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bookslovejenna's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
hii_petra's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
4.0
heres_the_thing's review against another edition
4.0
A meticulous excavation of one atrocity within the many atrocities of the Holocaust.
After Lowry is shown a photograph that depicts the execution of a woman and children from a Ukrainian Jewish community, she uses this rare photograph to examine the familial wounds created by genocide; examine the dichotomy of exhuming mass graves and honoring the dead; understanding the agenda of the photographer; and identifying both the victims and the perpetrators. Lowry’s writing is clear and focused, and each chapter brings the reader into a clearer, more painful understanding of the Holocaust in Ukraine. This is painstakingly researched and respectfully recorded.
Highly recommended; it’s also an important meditation on the reader and the historian’s duty to serve as witnesses.
Netgalley review.
After Lowry is shown a photograph that depicts the execution of a woman and children from a Ukrainian Jewish community, she uses this rare photograph to examine the familial wounds created by genocide; examine the dichotomy of exhuming mass graves and honoring the dead; understanding the agenda of the photographer; and identifying both the victims and the perpetrators. Lowry’s writing is clear and focused, and each chapter brings the reader into a clearer, more painful understanding of the Holocaust in Ukraine. This is painstakingly researched and respectfully recorded.
Highly recommended; it’s also an important meditation on the reader and the historian’s duty to serve as witnesses.
Netgalley review.
durrenmatt's review against another edition
4.0
In Western Europe, we tend to equate the Holocaust with gas chambers and Auschwitz. But as many as 1.3 million Jews were shot in mass killings in the forests outside their own towns and villages, mainly in Ukraine.
The numbers are so large, they are difficult to grasp and therefore the author of this important book uses a photograph, clearly depicting such a mass shooting, as a way to bring to life the tragedy of a single Jewish family.
Such pictures are rare, because perpetrators of such atrocities during the Second World War generally made sure not to leave any incriminating evidence behind.
The author of the book and Holocaust researcher Wendy Lower goes on a search for the story behind the image: who were the victims, who were the perpetrators, who is the photographer and why could he take this perfectly composed photograph? And what happened after, was some form of justice done? What follows is a terrible, fascinating but in no way uncommon account of one of the hundreds of mass killings that took place in the autumn of 1941.
If you like Philippe Sands you will probably appreciate this too.
The numbers are so large, they are difficult to grasp and therefore the author of this important book uses a photograph, clearly depicting such a mass shooting, as a way to bring to life the tragedy of a single Jewish family.
Such pictures are rare, because perpetrators of such atrocities during the Second World War generally made sure not to leave any incriminating evidence behind.
The author of the book and Holocaust researcher Wendy Lower goes on a search for the story behind the image: who were the victims, who were the perpetrators, who is the photographer and why could he take this perfectly composed photograph? And what happened after, was some form of justice done? What follows is a terrible, fascinating but in no way uncommon account of one of the hundreds of mass killings that took place in the autumn of 1941.
If you like Philippe Sands you will probably appreciate this too.
kleonard's review
2.0
This memoir follows the work of the author in seeking out more information about a devastating photograph of the murder of Jews in Ukraine during the Second World War. The author's explanations and descriptions of the war and its various entities is often simplistic, and while her writing about the power of photography and its use during the war and after is more engaging and informative, she remains at a distance in the narrative, even as she sifts fragments of human bone from a mass grave. The writing is often stilted and in the passive voice. I don't know if this is to make the work seem more scholarly--it is non-fiction, but not scholarly at all--or because of her own lack of ease with the subject matter. Unfortunately, the book ends with tepid platitudes and is, as a whole, unsatisfying.
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