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An Uncommon Friendship: From Opposite Sides of the Holocaust

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Just when we think we've read all the Holocaust books that we can, Bernie Rosner and Fritz Tubach come up with a book that almost defies definition. It certainly is about the Holocaust, but it is so much more. It is a short book and in its way, an almost quiet book. Mostly it is a story about living in spite of death's remarkable odds. How does a young lad from Hungary live beyond the deaths of his family members and the memory of the death camps? How does a young man who was a member of the Hitler Youth, and who admits to stealing a candle from a Jewish home just days after Kristallnacht, find his way out of such darkness?

The story of the paths taken and how they eventually cross is told for both men in the voice of Tubach. A chance meeting between their wives brought the men together in the relaxed setting of suburban northern California. The two men shared a love of music, art and literature and what developed was a friendship steeped in respect and admiration. They had been friends for many years when, after visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., Bernie knew he needed to tell his story, and who better to tell it to than his friend, Fritz. As Bernie reached backward to his most painful memories, Fritz, too, revealed the texture of his own youth from the opposite side of the same years.

This is a book about the bridge these two men built out of their friendship. They built it with the mortar of their friendship and their shared hope for a civilized world. It is a bridge built to span one of humankind's worst divides and it is a book that asks the reader to cross that bridge with them.

This is an unusual book.  We encounter two people whose life stories couldn't be more different.  In this book they let us participate in their meeting in later life and in their friendship.  Two friends, two Americans, tell each other the stories of their European pasts and childhoods-how one of the youths, born in 1932 to a Jewish Orthodox family, survived Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Gusen, and how the other, born in 1930, experienced the Nazi period and the war in a small village and joined the Jungvolk.  Above all, this is an American story.  The two men meet in the USA-indeed, it was only possible for them to meet there-where both have brilliant careers.  As a stateless orphan in Italy, Bernie is adopted by the GI, Charles Merrill, Jr., and then sent to the finest American universities.  He  conforms and becomes conservative.  Fritz, who immigrates following the war and works himself up from the bottom to a Berkeley professorship, moves in the lively left scene of Califor! ni! a in the sixties.  The book is neither a novel nor a reference work.  It poses many questions we normally never ask: How did Bernie survive?  It was necessary to quickly understand the rules of killing at any given moment: if younger people were killed, one had to appear older; when the sick were killed, one needed to appear healthy and to quickly join those fit for work-and to find a guard who would allow this to happen.

A generation of Germans remained silent; the report of village life in the Nazi period and its aftermath makes this clear.  But how was Bernie able to remain silent about his experiences for over 50 years?  History can remain abstract and distant.  Often we try to maintain a distance, because access is impossible.  This book opens a biographical door that brings history alive for us.  We have often heard about the millions of Jews that were murdered; we know about the Holocaust.  But have we ever met anyone who was there?  When we do meet a survivor, we are directly shocked and moved.  History happens when silence is transformed into memory.  On the other hand, this book allows us to understand and experience Bernie's story because it is written from a certain distance.  Bernie creates this distance also for himself by the device of the third person pronoun, and through the narrator, Fritz Tubach, who carefully and empathetically makes Bernie's childhood experiences in Europe accessible.

Employing phrases of great sensibility, the language and style of this conversation is of an unusual sensitivity.  The text was professionally reworked by Sally Patterson Tubach.  Moments of reflection in the present interrupt the telling of past events; they help avoid too much closeness and facilitate their acceptance.

This clearly written, compelling double memoir tells the story of Bernat Rosner, a Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivor and Fredric Tubach, German son of a Nazi officer raised in the fervent pro-Nazi atmosphere of 1930s Germany. It reveals how they became friends after the war in the United States and in the course of their friendship how they began to explore their painful personal and national histories together. This book shares the results of this collaboration.

This book is fascinating on many levels. It gives first hand accounts of how the Holocaust was experienced at the ground level perspective. For the Jews of Hungary, an abrupt change from traditional Jewish life in rural villages to sudden deportation to unknown destinations, leading for Bernat and his family to the death camps. For Fred, one sees the normal life of the German countryside, with seemingly normal differences of opinion regarding one political party or another, all leading gradually to war. Who knew that the Nazis were leading them to commit the greatest crime in history? Both Bernard and Fred tell their stories from their respective childhood vantage points.

The book also tells the story of rebirth after the war, where both boys come to the United States as refugees and build new lives. How they befriend each other and gradually inched toward their mutual exploration of the past is facinating and fruitful.

