The Righteous and the Wicked

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Holocaust book
Review: The Righteous and the Wicked, a Romantic Historical Novel, by Will Garelick is woven around actual events during World War II. Garelick intertwines many fictional characters with real people that played out the horrors of the war.The story involves the lives of seven people as we follow them over a six year period of time as the face the horrors of war, the mass murders of not only European Jewry but all those that were in the way of Hitler's paranoid desire to rid the world of Jews and Untermenschen.
Jews has fought in World War I for Germany and were awarded the Iron Cross. They were an important part of Germany's industrial and financial sector as well as Poland's textile industry. However, due to Hitler's obsession of conquering the Soviet Union he took needed people and sent them to the front lines. Hitler's attack on Stalingrad was a major tactical error which eventually cost him the war. The loss of an entire tank division attempting to cross a frozen lake was vividly well written. I generally do not read historic novels but after meeting the author and hearing him speak I decided to read the book.
The novel is a page turner. However I did find one technical error in the chapter on Yom Kippur, Garelick states "The sun had set. The full moon, the stars and the flickering oil torches gave the scene..." There is no full moon on Yom Kippur! Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, the week before always begins at a new moon. Several days after Yom Kippur is Sukkot which always falls on a full moon.