Holocaust Remembrance Week Archives

Meeting a Survivor: Baruch G. Goldstein

Last September, I decided to go to the Decatur Book Festival outside Atlanta for the first time. It sounded like a huge festival and there was bound to be an author I like there, right? I printed out the schedule at home and then sat down to decide who I was going to see when. I saw Diana Gabaldon, Ridley Pearson, Brandon Sanderson, Karen White, Joshilyn Jackson, Susan Rebecca White, Christina Diaz Gonzalez, and many more. Out of all of these, the person that I was the most excited to see was someone that I had never even heard of. His name is Baruch G. Goldstein and he is a Holocaust survivor. His book is For Decades I Was Silent: A Holocaust Survivor's Journey Back to Faith. Let me explain something first. We aren't really all that diverse where I live. Oh, Asheville itself is getting there, but outside the city limits? We're mostly Scotch-Irish Protestants. Needless to say, I have never met a Holocaust survivor before. Rabbi Goldstein was the last author I planned to see. He was speaking in one of Decatur's churches. It was packed. I would guess there were between 150-200 people there to see him. He was a phenomenal speaker. He laid his heart out before us, desperate to have us truly hear his story. (Forgive me if this is choppy. I have a hard time making posts about meeting people flow nicely, plus I'm writing from notes I took 6 months ago.) Rabbi Goldstein said that we aren't learning enough from history. We keep waging wars. He's not a pacifist, but wars need to stop. We've done so many great things, we can do this as well. Why are we so smart yet so full of hate? In 1939, there were five people in…

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May 8, 2011

Read more about the article Movie Review: <i>Life is Beautiful</i>

Screen and Stage Review

Movie Review: Life is Beautiful

A charming, fast-talking Italian man tries to win the heart of his "principessa." A few years later, he uses his boundless imagination to protect his young son from the realities of life in a concentration camp. I absolutely loved this movie. I'm not a huge movie buff, tending to fall asleep about halfway through almost everything, so it really means something for me to say that. Don't get me wrong, I do like movies, but I rarely love them. The first part of this lovely movie is like a fairy tale. Guido (Roberto Benigni) meets and falls in love with beautiful Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), who is already engaged to another man. Guido is so charming and funny that she finds it almost impossible to resist him. I did find it impossible to resist him. Benigni's performance is spectacular. He is excellent with the physical comedy that had me laughing continuously throughout this part of the movie. My husband very rarely laughs until he can't breathe, but he got to that point a few times throughout this first part. My favorite scene might have been the section where Guido jokingly uses his own skinny little body to extol the virtues of the Italian people. My poor husband has had to endure me singing the praises of his Cuban belly button in Guido-style ever since. A few years later, Guido is still a happy-go-lucky prankster, but times have changed. Soldiers are everywhere. As a Jew, authorities are keeping a very close eye on him. Then one day, he, his elderly uncle, and his young son are rounded up on a cattle train. We all know what that means. My heart started to hurt. I had fallen in love with this character. I didn't know if I could keep watching. But Guido sets…

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May 7, 2011

Introverted Reader Features

Character Connection: Elizabeth McKenna

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.Elizabeth McKenna is not physically present in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrow, nevertheless she is the heart of the story. Elizabeth has a talent for drawing people to her. They might normally be loners, but no one can resist her charm. She is the one who stuck a disparate group of people with such an awful name for a society. After an illegal pig roast on the German-occupied island of Guernsey during WWII, the partakers were on their way home after curfew. They knew they were in trouble when a group of German soldiers stopped them. Quick-thinking Elizabeth concocted a story about how they were just leaving a society meeting. They were allowed to safely go on their way with a warning. She knew that the Germans might start watching them to see if there really was a society, so she brought the society into being. Very few…

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May 5, 2011

Introverted Reader Features

Welcome to Holocaust Remembrance Week

<a href="https://introvertedreader.com/2011/05/welcome-to-holocaust-remembrance-week.html"><img border="0" src="https://introvertedreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/HolocaustRemembrance3-6.jpg" width="200"></a> I am not Jewish. I'm not saying that's good or bad. That's just how it is. The Holocaust will never be as personal for me as it is for others whose families suffered and survived. Yet here I am, hosting Holocaust Remembrance Week on my blog, because I feel that it is important for all of us to remember what the world lost in a horrific war about 70 years ago. The numbers of survivors and witnesses are dwindling now, so it's all the more important that those of us who came after carry on remembering and doing our best to make sure that we never let something like that happen again. My grandfather was in the European theater during WWII. As far as I know, he never spoke about what he saw over there. I don't even know if he encountered any camps or if he only saw armies fighting. Again, that's not good or bad, that's just the way that he dealt with it. It was a different generation. They didn't talk things out. They buried them and did their best to move on. My grandfather passed away 18 years ago, taking all those memories with him, never to be shared with anyone. I'm sure there are so many survivors and soldiers and civilians who were like him. It was easier to try to leave behind what they lived through and saw. That's why it's important that we read and watch and listen to those who did share their experiences. Most of us can't conceive of the horrors of the Holocaust. It's impossible to even wrap our minds around the numbers involved. Six million lives lost. The number is so big, it's meaningless. Yet we must make meaning out of it. By focusing…

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May 1, 2011