Posted on March 25, 2008 by Steve Pollak
The March 17th edition of The New Yorker had a terrific story about how one of only two known collections of photographs depicting life at Auschwitz during the second World War made its way into the hands of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The New Yorker does not have the story available on their Web site but there is a slide show of 14 photographs from the collection. Here's a blurb about the piece:
This week in the magazine, Alec Wilkinson writes about a rare album of photographs from the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, in southern Poland. The album, which was delivered to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007, belonged to Karl Hoecker, adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz from May, 1944, to January, 1945. Wilkinson writes:
“If the album consisted only of photographs of people who hadn’t been seen at Auschwitz, and of areas of Auschwitz that hadn’t been portrayed, or if it merely expanded the photographic record of Auschwitz, it would be valuable historically…but it has an enhanced value….In the fifty-four days between May 15 and July 8, 1944, a period partly covered in the Hoecker album, and called the Hungarian Deportation, four hundred and thirty-four thousand people were put aboard trains to Auschwitz—so many people that the crematoriums, which could dispose of a hundred and thirty-two thousand bodies a month, were overrun.”
You can find more about the collection, including a short documentary, on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Web site.
Posted on March 12, 2008 by Steve Pollak
I know I haven't posted anything in a week but I wanted to let you guys know I'm still here. I've been very busy at work lately but I'm reading Mimi Schwartz's "Good Neighbors, Bad Times."
Hope to get back in the swing of things next week. Things should calm down by then.
In the meantime, you might want to read this week's edition of The Forward to keep up with all the ridiculousness at the Paris book fair.
Posted on March 6, 2008 by Steve Pollak
I never got around to doing a February roundup of Jewish bestsellers on Amazon so here's the list just a few days late.
All of the results below are as of this morning. Amazon says they update the bestselling results each hour but I don't know anything more about their methodology. As always, there are some strange titles included in the Jewish categories, including Hamlet, which is listed among the books in Jewish World Literature, and a book by a Christian minister, which is listed under Judaism in Amazon's Religion and Spirituality category.
Without further ado, here's the list: Continue reading...