Rating: 
Summary: Great book
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Private Horror!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Private Horror!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Witness
Review: I read the book Witness. It was edited by Joshua M. Greene and Shiva Kumar with a forward written by Lawrence L. Langer. Witness is a narrative about the Holocaust. Greene and Kumar wrote the personal stories of people who survived this terrible time in history. There were twenty- seven witnesses including Jews, Gentiles, Americans, and one member of the Hitler Youth, a Jesuit priest, resistance fighters and child survivors. They each told their story about how the Holocaust effected them and their families and what actually happened. I really liked the book. I learned some more information about the Holocaust. Everyone had a different perspective towards the Holocaust because they all had something different to say about the Holocaust, the different camps and their experiences trying to survive in the camps. One of the things I learned from reading this book is how much the Poles hated the Jews. I also learned how the Jews survived and how people risked their lives to help the Jews, like Schindler. I would recommend this book to others because it was good and informative.
Rating:
Summary: Witness
Review: I read the book Witness. It was edited by Joshua M. Greene and Shiva Kumar with a forward written by Lawrence L. Langer. Witness is a narrative about the Holocaust. Greene and Kumar wrote the personal stories of people who survived this terrible time in history. There were twenty- seven witnesses including Jews, Gentiles, Americans, and one member of the Hitler Youth, a Jesuit priest, resistance fighters and child survivors. They each told their story about how the Holocaust effected them and their families and what actually happened. I really liked the book. I learned some more information about the Holocaust. Everyone had a different perspective towards the Holocaust because they all had something different to say about the Holocaust, the different camps and their experiences trying to survive in the camps. One of the things I learned from reading this book is how much the Poles hated the Jews. I also learned how the Jews survived and how people risked their lives to help the Jews, like Schindler. I would recommend this book to others because it was good and informative.
Rating:
Summary: profound, disturbing, a must read on the holocaust
Review: I read this book several years ago and it had a profound affect on me. It is divided into three sections: life before, during, and 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. This book was a compelling read - true accounts directly from those who survived the greatest horror of the 20th Century.
Rating:
Summary: Illusion-reality
Review: If you are interested in this section of history - man's cruelty to himself, this book is as good as any. Two points made by two survivors. One: If it is for advanced civilization we strive then what can be said about the Nazis? The German country and government during that period was one of the most advanced that the planet had ever experienced, yet it was also the most barbaric. Lo that comment was made in ignorence. Historically, every century is filled with Nazi-like governents that when in a situation where they cannot be held accountable- let their whims run amuck. (All in the name of fear, some god, patriotism or nationalism.) And two: nothing in the human experience, or the way humans react is going to improve until there is a fundemantal change in the way man has been created. This book may make you think, it may make you angry, but the point is, even if you went through what these people went through: You may learn something, but it won't be lasting; nothing's going to change. The book has some tough messages.
Rating:
Summary: Mindblowing
Review: This book has to be one of the greatest books ever written about Jewish mistreatment during the Holocaust. I am a relatively young reader in comparison to the time in which WWII occurred, but this book does a wonderful job of putting the horrors of the Holocuast into my generation's perspective. We did not have to live through the horror of WWII, and with time steadily marching on, we chance losing every Holocaust survivor and their stories. Witness does a great job of recording the memories that are forever burned into the Holocaust survivor's mind. I recommend this book to every person that wants to know what it was like in the life of a Jewish man, woman, or child during those hellacious years.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptional
Review: This book was so heart wrenching. The author organized narratives from the same individuals over different points of the Holocaust and followed them along. Many pictures added faces to the stories which although are most certainly true, are still infathomable to imagine. It was presented as people telling stories rather than a history lesson. Hard to read all at once, takes a while to take it all in.
Rating: 
Summary: This compelling book was Great!
Review: 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.
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