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A Holocaust Trilogy #3
After Auschwitz
extracts from a new review of AFTER AUSCHWITZ from author Joanna Schmida ... I am thrilled to be favorably compared with Herman Wouk and Leon Uris ... thank you Johanna
After Auschwitz is the third book in the remarkable WW II trilogy written by Lewis M. Weinstein, a brilliant scholar and meticulous researcher. To be sure, you’d get a better handle on the story and insight of the two main characters if you read the first two books, A Flood of Evil and A Promise Kept, and I recommend that. But if not, this book can stand alone.
This third volume of the novel is both engrossing and well-narrated. Not since I read Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance, or Exodus by Leon Uris have I been so moved by a story emerging from WW II. The true story that will never cease to horrify. And the conclusions drawn will intrigue both Jews and Christians alike.
This volume of the trilogy would be an engrossing mini-series. The combination of all three volumes would be an extraordinary one. A story of love, war, and redemption. Everyone should read this novel. It is well worthwhile.
After Auschwitz is the third book in the remarkable WW II trilogy written by Lewis M. Weinstein, a brilliant scholar and meticulous researcher. To be sure, you’d get a better handle on the story and insight of the two main characters if you read the first two books, A Flood of Evil and A Promise Kept, and I recommend that. But if not, this book can stand alone.
This third volume of the novel is both engrossing and well-narrated. Not since I read Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance, or Exodus by Leon Uris have I been so moved by a story emerging from WW II. The true story that will never cease to horrify. And the conclusions drawn will intrigue both Jews and Christians alike.
This volume of the trilogy would be an engrossing mini-series. The combination of all three volumes would be an extraordinary one. A story of love, war, and redemption. Everyone should read this novel. It is well worthwhile.
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First published June 17, 2021
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About the author
Lewis M. Weinstein
11 books619 followersReading the reviews of my GR friends, and sometimes adding a comment, is a great way for me to start my day in a literary frame of mind. Then I turn to my own research and writing.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 17, 2024
*** had a great meeting with my former bookclub which read After Auschwitz ... good questions and observations ... everybody loved the Epilogue
UPDATE ... AFTER AUSCHWITZ is currently available via Kindle Unlimited at zero cost!
***
I'm reading my most recently published novel to prepare for an upcoming author presentation in Key West
AFTER AUSCHWITZ, set in Israel and Germany after WWII, is the conclusion to my Holocaust trilogy, and ties many things together, although it can also be read first or as a standalone.
READER COMMENTS … a love story within a factual and fast-paced historical novel … characters are so realistically portrayed … never a dull moment … an accessible way to learn this abominable history in a captivating manner ... Weinstein brings us into the rooms … you feel like you are another character in the corner … a moving, compassionate, and inspiring story of two very brave young people … part historical novel, part political thriller, part love story … … the ending is the most moving I've read in a Holocaust novel … Weinstein's gift is to weave the history into a beautiful and endearing love story … the ending brought tears to my eyes …
UPDATE ... AFTER AUSCHWITZ is currently available via Kindle Unlimited at zero cost!
***
I'm reading my most recently published novel to prepare for an upcoming author presentation in Key West
AFTER AUSCHWITZ, set in Israel and Germany after WWII, is the conclusion to my Holocaust trilogy, and ties many things together, although it can also be read first or as a standalone.
READER COMMENTS … a love story within a factual and fast-paced historical novel … characters are so realistically portrayed … never a dull moment … an accessible way to learn this abominable history in a captivating manner ... Weinstein brings us into the rooms … you feel like you are another character in the corner … a moving, compassionate, and inspiring story of two very brave young people … part historical novel, part political thriller, part love story … … the ending is the most moving I've read in a Holocaust novel … Weinstein's gift is to weave the history into a beautiful and endearing love story … the ending brought tears to my eyes …
July 9, 2021
First of all, thanks to Lew Weinstein for providing an advance copy of this book in return for my thoughts and opinion. I bought and read the first two books of this series and enjoyed them very much, so I was happy to read this one without needing to pay for it.
