The Dentist of Auschwitz: A Memoir

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Summary: This would make a good "first book" of Holocaust reading.
Review: "The Dentist of Auschwitz" may sound like it is about a dentist who worked for the Nazis, but it is not. This is a very personal story about a boy who struggled to keep his dentistry tools with him as he entered the prison camps. It could just possibly be that the tools saved his life. His services were offered to the other prisoners, though he did have to do some unpleasant dentistry as well. This story is much more than a story of dentistry. In fact, his dental services are a very small part of a story about a young boy and his father who were taken from their home. Later he located his younger brother in a nearby camp. Eventually, all three were together. The book tells of a romance between Jew and non-Jew,(a few sentences a bit personal) which is rare in the survivor books. I will not divulge more story, because, if you are like me, I do not want to "know the show before I see it." I will say that this young man was not as concerned for his own life as he was for others. He does not speak in detail about the horrific behavior of the Nazis as many other books do, (not to say that the truth should be hidden). This is a book of hardships but not gore. I have read at least fifty personal survivor accounts of the Holocaust, because I am a Jew in spirit. I am particular about the honesty in the books that I read. The writer of this book was not overly flowery; but on the contrary, with few words, he made you feel that you were there. In my view, he is a very good writer. This book was pleasant and inspiring reading for me. Larry

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Summary: Magnificent Book
Review: "The Dentist of Auschwitz" is an outstanding and accessible nonfiction Holocaust memoir on a par with Elie Wiesel's venerable and moving novella, "Night." As a survivor of both labor and concentration camps during the Holocaust years in Europe, Benjamin Jacobs offers us two very unusual perspectives into the Nazi kingdom of death. First, he was already a young adult when he was incarcerated in a labor camp in Poland; he was not a child nor was he already a person advanced in age, and thus he brings a unique vantage. Secondly, Mr. Jacobs, now in his eighties, has expended the effort and anguish to reach back through the benefit of five intervening decades of time to relate his harrowing story and that of his family. "The Dentist of Auschwitz" is a very human account of an ordinary Jewish family in Poland whose lives were changed indelibly--and for his mother, father, and sister, ultimately extinguished. In a thoroughly engaging manner, Mr. Jacobs relates his thoughts, loves, passions, and challenges with God as he endured the daily fear and hunger, cold and pain of 4 years in the Holocaust universe. He is to be commended for sharing his life with us. Hopefully, we will listen.

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Summary: A Remarkable Story of Courage and Survival
Review: I found out about this book after reading another book that the author co-wrote. It is called The 100-Year Secret and it deals with a portion of the material that is contained in The Dentist of Auschwitz. The author spent almost five years in various camps, riding in closed railroad cars in summer, open railroad cars in winter, on death marches in the dead of winter, and on "hell ships," that were mistakingly attacked by the RAF and he, along with his brother still outlived the Nazi monsters that created this world for them. How Jacobs managed to survive his voyage through "man's inhumanity to man" is at the heart of this amazing story of survival. I promise you will not be able to put this book down.

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Summary: An outstanding account of a Holocaust Survivor.
Review: I started reading this book and could not hardly put it down. I think I read it in 3 days. Benjamin Jacobs was sent to a concentration camp along with the rest of his family. Benjamin and his father ended up at Auschwitz. Had it not been for Benjamin's dental training and given a little bit of preference over the other inmates, the pure hell he was put through would have surely ended in death. The love story between him and Zosia is touching. Unbelievable how anyone could survive just a nightmare. This is truly the part of history most of us would like to rewrite. Great book.

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Summary: A Survivor's Story
Review: In Holocaust literature, this testimony is far and above one of the best I've read. The author's desire to preserve his family at all costs is gripping, yet the finality of their humanity is inevitable. One shocking exposure was the author's experience with ss-sargeant Otto Moll, one of the Holocaust's bloodiest executioners. His kindness portrayed here is in direct contrast to the testimony of Filip Muller, in "Eyewitness Auschwitz", another must read for the serious student of history. I would recommend this book for its human interest value.

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Summary: Wonderfully Written
Review: Jacobs captures the hardships of life under Nazi Occupation in terms anyone can understand.A wonderful text which gives people an inside look at life in the concentration camps,a must read for anyone who ever thought of holocaust victims as individuals rather than a statistic.