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4.38 AVERAGE
4.38 AVERAGE
dark
hopeful
inspiring
fast-paced
I love the picture on the back of this book. Natan looks so darn happy that it's cheering me up 30 some years later.
This book is split into two parts. The first focuses on Sharansky's arrest and trial and the second focuses on his time in the prisons and work camps. Both go into a lot of detail of how he lived, dealt with his captors and with his fellow captives.
I think the biggest thing that struck me about this is the simplicity of his choices. Not that his choices were easy. I'm sure it would've been easy to cave in to the KGB for more a more comfortable life but he held to a clear black and white view of it all. That you don't cooperate with the oppressors ever, done.
I think that's part of what I find so inspiring about these kinds of books. There's both the clarity of choice and the heroic rising up to meet the challenge.
In the epilogue, Natan reflects on that. How life in prison was straightforward: "Every day brought only one choice: good or evil, white or black, saying yes or no to the KGB. (p 423)" but afterwards, he had to navigate all the choices of a free society and how best to apply his time and energy.
And I'm left reflecting on that. I'll probably never be faced with the gulag or death. But I do have the opportunity to lie, slander or knuckle under. And it would be easy to go along but I hope Sharansky's example can help remind me that you don't cooperate with evil, ever.
This book is split into two parts. The first focuses on Sharansky's arrest and trial and the second focuses on his time in the prisons and work camps. Both go into a lot of detail of how he lived, dealt with his captors and with his fellow captives.
I think the biggest thing that struck me about this is the simplicity of his choices. Not that his choices were easy. I'm sure it would've been easy to cave in to the KGB for more a more comfortable life but he held to a clear black and white view of it all. That you don't cooperate with the oppressors ever, done.
I think that's part of what I find so inspiring about these kinds of books. There's both the clarity of choice and the heroic rising up to meet the challenge.
In the epilogue, Natan reflects on that. How life in prison was straightforward: "Every day brought only one choice: good or evil, white or black, saying yes or no to the KGB. (p 423)" but afterwards, he had to navigate all the choices of a free society and how best to apply his time and energy.
And I'm left reflecting on that. I'll probably never be faced with the gulag or death. But I do have the opportunity to lie, slander or knuckle under. And it would be easy to go along but I hope Sharansky's example can help remind me that you don't cooperate with evil, ever.
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
I am not sure how or what to rate this book, since Sharansky was always, despite my not yet being Jewish, a hero to me for some reason. I feel like I only even heard of him after I finished college, yet I recall making dinner for a couple of former Soviet refusniks who'd gotten out of the Ukraine just after the explosion of Chernoble, in Kiev, yet this would have had to have been in 1985, and Chernoble was earlier. Nevertheless, in speaking with them, I felt honored to have a connection with people like Sharansky, who fought an oppressive regime and spoke out for those who could not speak.