I thought the book was very good on several levels. I originally began reading the series to try to understand better how Hitler was able to come to power and convince so many intelligent people to follow him. I've read all about the holocaust, and what happened, but not so much about how it came about. But when Donald Trump became president and managed to convince so many people to apparently take leave of their senses and believe so many obvious lies - not that most politicians don't lie, but they usually limit their lies to either stretching the truth, spinning the facts, and covering up affairs, not manufacturing facts and totally discrediting legitimate news.
However, during the first book, I also got interested in the characters and their lives. There was Berthold, an unwilling Nazi who could not forgive himself for what he did, even though he was taking such risks by working against the Nazis for the Allies. And his girlfriend Anna, who loved him through it all and waited so many years to be with him. They seemed so real that it was sometimes hard to remember that they were fictional. This was a love story, and many parts were very emotional to the point where I would have to stop often because I'd get teary-eyed and couldn't read the print. So much sadness because Berthold could not imagine that he was worth being loved even though he took such incredible risks and saved so many people from death.
I think you would best read the first two books before this one; but if you already have, you will want to read this without a doubt.
I thought the book was very good on several levels. I originally began reading the series to try to understand better how Hitler was able to come to power and convince so many intelligent people to follow him. I've read all about the holocaust, and what happened, but not so much about how it came about. But when Donald Trump became president and managed to convince so many people to apparently take leave of their senses and believe so many obvious lies - not that most politicians don't lie, but they usually limit their lies to either stretching the truth, spinning the facts, and covering up affairs, not manufacturing facts and totally discrediting legitimate news.
However, during the first book, I also got interested in the characters and their lives. There was Berthold, an unwilling Nazi who could not forgive himself for what he did, even though he was taking such risks by working against the Nazis for the Allies. And his girlfriend Anna, who loved him through it all and waited so many years to be with him. They seemed so real that it was sometimes hard to remember that they were fictional. This was a love story, and many parts were very emotional to the point where I would have to stop often because I'd get teary-eyed and couldn't read the print. So much sadness because Berthold could not imagine that he was worth being loved even though he took such incredible risks and saved so many people from death.
I think you would best read the first two books before this one; but if you already have, you will want to read this without a doubt.
November 12, 2021
**Contains Spoilers ** I just finished "After Auschwitz", the third book in a trilogy. They are incredibly historically accurate, and the characters are woven into the real history of the time. They also tell that story better than a history book because two people are living their lives through that history and telling us about it.
These books are the story of Berthold Becker and Anna Gorska, one a Nazi, the other a Jewish journalist. This is an unlikely love story, until you look closely at Anna and Berthold. Unlike most non-Jews, Berthold's best friend from early boyhood is Jewish, his mother works at Leonard's father's store, and he has no hatred of any Jews. They are just ordinary people like he is. He later learns he is also Jewish, but was raised Catholic.
Berthold and Anna fall in love in their early twenties, long before Hitler comes to power and remain in love all their lives regardless of the serious problems their relationship faces after being physically on opposite sides of the Holocaust. Berthold became a Nazi because he needed to keep his job, even though he saved people's lives and spied for the British. Anna escaped the Holocaust only to throw herself back into it and get herself rounded up and sent to Auschwitz by going back to Poland as Germany was losing the war. Reporters don't report from the sidelines.
They both agreed Hitler was a bad guy and should be stopped. But what can two individuals do to stop a leader of a regime with an armed military and immense power? It turns out more than you might think, but they both harbor guilt about dragging each other into their circumstances and actually doing what they did to survive and try to let the world know what was really happening. They also had to accept that no matter what they did to warn the world, that world may never come to the rescue and end the murdering, not as they would hope or think it should. Two against the world was an overwhelming task, and they both took on more guilt and responsibility for the bad things that happened than anyone could have assigned to them.
The most gripping thing about these books is they answered questions I've had about the how and why the Holocaust happened. It put together a lot of information I already knew in a coherent story. Could it happen again to other people? Where was God in all this? How could He let this happen? The answer is yes, genocide could and has happened since WWII. It may have happened before histories were written in our human past. Killing each other is something we humans do. We are violent, and it doesn't seem to take too much for us to think up some excuse to do it again. As for God being involved and letting or not letting things happen, who knows? If you read the Book of Job, you see God isn't above making man miserable for His own amusement. Does God exist? Who knows. Or is God just a cruel bitch? Again, who knows. He or She didn't do anything to prevent or stop the Holocaust, not like we would expect an omniscient being to do.
