Historian Otto Dov Kulka has dedicated his life to studying and writing about Nazism and the Holocaust. Until now he has always set to one side his personal experiences as a child inmate at Auschwitz. Breaking years of silence; Kulka brings together the personal and historical; in a devastating; at times poetic; account of the concentration camps and the private mythology one man constructed around his experiences.Auschwitz is for the author a vast repository of images; memories; and reveries: “the Metropolis of Death†over which rules the immutable Law of Death. Between 1991 and 2001; Kulka made audio recordings of these memories as they welled up; and in Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death he sifts through these fragments; attempting to make sense of them. He describes the Family Camp’s children’s choir in which he and others performed “Ode to Joy†within yards of the crematoria; his final; indelible parting from his mother when the camp was liquidated; and the “black stains†along the roadside during the winter death march. Amidst so much death Kulka finds moments of haunting; almost unbearable beauty (for beauty; too; Kulka says; is an inescapable law).As the author maps his interior world; readers gain a new sense of what it was to experience the Shoah from inside the camps—both at the time; and long afterward. Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death is a unique and powerful experiment in how one man has tried to understand his past; and our shared history.
#1020634 in Books Harvard University Press 2011-03-04 2011-02-07Ingredients: Example IngredientsOriginal language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.28 x 1.00 x 6.12l; 1.34 #File Name: 0674060539384 pages
Review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. RevealingBy Torrie's BooksAs a historian; the book was well written; extensively researched; and easy to digest. Author does a great job of showing how race was dealt with in one Arizona county; not a subject easily discussed. Only downside was a seeming lack of information regarding Blacks and Native Americans. However a must for historians examining borderlands behavior past and present.1 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Are You An American or Are You Not? Famous words by Sheriff Wheeler in 1917By SFCI loved this book as it is about the history of Cochise County; Arizona from the late seventeen hundreds. Personally I do not know that most Arizonans have no idea what was the reason of the OK Corral Gun Fight(s); the Gadsden and the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaties; Tres Alamos and how they played a big part in the development. Arizona's Indian wars with the Chiricahua Apaches and how Geronimo was caught. The Bisbee Deportation; how Phelps Dodge play an important part in a decision in the nation's capitol before Arizona was a state. How Tombstone and Tres Alamos was caught up in the was in a race and conflict during the Bisbee racial hiring for it's Copper Mines and how the two towns invoked race and nation simultaneously started Anti Chinese campaigns in 1866. How the Federal Soldiers (Gringos) as the Mexican could not pronounce Green Coats. Cochise County was very involved in not allowing illegal Mexicans starting as far back in the eighteen hundreds and remain very much the same today. How Arizona was involve in the US - Mexican war in 1848; the Indian Wars ended when the resistance leader surrendered along with the Medicine man at Cochise County's Skeleton Canyon 1886 In 1917 the US Army was still chasing Geronimo. in 1861 the Civil War was fighting for freedom of slavery and the US Army Posts throughout Arizona began moving to the east to choose a side to fight on.I highly recommend this book for all Arizonan's to read or if you are a history buff gives a better idea of why Arizona is the way it is today.0 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona...By SharonMy husband saw this book and thought about my current job. This is very educational and I would recommend to others.
