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Summary: A profoundly interesting and original Holocaust memoir
Review: Each memoir is important in adding to the historical record of this terrible period, and this book adds a considerable dimension with the authors shared as well as separate memories and their astute and insightful analyses of every aspect of their experiences. By the time I finished reading this book, I felt I knew both authors well and also many of the people who surrounded them over the years. I hope the book is widely read and given a place of honor in Holocaust literature. It deserves deep attention by scholars and general readers and seems eerily prescient, too, in light of September 11th, and its concern for the horrors our species can inflict on its victims. If I were still writing book reviews, this book would be a prime choice for me. It deserves all the notice in print it can get.
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Summary: for a better world
Review: I read this wonderful new book with both tears and enthusiasm. I think it is a tremendous contribution to the healing process of all the so-called evil periods in history. I personally believe that most of the evil in this world is purely imagined, and that people are still innocent deep-down, even if they do horrible things sometimes. If we use our imagination to step outside our own shoes and take the perspective of someone else, this truth becomes inevitable. Learning to speak another language also helps us realize this very quickly and profoundly. The honesty of this book may well change the course of human history for the better.
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Summary: A vey moving historical book that everyone should read
Review: 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.
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Summary: From a distant relative of Fritz Tubach
Review: 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.
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Summary: From a distant relative of Fritz Tubach
Review: 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.
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Summary: Becoming a Lifelong Survivor
Review: 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.
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Summary: I go to the school mentioned in the book!
Review: The two authors of the book just visited my school today, and told me and the other students their stories. Bernat Rosner went to my school, Thomas Jefferson School, and he even mentions and has pictures of it in the book. I've yet to read it, but I'm eagerly anticipating it. Their stories are so touching, and I feel so honored to have met these two men. Also to have had a man as interesting as Bernie Rosner go to my school in 1950, it's just so amazing. They are very interesting people, and there's just so much more I could say, but this review would unfortunately become boring. I strongly suggest that everyone should read this book, the authors have two great stories to tell.
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Summary: An Uncommon Friendship; an uncommon reading experience.
Review: 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.
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Summary: What understanding and compassion
Review: This book reduced me to tears many times, for different reasons. The most profound moment in the book for me was when Mr. Rosner and his family were removed from their homes and forced to witness what no teenage boy should have to witness... the manhandling of his mother. It caused me to stop and reflect on the relationship I have with my 13 year old son and how he would feel to see his strong mother reduced to the status of an animal in another's eyes. The life stories of these two men and the intertwining of their lives - years, decades later - show that with time wounds still exist but with love, compassion, understanding, empathy, and friendship, those wounds can be exposed and cleansed. In an effort to educate the rest of us, these two men expose their wounds in the rawest ways and give us all the gift of pure appreciation for what they both lived through - one as the son of an SS man and the other a Jew. What a poignant story for us all to learn from!
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Summary: An unusual encounter makes history comprehensible.
Review: 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.
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