The Holocaust was brought on by a long, deep hatred of "the other", in this case, Jews who worshipped and lived apart from Christians. Also, Christians lived apart from Jews, so we can't know who moved away first. The Catholic Church and many Protestant churches preached for centuries that Jews killed Jesus and they should be hated for it. If one reads the whole Bible, it's very clear Christianity shares a huge story with Judaism. So does Islam. If one reads history of the Roman empire it's also clear that crucifixion was a Roman form of execution. Harrod would never have sentenced any Jew to death by crucifixion. They would have likely been stoned or "put to the sword". Most Christians have never read the Bible. They know verses that were taught to them, but very little of the full text is covered in church. The Bible was written in Latin for many centuries before it was finally written in English so common people could read it. Most Christians are wholly uneducated in their own beliefs. Who wrote the Bible? Men.
Then, there is Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in which he lays out his entire plan for taking over Germany and ridding the world of his enemy, the Jews, the final solution to the Jewish question. I'm still unclear exactly why Hitler hated Jews so much, but he did. The answer to his Jewish question wasn't worked out that early, but when Hitler put his officers on the problem, extermination camps were invented. Zyclon B was a pesticide that was repurposed to kill people. Thank you I.G. Farben. This method of killing was extremely efficient and massive resources were used to build concentration and extermination camps and transport people to them. The imagination it took to build these camps is diabolical, sadistic. Most were killed as soon as they arrived, but those who weren't became slave labor to be used up and then killed. Or they became guinea pigs. Since Jews and other political prisoners were considered subhuman, doctors and other scientists experimented on them. I have read some of what the doctors did, and many experiments were just sadistic and weren't really designed to learn anything.
Deep generational hatred plus a dictator willing to rule that Jews were no longer citizens and were subhuman made extermination easier, something ordinary people could allow to happen. The regime also made it in their best interest not to rock the boat or they would be exterminated, too. Do you choose to live or to do what may sacrifice your own life? That's a very tough position to be put into. Most people will choose themselves over others. Anna and Berthold didn't. History also shows that Allied troops and undergrounds doing something about the Holocaust was just too far down on everyone's list of importance. They had other things they considered more important to do first. The Allies ended the war which ended the Holocaust, but could it have been done sooner? Probably, if it had been a higher priority.
We say we can't imagine how such a thing could happen, but we're lying. Americans are a country that enslaved Africans longer than we have been a nation. We fully understand we can use the law to create "the other". We did it to Africans and their ancestors long before the Germans did it to Jews. Many Americans today are antisemitic along with treating Blacks and other minorities as less than themselves. So far, we haven't rounded up minorities to exterminate them, but in today's greatly divided America with a lot more hatred of minorities and immigrants than I have ever seen in my life, I can see how enough of the population could go that far if they managed to gain enough power and silence descent. Even without a government mandate, African-Americans are killed at higher rates than other races. Whether we would go to the extent of building concentration camps is something I can't answer. Americans with guns could accomplish an extreme level of killing like what was done in the 1930's before the war. All too many people need is the instruction to do it.
These books are the story of Berthold Becker and Anna Gorska, one a Nazi, the other a Jewish journalist. This is an unlikely love story, until you look closely at Anna and Berthold. Unlike most non-Jews, Berthold's best friend from early boyhood is Jewish, his mother works at Leonard's father's store, and he has no hatred of any Jews. They are just ordinary people like he is. He later learns he is also Jewish, but was raised Catholic.
Berthold and Anna fall in love in their early twenties, long before Hitler comes to power and remain in love all their lives regardless of the serious problems their relationship faces after being physically on opposite sides of the Holocaust. Berthold became a Nazi because he needed to keep his job, even though he saved people's lives and spied for the British. Anna escaped the Holocaust only to throw herself back into it and get herself rounded up and sent to Auschwitz by going back to Poland as Germany was losing the war. Reporters don't report from the sidelines.
