Mary Halasz is an American woman who has spent the last 63 years in the small western Ukraine city of Uzhhorod. Her Hungarian parents moved with the infant Mary from newly-formed Czechoslovakia to Trenton, New Jersey in 1921. While growing up she visited Uzhhorod with her mother a couple of times. On one of these visits she met her future husband and started a correspondence. She moved to Uzhhorod in 1938 on the eve of World War II to marry the Hungarian man she had fallen in love with. Mary had two children and lived through World War II, the Holocaust, the transfer of Uzhhorod to Soviet Ukraine and her husband's imprisonment in the Siberian Gulags. She is kept apart from her American family by Soviet bureaucracy until her mother is finally allowed to visit in 1962.

The story of her life will give American readers a very accessible point of view on the history and society of the Soviet Union and western Ukraine. Her experiences as a single parent in a small regional capital in the Carpathian Mountains will be of interest to students of women's studies, Soviet history, and Ukrainian life.

My parents are from a small town just outside Uzhhorod and I have visited the city four times. I found her story to reflect the charm and mystery of this remote corner of the world very accurately and completely.

It's an old and acknowledged saw that "to the victors go the spoils". What should be added to this splendidly commonplace bit of street lore is the similarly well-acknowledged fact that it is indeed the victors who get to write and thereby promulgate the official version of history, interpreting it to their advantage, giving it such spin, direction, and body language as needed to serve the perceived needs and political purposes of the present. In this sense the historical treatment of the past, especially the recent past, tells us volumes about what forces exist to warp into particular forms and modes today. This is especially true in this absorbing and well-edited series of essays by a number of noted historians and critics relating to the subject of the relative merits of the retribution process in Europe following the conclusion of the Second World War.

As is likely true for all conflicts, the punishment delivered in the aftermath of the war was by no means fair, equitable, or necessarily deserved by those it was haphazardly visited upon, and some who deserved to be punished walked away unblemished, while others who did nothing wrong were falsely accused and punished. Indeed, one of the consistent themes in these essays is the degree to which the captive people of Europe engaged in what has to be recognized as being a widespread accommodation and cooperation with the Nazi authorities and their lackeys. Yet although their were obvious many who escaped getting their just desserts, and many more who were unfairly castigated and punished, by and large the effort at social retribution after the war appears to have served a wider and more useful role in expiating the collective guilt and anxiety that literally permeated the continent in the wake of the war's end.

This is a fine collection of essays that seek to address the complex welter of needs, drives, and issues that had to be settled in the postwar period, and among the competing strands of thoughts and arguments one finds that the historical interpretation of the past was indeed manipulated and bastardized, often at the expense of specific groups and individuals, who had to suffer the continuing social indifference to the injuries they had suffered, or worse, the accusation and punishment for deeds they either did not commit, or that they had committed in such a strange and sordid set of constraining circumstances that to make an issue our of it was existentially absurd. It is in this sense that a kind of selective amnesia overtook many of the survivors, such that they repressed the ugly truth in favor of more palatable and pleasing fictions.

Of course, many of the issues discussed here are neither fully resolved nor completely played out. Just as many of the events of the war itself found their genesis in attitudes and cultural predispositions formed long before the war, so too, do many of the issues and dilemmas of the present find their antecedents in facts and circumstances located in postwar activities, and these may never be resolved. Whether talking about ethnic differences within a specific country or cultural predispositions existing between reviving cultures, many of the complex issues and concerns threading through these essays may never be resolved. This is a fascinating and quite worthwhile book, and one I am sure you would benefit from. Enjoy!

Prof. Deak admits that there is an overabundance of Holocaust literature and then adds to the heap without saying anything particularly new or interesting. These compiled-essay publications are becoming all too common and seem to be a lazy substitute for creating new and noteworthy work. While his students will probably be obliged to read and admire this volume, there is little to commend to the general reading public. Yes, there IS a lot of Holocaust lit out there- and most of it is more readable, provocative and worthy than this.

Prof. Istvan Deak's compilation of review essays from the New York Review of Books and the New Republic is history of a rare breed: rigorous, cogent analysis that is accessible to all by dint of its eloquent style and by the lack of scholarly jargon and neologisms that often mar such undertakings. For specialized scholars, this book will be valuable as a guide to the ever-expanding scholarship on Germany and East Central Europe -- particularly the essays on the presence and persistence of the past in this region. For the broader readership, Prof. Deak's book provides an excellent introduction to the paradoxes and problems that are attendant to inquiry into this period of time. Highly recommended to all readers.

I was surprised by the sharp diversity of opinion regarding this work. I'd have to side with those who found this book dull and unreadable. One of the positive reviews called the book "entertaining". That is one word I would NOT use to describe Deak's writing. Certainly, the subject matter is interesting and a capable writer and thoughtful historian could write a stunning and exciting treatment. This is not it. This book was written before Deak became an apologist for Pope Pius in the recent controversy over his role in the Holocaust (see _Hitler's Pope_). Undoubtedly, the notoriety will bring people to his earlier works such as this one, but they will find no fire here.

This is an interesting book on the Habsburg officer corps and its role within the Austro-Hungarian Army, state politics and the social structure of the empire. However, Mr. Deak bombards the reader with statistics and charts, while intersting and helpful, are not effectively worked into the study and would be difficult for anyone not already familiar with the subject to digest. Subsequently, the books effectiveness is seriously curtailed. Some conclusions are debatable and some also seem to be a matter of personal opinion. If nothing else, this book gives a good sense of the basic structure of the Habsburg Officer corps.

This excellent study by one of this country's leading historians of East Central Europe provides a key to understanding the fascinating and complex multi-national Habsburg monarchy through a close look at one of the very few institutions that held this sprawling empire together -- its army officer corps. Deak's social and political analysis of this group is as entertaining as it is insightful, and demonstrates a interpretative approach that could prove fruitful for historians of other countries as well. The book is certainly of interest to military historians, but its real audience is much, much broader than that.