I think that more than anything else, this book shows how it is impossible to make generalizations covering nations or peoples. There is often a tendency to blame whole nations for what occurred during the Holocaust: Germans, Austrians, Poles, the finger pointing list goes on and on. Yet within every Holocaust tale, when one comes down to the individual stories one finds that the widely cast blankets of blame are not accurate. My parents are both Holocaust survivors from Vilna Poland. My father survived execution by German and Lithuanian Nazis at the killing grounds of Ponari and was hidden by Polish peasant families who risked their lives to save him. My mother faced open anti-semitism by local Poles who often supported the Nazis in their efforts to find all the Jews in Vilna, but she and her parents were saved by the German Wehrmacht officer in charge of their labor camp who risked his life to save hundreds of Jews under his command from the murderous intent of the SS. .... How does one make sense of this other than to conclude that one must judge each person by the choices they make and the actions that they take. If Bernard and Fred can build bridges across the cultural divides of the Holocaust, maybe there is hope that humans will find a way to overcome suspicion, xenophobia and bigotry. The Holocaust demonstrates the worst that we humans are capable of. The story of this uncommon friendship gives us all hope that we can overcome our past with some measure of hope for the future of mankind.

There are dozens of books about the Holocaust - and other horrible tragedies man has perpetrated on his fellow man before and since. Where many of these dehumanize the victims by focusing on the specifics of the crimes, this book is alive and all human.

That these two men, Bernat and Fritz, were able to overcome their past and become friends is as moving a story as any you'll find. More than anything, I came away feeling that it is possible to move beyond our historic differences and hatreds. Its a warm, human, and hopeful message. Perhaps there's hope for Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Rwanda...and for all of us.

What an inspirational story about facing the demons of our past through overcoming tragedy, adapting coping skills, and accepting tolerance. Bernie and Fritz have told such an intriguing story that it is hard to put the book down. The book bridges the opposite sides of the Holocaust through the eyes of youngsters, grabs your attention and doesn't let you go. It must be so therapeutic for the two survivors to talk about this horrific beginning of their life. A story very well written and a tribute to two wonderful, talented and successful men bonded by fate, forgiveness and an uncommon friendship.

A wonderful book. I enjoyed "An Uncommon Friendship" enormously; it is sensitive, thoughtful and erudite and beautifully written, in its own way a contribution to the civilized society Rosner and Tubach so ardently desire. I was especially fascinated by the difference in the two men: the "insider" and "outsider". Fritz's predilections are easier to understand; he seems to have been born a maverick. And I guess it is not hard to imagine why Bernie, who once lost everything, must now conserve everything. The foreword is an eloquent introduction. Congratulations and kudos to the authors.

In the past few years there have been many new books written about the Holocaust. Some of these I've read, but none affected me as much as did "An Uncommon Friendship". I was so impressed that I read the book three times, - the first reading was difficult because at many points I had tears in my eyes because of the many horrors to which Bernie Rosner, a teenage Hundarian boy was subjected by the Nazis. The second reading was emotionally easier and I began to realize the strong character that Bernie had to develope to endure the mental and physical tortures to which he was subjected. I now realize that this period of Bernies life was the clay that molded him into a SURVIVOR, preparing him for future difficult periods of his life. The sadness of the concentration camp joyfully offset by the tender and loving relationship of the family that sponsored him in the United States. This love and support was the foundation that led him to eventually become a noted lawyer and respected business man.

I was very impressed with this book; for such a difficult subject it was beautifully written. I have been to the Holocaust Museum in Israel, and though the documentation there is quite graphic and disturbing, the voice of the child in Bernie, and the voice of the child on the other side in Fritz, completes a picture that is enlightening, but reveals a picture that no one wants to believe. It seems to me that is often the way people have dealt with this very terrible time, and the authors are very brave to tell this story. I think this book should be required reading for all college students.

Fritz Tubach's account of the parallels and perils of his and Bernie Rosner's youth are enriched through a unique and captivating perspective. Tubach, a native of Nazi Germany must narrate the story of Rosner's holocaust survival in his own words. The challenge and contradiction of communicating such an opposing experience is resolved through the evident strength of the two men's adult friendship and their profound level of empathy and understanding. This book is a facinating read, and illustrates the horrors of the holocaust while resonating with the evidence of man's better nature: human compassion and cultural tolerance.

In a world with a lot of open wounds in need of healing, "An Uncommon Friendship" helps bridge former sins and ongoing roots of bitterness to establish a world pregnant with new beginnings--every day. This book shows that other options are possible beyond the labels of cultural bigotry. When properly understood and appropriated, understanding and forgiveness are seldom far apart in life-giving relationships.

Recently we came in contact with a person who has such a high disregard for Germans. If only they knew and understood the rich heritage German culture has also given as a gift to the New World of new beginnings.