They both agreed Hitler was a bad guy and should be stopped. But what can two individuals do to stop a leader of a regime with an armed military and immense power? It turns out more than you might think, but they both harbor guilt about dragging each other into their circumstances and actually doing what they did to survive and try to let the world know what was really happening. They also had to accept that no matter what they did to warn the world, that world may never come to the rescue and end the murdering, not as they would hope or think it should. Two against the world was an overwhelming task, and they both took on more guilt and responsibility for the bad things that happened than anyone could have assigned to them.
The most gripping thing about these books is they answered questions I've had about the how and why the Holocaust happened. It put together a lot of information I already knew in a coherent story. Could it happen again to other people? Where was God in all this? How could He let this happen? The answer is yes, genocide could and has happened since WWII. It may have happened before histories were written in our human past. Killing each other is something we humans do. We are violent, and it doesn't seem to take too much for us to think up some excuse to do it again. As for God being involved and letting or not letting things happen, who knows? If you read the Book of Job, you see God isn't above making man miserable for His own amusement. Does God exist? Who knows. Or is God just a cruel bitch? Again, who knows. He or She didn't do anything to prevent or stop the Holocaust, not like we would expect an omniscient being to do.
The Holocaust was brought on by a long, deep hatred of "the other", in this case, Jews who worshipped and lived apart from Christians. Also, Christians lived apart from Jews, so we can't know who moved away first. The Catholic Church and many Protestant churches preached for centuries that Jews killed Jesus and they should be hated for it. If one reads the whole Bible, it's very clear Christianity shares a huge story with Judaism. So does Islam. If one reads history of the Roman empire it's also clear that crucifixion was a Roman form of execution. Harrod would never have sentenced any Jew to death by crucifixion. They would have likely been stoned or "put to the sword". Most Christians have never read the Bible. They know verses that were taught to them, but very little of the full text is covered in church. The Bible was written in Latin for many centuries before it was finally written in English so common people could read it. Most Christians are wholly uneducated in their own beliefs. Who wrote the Bible? Men.
Then, there is Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in which he lays out his entire plan for taking over Germany and ridding the world of his enemy, the Jews, the final solution to the Jewish question. I'm still unclear exactly why Hitler hated Jews so much, but he did. The answer to his Jewish question wasn't worked out that early, but when Hitler put his officers on the problem, extermination camps were invented. Zyclon B was a pesticide that was repurposed to kill people. Thank you I.G. Farben. This method of killing was extremely efficient and massive resources were used to build concentration and extermination camps and transport people to them. The imagination it took to build these camps is diabolical, sadistic. Most were killed as soon as they arrived, but those who weren't became slave labor to be used up and then killed. Or they became guinea pigs. Since Jews and other political prisoners were considered subhuman, doctors and other scientists experimented on them. I have read some of what the doctors did, and many experiments were just sadistic and weren't really designed to learn anything.
Deep generational hatred plus a dictator willing to rule that Jews were no longer citizens and were subhuman made extermination easier, something ordinary people could allow to happen. The regime also made it in their best interest not to rock the boat or they would be exterminated, too. Do you choose to live or to do what may sacrifice your own life? That's a very tough position to be put into. Most people will choose themselves over others. Anna and Berthold didn't. History also shows that Allied troops and undergrounds doing something about the Holocaust was just too far down on everyone's list of importance. They had other things they considered more important to do first. The Allies ended the war which ended the Holocaust, but could it have been done sooner? Probably, if it had been a higher priority.
We say we can't imagine how such a thing could happen, but we're lying. Americans are a country that enslaved Africans longer than we have been a nation. We fully understand we can use the law to create "the other". We did it to Africans and their ancestors long before the Germans did it to Jews. Many Americans today are antisemitic along with treating Blacks and other minorities as less than themselves. So far, we haven't rounded up minorities to exterminate them, but in today's greatly divided America with a lot more hatred of minorities and immigrants than I have ever seen in my life, I can see how enough of the population could go that far if they managed to gain enough power and silence descent. Even without a government mandate, African-Americans are killed at higher rates than other races. Whether we would go to the extent of building concentration camps is something I can't answer. Americans with guns could accomplish an extreme level of killing like what was done in the 1930's before the war. All too many people need is the instruction to do it.
