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achoward's review against another edition
5.0
In 2009, Wendy Lower (author of Hitler’s Furies , another worthy book to add to your TBR list) comes across a photo from Miropol, Ukraine: a woman, toddler in her arms, baby at her feet, being shot by a Ukrainian collaborator during operations in that country during WWII. The title refers to the ravine into which people fell after being executed for no reason other than they were not part of the so-called "master race".
What follows is an excellent, although horrifying read, of Lower's investigation into this photo. This entails records retrieved in various countries - the US, Ukraine, Germany, and Israel - talking with people and/or potential witnesses, and eventually spans ten years to finally identify the doomed family as well as the Slovakian photographer who was not supposed to be taking pictures of these operations.
If you're at all interested in the Holocaust or the European Theater of Operations during WWII, you'll likely be as engrossed in this book as I was, even given - or especially because of the book's subject, something no one should ever forget.
Five out of five stars.
Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for the review copy.
What follows is an excellent, although horrifying read, of Lower's investigation into this photo. This entails records retrieved in various countries - the US, Ukraine, Germany, and Israel - talking with people and/or potential witnesses, and eventually spans ten years to finally identify the doomed family as well as the Slovakian photographer who was not supposed to be taking pictures of these operations.
If you're at all interested in the Holocaust or the European Theater of Operations during WWII, you'll likely be as engrossed in this book as I was, even given - or especially because of the book's subject, something no one should ever forget.
Five out of five stars.
Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for the review copy.
ladyeremite's review against another edition
4.0
A short, poignant book not just about the Holocaust but about the process of discovering historical truth as well.
srash's review against another edition
5.0
This is a very difficult read but one well worth reading. I'd actually balked at reading it for a while due to recent world events before realizing that was all the more reason it needed to be read.
A noted Holocaust expert and researcher attempts to piece together the story behind a chilling photograph of a slaughter of Jewish civilians that was taken in Ukraine during WWII and subsequently buried in a Czech archive for decades. Though it is an obscure town and massacre not really written about before, the details will be familiar to anyone who has read about the Holocaust by Bullets that preceded the extermination camps.
Less familiar is the painstaking illustration of how 21st century historians and researchers around the world are still working to preserve these stories and identify the victims. Lower methodically analyzes the photograph, identifies the location, reconstructs the crime, tracks down the story behind the picture, searches for information on the perpetrators (whom she knows will likely be either incredibly elderly or dead), and tries her best to identify the woman and child in the picture. She also provides some useful debunking of long-held myths about the Holocaust, including one that I have seen repeated an alarming number of times on the internet of late (that the Nazis didn't commit rape or sexual violence), and argues for not losing individual and family stories of victims of genocide amidst the overwhelming statistics of people murdered.
A heartbreaking but well-written, well-researched, and thought-provoking read. A good companion read to the Philippe Sands books I was reading a few months ago.
A noted Holocaust expert and researcher attempts to piece together the story behind a chilling photograph of a slaughter of Jewish civilians that was taken in Ukraine during WWII and subsequently buried in a Czech archive for decades. Though it is an obscure town and massacre not really written about before, the details will be familiar to anyone who has read about the Holocaust by Bullets that preceded the extermination camps.
Less familiar is the painstaking illustration of how 21st century historians and researchers around the world are still working to preserve these stories and identify the victims. Lower methodically analyzes the photograph, identifies the location, reconstructs the crime, tracks down the story behind the picture, searches for information on the perpetrators (whom she knows will likely be either incredibly elderly or dead), and tries her best to identify the woman and child in the picture. She also provides some useful debunking of long-held myths about the Holocaust, including one that I have seen repeated an alarming number of times on the internet of late (that the Nazis didn't commit rape or sexual violence), and argues for not losing individual and family stories of victims of genocide amidst the overwhelming statistics of people murdered.
A heartbreaking but well-written, well-researched, and thought-provoking read. A good companion read to the Philippe Sands books I was reading a few months ago.
ericabo_louise's review against another edition
5.0
This should be taught for all students of history ever planning to do primary source work, archival research, personal interviews--any kind of close-touch, close-examination, investigatory discovery, all the words I don't have for getting into the most granular details to the literal ground-level observation, as well as students curious about archival studies. It's a case study in how a single document can tell such a larger scale story or how it can reveal sides of a history you think you've already been taught. Another heartbreaker of non-fiction but just an education in research methodology and persistence.
xxstefaniereadsxx's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
slow-paced
4.0
This book is written by the same author who wrote Hitler's Furies. I was excited to see this book in the bookstore the other day, but I didn't get it. I remembered it when I got my Audible credits for the month, so I used one to purchase this book. This book is about the discovery of a photo that was taken during a Mass killing event in the Ukraine during World War II. I loved hearing about the detective work to uncover who was in the photograph and who it was taken by, as well as the search for the specific site that was pictured. This was a very interesting book, full of investigative detail. I really enjoyed it.
cathebes's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
4.0