Heidegger's Glasses

This book is best described as surreal. In fact, it reminded me of another book I blogged that I am going to have to go look up under the 'surreal' tag.

This is the story of a group of people, saved from the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, in order to translate. They were supposed to respond to letters sent to those who had been killed, displaced and disappeared in the Holocaust. (As far as I can research online, this was a creation of the author's imagination, but the Nazi's did do a bunch of really bizarre (and horrific) things).

The 'Scribes' live in a abandoned mine that has weirdly been remodeled into a Disneyland-like fake village. Also at the village are their Nazi guards and a woman, Elie who is the one who forages out into the world for food, supplies, orders from Nazi headquarters, etc. Elie also happens to be a member of the Resistance who saves those bound for the death camps. This book was fascinating and heartbreaking and you should read it. Being obsessive, like I am, I will no doubt pick up a million other books that relate to this.

The History of Love

Most of my book club didn't like this book. I did. It's a complicated story. Leo, a holocaust survivor lives in New York. He feels so alone, he constantly draws attention to himself to be sure he exists. The one thing he ever did in life was to love Alma. He wrote a book for her called The History of Love but it was lost in the horrors of the war. He also has a son with Alma who doesn't know that Leo exists.

Enter Alma Singer, who was named after Leo's Alma. Her parents read The History of Love in Spanish. Leo doesn't realize that his book has been published under another man's name. Alma Singer is trying to save her family. Her mother is depressed after the death of her husband, Alma's father and Alma's brother just keeps getting stranger and stranger. Eventally, the fates conspire to bring Leo and the second Alma together.

This is a lovely story. Sad but full of hope.

Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb

Subtitle: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi.

I LOVED this book but it was a hard read. It is all about how the young Israeli intelligence office captured Adolf Eichmann. The most interesting part of this book to me was the realization by the Israelis about how ordinary evil can be. Here was a man who masterminded the transportation of MILLIONS of people to be exterminated and he was just a sad, little, ordinary man.