July 2, 2021
A Landmark Trilogy. After Auschwitz is the third book in the remarkable WW II trilogy written by Lewis M. Weinstein, a brilliant scholar and meticulous researcher. To be sure, you’d get a better handle on the story and insight of the two main characters if you read the first two books, A Flood of Evil and A Promise Kept, and I recommend that. But if not, this book can stand alone as the fictionalized account of two people who love each other, immediately after the war and into the 1960s.
In this volume, the story of Berthold Becker and Anna Gorska continues separately in post-war Berlin and Palestine. Much of the account is in the form of confession and dialectic in Spandau prison, set against a historical background, exploring the genesis of anti-semitism and the role of its origins in the war.This third volume of the novel is both engrossing and well-narrated. Not since I read Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance, or Exodus by Leon Uris have I been so moved by a story emerging from WW II. The true story that will never cease to horrify. And the conclusions drawn will intrigue both Jews and Christians alike.
In After Auschwitz, the good German—Berthold Becker—is judged guilty at Nuremberg and incarcerated at Spandau for the ill deeds he was ostensibly responsible for, running the trains to Auschwitz. His reward for good deeds—spying for Churchill and saving children from the trains—is a prison sentence in lieu of hanging. Throughout the book, he holds discussions with his confessor about his own guilt. And he questions the German support and papal tolerance for Hitler. With his fellow prisoners he engages in arguments about Hitler, expounding his theory that the Fuhrer lost the war for Germany because he allowed his hatred and the Final Solution to blindside his aspirations for the country.
At the same time, Anna, the woman Berthold loves—now freed from Auschwitz and a respected journalist based in Palestine—questions God, her Jewish God, who allowed the Holocaust to happen to his people.Be prepared to meet numerous real people in this roman à clef featuring politicians like Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, top Mossad Nazi hunters, Churchill and his wife, et al, and a host of Nazi bad-asses like Albert Speer who keep Berthold company at Spandau, engaging him in conversation defending the Nazi position.
This volume of the trilogy would be an engrossing mini-series. The combination of all three volumes would be an extraordinary one. A story of love, war, and redemption. Everyone should read this novel. It is well worthwhile.
In this volume, the story of Berthold Becker and Anna Gorska continues separately in post-war Berlin and Palestine. Much of the account is in the form of confession and dialectic in Spandau prison, set against a historical background, exploring the genesis of anti-semitism and the role of its origins in the war.This third volume of the novel is both engrossing and well-narrated. Not since I read Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance, or Exodus by Leon Uris have I been so moved by a story emerging from WW II. The true story that will never cease to horrify. And the conclusions drawn will intrigue both Jews and Christians alike.
In After Auschwitz, the good German—Berthold Becker—is judged guilty at Nuremberg and incarcerated at Spandau for the ill deeds he was ostensibly responsible for, running the trains to Auschwitz. His reward for good deeds—spying for Churchill and saving children from the trains—is a prison sentence in lieu of hanging. Throughout the book, he holds discussions with his confessor about his own guilt. And he questions the German support and papal tolerance for Hitler. With his fellow prisoners he engages in arguments about Hitler, expounding his theory that the Fuhrer lost the war for Germany because he allowed his hatred and the Final Solution to blindside his aspirations for the country.
At the same time, Anna, the woman Berthold loves—now freed from Auschwitz and a respected journalist based in Palestine—questions God, her Jewish God, who allowed the Holocaust to happen to his people.Be prepared to meet numerous real people in this roman à clef featuring politicians like Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, top Mossad Nazi hunters, Churchill and his wife, et al, and a host of Nazi bad-asses like Albert Speer who keep Berthold company at Spandau, engaging him in conversation defending the Nazi position.
This volume of the trilogy would be an engrossing mini-series. The combination of all three volumes would be an extraordinary one. A story of love, war, and redemption. Everyone should read this novel. It is well worthwhile.
September 30, 2024
Interesting, well researched, well written, glad to have read it.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews