Twelve
Wounds
A young Brooklyn assistant district attorney, Carmen Rodriguez, is called to
investigate the murder of a Hasidic Jew. The Shomrim, the Hasidic community
patrol, apprehended a suspect, Ramon Perez, a few minutes after the murder. Kirkus Review
A put-upon prosecutor investigates a racially charged murder in this spicy legal
drama.
From
Lemberg to Bordeaux: A German War Correspondent’s Account of Battle in Poland,
the Low Countries and France, 1939-40 From Lemberg to Bordeaux is Viennese war reporter Leo Leixner’s account of his front line experiences, from Poland in 1939 to France in 1940. From Lemberg to Bordeaux went through four editions and sold in the hundreds of thousands of copies by 1942. Leixner was assigned to various infantry companies and documents his moves from one to the next. During attacks he was often at the front. Leixner is an engaging writer. He had a doctorate in German literature from the University of Graz, with a thesis entitled Mohammed in German Poetry, and was himself a poet; indeed, his battle accounts are almost blank verse. Leixner died while crossing the Kuban River in Russia, 14 August 1942, part of a flotilla. At 5 a.m. he was standing upright in a boat when he was killed with a single shot through the head.
Tanks
Break Through! A German Soldier’s Account of War in the Low Countries and
France, 1940 There are many eye-witness accounts of the military disaster that led to the fall of France, 1940, from the Allied point of view. For a look at the experiences of the common German soldier, there is no better source than Tanks Break Through! written by Alfred-Ingemar Berndt, a journalist and close associate of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. When the 1940 attack was in the offing, Berndt joined the Wehrmacht and afterward published his recollections. Berndt’s memoir is a tale of German military prowess, valor and violent death, a Teutonic Iliad. His prose is often thrilling and brings to mind Woody Allen’s remark, “I just can't listen to any more Wagner. I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.” Hitler sensed French weakness and unwillingness to fight. Berndt writes of the formidable foe the French faced.
Wartime Sites in Paris: 1939-1945 Paris, the City of Light, is the most popular tourist destination in Europe. Celebrated in painting, literature, film, and song, Paris never ceases to delight its millions of visitors. This book is a guide to historical sites in Paris associated with the Second World War, which official French histories call La Guerre 39-45. Understandably, the dark years of the German Occupation are a time the French prefer not to remember at all. Why should they? Would anyone expect them to put a plaque on the former Gestapo headquarters at 74, avenue Foch or 9, rue des Saussaies? As the Resistance developed, screams from the interrogation rooms kept neighbors awake at night. But these places, all described here, are harrowing reminders, often unmarked, of a time of humiliation and privation, unspeakable cruelties and brutal murders, but also of heroism and hope.
"Lehrer is right that Paris, and France more generally, still has not fully come
to grips with its years of occupation and collaboration."
Nesthäkchen
Series Else Ury (1877-1943) was a children's author murdered at Auschwitz. Her books are German literary classics. Steven Lehrer translated volumes 1-6 of the series. |