Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Recommended Reading

Two remarkable books, both about the Holocaust:

1. The novel The Last of The Just, by Andre Schwarz-Bart. It was published in France in 1959, and was brought out in America in 1960.

The edition I read was published by MJF Books of New York, as part of its “Library of the Holocaust.”

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Just-Andre-Schwarz-Bart/dp/1585670162/

2. Holocaust, by the poet Charles Reznikoff. Published in 1975.

From the back cover of the book: Reznikoff’s "source materials are the U.S. government's record of the trials of the Nazi criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and the transcripts of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. None of the words here are Reznikoff's own: instead he has created, through selection and arrangement of the courtroom testimony, a poem that unfolds in the voices [of] the perpetrators and the survivors of the Holocaust themselves. He lets the terrible history lay itself bare in history's own tongue."

http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Charles-Reznikoff/dp/1574232088/ref=ed_oe_p