Customer Reviews

The Wall - A Novel

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Hersey is probably America's greatest unrecognized writer. Hersey probably didn't care. The Wall drove me to my local library where I soon found the names of many of his fictional characters. The Jewish historian who hid his writings in milk cans has a name. He died in 1944. Milk cans were still being found in the 1950's according to my research. How did the son of Protestant missionaries to China write this Jewish story? It was easy---Hersey loved them very much. His characters are largely doomed to the fate the Nazi's inflicted upon them. But you cry for them--we lost those wonderful people because they were Jewish. Hersey writes with a pen in one hand and a lightning bolt in the other. This is a great read, filled with compassion and a skill with words that is nearly gone from today's garish bestsellers.

You can read the other reviews to get an idea as to what the story covers, but I want to share with you my experience as to the impact of its delivery and tale. I read a lot. And it's rare for a book to make me laugh out loud or cry tears. At first, I neither liked nor cared for any of the characters. At the end, I cried; hard. I've never had a story affect me this way.

This is a very deep and powerful historical novel involving Poland, Jews and the Germans. I think it was published even before the Schindler's list became widely known. This is the story of the condammed Jews in the Polish ghetto trying to fight back without any help from the outside and not for the survival (it was impossible and they knew it) but for the remains of dignity and for the right to die standing tall. Mila 18 by Leon Uris comes to mind when you read "The Wall".

One of the only true accounts, which will leave you wondering 'could this ever happen again.' I began the book, thinking it was a mistake, but after reading the first page, my mind was drawn to the wondrous text. I read page after page, loving each milisecond in which I could enjoy the classic. It tells of a Jewish 'family' living in the Warsaw ghetto during the second world war. Many exciting, and interesting charcters sweep you off your feet as you read. People who otherwise would never have been remembered, during one of the most tragic times, in all of the world's history will at last get the credit they deserve. The 'family' consisting of several families, with ages varying between a few months to nearly sixty years of age. Every charcter has a story in which they wish their close friend, Noach Levinson, to record in his archive. His archive was retrieved by a Jewish girl, Rachel Apt, and her older Jewish lover, Dolek Berson, after the war. Levinson's archive was filled with documents containing information concerning his friends, and enemies, the Nazis. Also contained in his archive were plays, stories, and journals written by people in the ghetto. The book explains in detail the thoughts, conversations, and contributions to the war, of the forty+ Jewish who escaped the tragedies of the ghetto, through the underground sewer system. You'll feel as you end the book, that you are one of these Jewish struggling to survive in the climate of a war-torn Europe. You'll know the 'family' personally, even though you have never met them, and probably never will. I personally loved the book, and hope people of many future generations will be able to experience the sadness, hope, and frustrations felt while reading this classic novel

Although I read this many years ago, it is on my re-read list. I recall that it was a fast read and held my interest to the end. If you have ever wondered just how the Holocaust could have happened, read this book and get a feel for just how an intelligent group was identified, manipulated, herded into the ghetto, managed to survive as long as they could.....a real eye-opener. Probably one of the better WW II pieces of historical fiction.

This is John Hersey's stunning novel about the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during WW II. It's a huge, sprawling book, and revolves around upwards of fifty different characters in their struggle to survive Nazi atrocities within the ghetto. Hersey based much of the novel on thousands of pages of original source material written in Polish and Yiddish by Jews in Warsaw. A handful of the characters begin to take center stage and relate what's going on and their feelings and impressions through first-person narratives: Dolek Berson, Pavel Menkes, Henryck Rapaport, Rachel Apt, and especially Noach Levinson become leaders of the "Jewish family" that first confront the Germans and then finally escape as the last buildings are being razed. With so many characters we witness the vast array of human qualities, from the strong to the weak, the resourceful and resilient to the helpless and feeble. Not only is the book an indictment of the horrors that people are able and willing to inflict on others, it's a rousing hurrah for those who fight against and somehow survive the torture and humiliation. The book is an amazing achievement, certainly Hersey's greatest novel.

This book seems to be based on the real-life diaries of Emanuel Ringelblum, whose copious writings were unearthed after WWII, and also takes a similar form to the novel 'Mila 18,' which is also based around journal entries taking place in Warsaw during WWII. This particular journal was kept by Noach Levinson, whom we find out in the foreword died in March of 1944 of TB, and was unearthed by several of the survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto. However, it isn't the normal book told in journal form, since Noach mostly describes what happens around him and to other people instead of just focusing on himself and his own feelings. Many of the entries are told from the point of view of other characters, who later related their stories and feelings to Noach, even opening up to him about very personal private matters. I would strongly recommend it to people looking to read more in this sub-genre of Shoah literature, right up there with 'Mila 18' and Ringelblum's actual journals.

