Customer Reviews

Witness: Voices from the Holocaust

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4 star:		(5)
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I picked up this book in a local bookstore one afternoon, not planning to buy it, just to glance through since I'm very interested in the Holocaust. I was late picking my mother up from work because I became so caught up in it. What I appreciated most about Witness was the many different viewpoints presented, I can't remember another time where I was able to read a Hitler Youth's account of the happenings, and I had not read all that many accounts by American POWs. I spent an entire afternoon and late into the night reading the book straight through, and it was definitely time well spent. I agree with the previous reviewer in that the stories arent' quite so graphic as many I have come across, and yet I think since it is in each of the witnesses own words, nothing altered, not even grammar, it is so much more poignant. I would definitely recommend Witness to anyone searching for a greater knowledge of what occured in the camps and throughout Germany and Poland during this horrific time.

Witness: Voices from the Holocaust gives a very detailed account of the Holocsust, beginning in the early 1930's of Europe. Twenty-seven individuals are interviewed in the first person. Jews, Gentiles, Hitler Youth, priests, and others tell their story of their life and memories during these years. I found the book to be very educational and informative. It is not too graphic even though it does give you a very realistic view of life as it was when Hitler was controlling Germany.

As opposed to earlier commentators I do not come from a background rich in readings on the subject of the Holocaust and therefore Witness came as a unexpected mine of memories of people that had experienced the unimaginable.
My knowledge of the events of the Holocaust were almost exclusively from video documentaries and those documentaries had left many unanswered questions: questions about the Transportation, about the Marches after the camps closed late in the war, about the closing of the ghettos, about the long-term hiding, about the massive anti-semitism that greeted the survivors after the war upon returning "home" and finally the Jewish guerrilla bands that sprang up throughout eastern Europe.
The remarkable thing about this great exercise is the broadness of the interviews that compose the book: the authors assembled a very wide ranging collection of these interviews that spoke about all the topics that I had only heard snatches about in the video documentaries. It was all the more remarkable because these were all primary sources-they were not what somebody had interpreted but the memories of the people that lived the experience and because of this the book had an enormous impact on this reader.
I am a slow reader and the book absorbed me totally and I finished it in a matter of days.
If you read no other book about the Holocaust-read this one.

After reading some 100 Holocaust-related books, I find this to be one of the best actual survivor compilations. Though the last names are not used throughout the book, each "author" has a distinct personality, which really makes the reader feel the different accounts in a truly different way. From the poor girl whose parents were deaf to the American soldier wrongly arrested and interned, this book allows those who lived the hell of the Shoah to tell their own words in their own way. I literally did not put this book down until I finished every page. It made me cry, and again question how the world stood by and allowed this to happen.

I read this book several years ago and it had a profound affect on me. It is divided into three sections: life before, life during, and life after the holocaust for Jewish survivors. All the accounts are first-person narratives by the survivors themselves. I believe they were all interviewed on tape for a documentary. And then they put it into print to create this book. Something that surprised me was how prevalent anti-semitism was in the years before the Holocaust. Sometimes we think Hitler suddenly arose out of nowhere with his anti-semitism. But he was actually just "riding a wave" of hatred of the Jews. The Polish people were in particular very hateful of the Jews. It really surprised me how much they had to endure before WWII even began! This book was a compelling read - true accounts directly from those who survived the greatest horror of the 20th Century.

This great, compelling story of historical drama and is told from many points of view from that time in history, the 1940's. The book is set all over in Germany and is told by many different characters. I really liked how the authors described in detail what they felt when,they were being taken to a concentration camp or taken away from their loved ones. This book is a collection of many autobiographies of the survivors in the Holocaust. I loved how this author put together these autobiographies in chronological order, so it was easy to follow. Witness does a great job of telling about the memories that the survivor's in the Holocaust have had for many years. It also helps you understand what is was like for the Jewish citizens and the huge impact the Germans had on people around the world. This book is for every person that wants to know what it was like in the life of a Jewish man, woman, or child during that horrible time in history.

This great, compelling story of historical drama and is told from many points of view from that horrible time, the 1940's. The book is set all over in Germany and is told by many different characters. I really liked how the authors described in detail what they felt when,they were being taken to a concentration camp or taken away from their loved ones. This book is a collection of many autobiographies of the survivors in the Holocaust. I loved how this author put together these autobiographies in chronological order, so it was easy to follow. Witness does a great job of telling about the memories that the survivor's in the Holocaust have had for many years. It also helps you understand what is was like for the Jewish citizens and the huge impact the Germans had on people around the world. This book is for every person that wants to know what it was like in the life of a Jewish man, woman, or child during that horrible time in history.

This is the best book I have ever read on the witnesses of the Holocaust. It is not just a conglomeration of mini-biographies. It is a superbly woven testimony by survivors from a wide cast; not only from concentration camp victims but also from guards, SS Troops, Hitler's Youth, US POWs, Rabbi's, Pastors, neighbors, etc.

It quite uniquely begins at the beginning chronologically... so you get a comprehensive perspective of the social, economical, spiritual, anti-semitical and political atmosphere through the testimonies of this wide range of survivors as to when - where - how they saw the climate change in the pre-war and early war years. It continues chronologically through each phase and up to the writing of this book.

You won't be able to put this book down. The pictures and names of the witnesses and each of their testimonies become so integrated through-out each phase and bring you so close to the reality that it will always be a part of you.

I regret that I cannot more adequately expound on the merits of this book. I have bought it for others and they tell others about it. Read it for yourself. Put yourself in each of their places... see - hear - feel - experience what they did. What would you have done? How would you have reacted? How would you survive today after surviving the holocaust they did? What would you do to keep it from happening again?

As far as holocaust books go Witnesses: Voices from the Holocaust is one of the best books I have read. This book takes interviews from survivors on all sides of the war and organizes them into a book. The authors takes the interviews and without changing anything, even the grammar and organizes them into before the war, during the war, and after the war. While the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust were great the interviews in this book manage to portray the gravity and despair of the circumstances without going into the gory details that other books do. Even without the detail of torture and medical testing Witnesses manages to portray the fear the victims felt by leaving the accounts in their exact grammar and word choice.
The way this book is organized allows the reader to follow each person throughout the entirety of the war. By breaking up the stories but keeping the people the same the author allowed for a better understanding of what happened to different people in different stages of the war and how those events effected them later. From the story of a woman smothering her baby on accident so it isn't taken from her to the family hiding in a barn, each story breaks your heart. Witnesses is a must read for those people who are interested in the human interest side of the Holocaust

This is one of 10 volumes I have recently read. The content is heart rending. The organization of the material was a bit of a challenge for me to follow but well worth the persistence. This is a reality that is needed to view our current world conditions with clarity of our own destiny.