However, this book was a little slow at first for me, but it quickly became more interesting and faster-paced. And I'm hardly one to talk since my own writing features a lot of characters as well, but sometimes it was hard to remember who was whom because there were so many characters, even minor secondary characters, and sometimes these characters would go unmentioned for pages at a time, making it a bit difficult to get a picture of just what this person's significance was or even what this person was like. In a book with a lot of characters, it's easier to keep track of everyone if characters are introduced and developed at around the same time instead of just popping up sporadically. As a result, I didn't feel attached to all of these characters in the same way. Still, that's a relatively minor criticism given that the subject matter itself is so engrossing and detailed.

My other relatively minor issue with the book is the writing style itself. Sometimes it does seem a little pretentious or confusing how an entry will be broken up midway through with an insert in brackets, an insert containing an older entry or an entry that would be written at a future date, or notes from conversations that took place while the survivors were hiding in a sewer after the revolt, on a subject related to the main entry. This occasional nonlinear structure didn't really seem that effective or natural to me. There were also a number of inserts in brackets referencing older entries; even if this was meant to be told in a journalistic matter, that still seems a bit pretentious in a work of fiction, kind of interrupting the natural flow of the story. I also wished there had been some sort of afterword, providing more of a sense of closure on what happened to the survivors after they were taken from the sewer to the partisans in the woods. I was left wondering what had happened to some of the characters who had escaped the Ghetto and were now living on the Aryan side, like Rachel's father and sister, or Rachel's little brother David, who was in a secret convoy going to Palestine. Still, all in all, in spite of a few comparatively minor shortcomings, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in this particular sub-genre of Shoah literature.

This is a fictitious drama, but most of the characters and incidents are based on historical facts surrounding the 1943 Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. It is truly an epic, divided into four parts and surround several families' experiences and comraderie during the Nazi occupation of their hometown. Hersey makes a painstaking chronicle of their everyday lives, their hardships and underground networking, leading to the eventual revolt. It is a sad, yet ultimately triumphant story.
A quick, personal rebuttal regarding the teen commenting on this book being boring (and for other youngsters considering reading this book):
1. Just because you're in high school does NOT mean your opinions are not important; they are. If you really feel this book is endless, you can and should say so. But what parts of it do you find objectionable? Are the sentences long-winded (you might find this to be true since Mr. Hersey was trained in journalism, hence he chronicles a great deal of detail into the story)?
2. You might think this is crazy, but try reading this book again! But this time, focus your interest on perhaps just one or two main characters (ie: Dolek Berson, Noach Levinson, Rachel Apt, etc.) By doing this, you'll probably find that your interest level in the material goes up since you'll be more attentive to the goings-on of just the people you want to follow within the story. The remaining details will indirectly fall into place as you continue in the book.
3. Don't let the length of this or any other book intimidate you. I agree with you that "The Wall" is a long piece of work, but the contents makes it worth reading. In contrast, you may have encountered books that are only 100 pages long, but they are so dry and uninteresting that you cannot wait to get to the end of them (I had assigned reading like this in high school, so if you too feel this way, I can empathize!).
In any case, I hope you (and others) are not discouraged from studying this very important era of World War II. All the best!

If you read this book, you will enter the Warsaw Ghetto during the 1940's, and live there along side the Jews, Poles, etc. You will experience their joys, humor, cleverness, sadness, depression, anxiety, and terror. The characters are fictional; the history is factual; and the heartbreak too real! If you want a history lesson on Nazi persecution, on the sense of family under horrendous pressures, on the claustrophobia of living underground, and the exhilarations of courage and weapons acquisition--and a cold, hard look at the Final Solution in action--this is the book for you!

Leon Uris based "Mila 18" on Hersey's "The Wall." Hersey, a non-Jew born of missionary parents in China, I feel, channeled Noach Levinson, a scholar of the Talmud, in this, the best novel of ghetto life during World War II. Memorable characters, an exciting plot that keeps you riveted to the story, wonderful characters, and the great Berson and his concertina and Rachel, homely, wonderful, fantastic. I've read this work many, many times, and each time I am swept up by the story. All the hoopla that surrounded "The Naked and the Dead," and who reads it anymore anyway, and "The Wall" is forgotten by the quote literary world. This work, read in tandem with I. B. Singer's "The Family Moskat," is the quintessential portrait of Polish Jewry from the turn of the century up until, well, speaking in literary terms, up until "Exodus." Uris's novel is a journalistic movie--don't look for nuance or depth. Hersey's is a novel in the Tolstoyan sense in which you never forget the characters and they live inside your soul forever. Uris's Ari, for example, is a kind of Ayn Rand Howard Roark superhero, superman, "Who is John Galt?" kind of guy, way beyond my caring too much about him other than to wish that Paul Newman were still alive.

Read "The Wall." Live "The Wall." Tell your friends about "The Wall." Maybe NYRB will reissue it with a proper intro by some literary bigwig and put Hersey's novel back on the map.