This book has haunted me since I found it in our local library. I am ordering a used copy since it is out of print. Basically the book is a copy of a kind of souvineer scrapbook made by someone on the staff of the notorious camp. It is mostly pictures by the camp official photographer. The pictures are actually quite prosaic & even nostalgic. It documents the various phases of the camp operation. The pictures of the dead & their disposal are not included but this actually heightens the effect. Pictures of groups of ordinary people most of whom were dead an hour after their picture was taken. The book was found by a camp survivor, became a famous artifact & rare document of the holocaust. The book is designed to simulate the original scrapbook. The pictures are accompanied by quotes from accounts from other books & captions which illuminate what is going on beneath the almost tranquil surface. I worked in a military film archives years ago which had footage taken during the camp liberation. This is far more disturbing.

Reading Lilly: Reminiscences of Lillian Hellman not only illuminates the life of Miss Hellman, it brings a fuller understanding of one's own life to the reader. I recognized certain bits of the author's rare insight into his friend and into himself as authentic feelings of my own--that I was unaware anyone else had ever experienced. Mr. Feibleman has done a great service to Miss Hellman; he has loved her enough to remember her without apology or explanation. It is a masterful work.

Peter Urs Bender writes in such a refreshing way that it's hard to stop reading his books once you start.

Leadership from Within is full of excellent ideas, interspersed with Peter's own enlightening perspectives and first class expertise.

Any business person (whether employed, or self-employed) can learn something by reading Leadership from Within - I work entirely alone and I even gained some incredibly valuable knowledge.

This is an excellent choice. buy it!

Mr. Bender has written a fantastic little book on leadership style and approach. It isn't overwhelming, one can read a littler here and a little there, the topics are on the mark, the advice is solid and the package is interesting.

It's hard to make the topic of leadership something beyond informative, but Bender manages to make it interesting and fun. The author focuses on 'style' and how one can manage the various personalities that inevitably crop up in the professional world. What's particularly nice about the insight in this book is that it's in no way condescending. Like magnate Mike Hammer says, "the soft stuff is the hard stuff." Managing people is 'soft leadership' while managing process is 'hard leadership.' And it's the soft leadership that is the hardest to do well. Bender will set you well on your way to doing right and doing it well.

...I highly recommend Mr. Bender's works.

This book is easy read, simple to understand. It helped me to make a big difference to my life. I highly recommend it to anybody. English is not my first language. This is the first book I finished to read in English... Thanks for writing it !

"Heroes - Tales From the Israeli Wars" tells the stories of some very different Israelis, both civilian and soldier, during Israel's short but turbulent history. Perhaps one of the most unique features of this book is its' attempt to take as little stand as possible on the questions of Israel and the Palestinian-Arabs. At points, the author seems to take a passive stance towards supporting Israel's radical left such as political organizations like Peace Now (Gush Shalom) that advocate the Israelis taking the same disastrous path as the Oslo War and the current and deadly 2003 Road Map proposed by President Bush's administration. In parts, the book come perilously close to the fallacies of moral equivalence, which is to say holding the fireman to the same level of guilt as the arsonist. This was probably the weakest aspect of the book.

"Heroes - Tales From the Israeli Wars" tells the story of seven different Israelis:

1.The Animal: Aryeh "Biro" Dayan: "Biro" is one of Israel's most colorful characters and has been extensively written about in most histories of the 1967 Six Day War as well as a few books about the 1948 War for Israeli Dependence. He is a death camp survivor complete with a Nazi-tattooed number on his forearm. His fame, however, comes from being a consummate, aggressive, and utterly uncompromising soldier.

2.Uzi Yairi: "He Hated the Army and Loved the IDF": An Unlikely Paratrooper: Uzi Yairi has become one of Israel's most famed commandoes while harboring a sensitive personality unexpected of soldiers. He fought courageously in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and was later slain while stopping terrorists who landed by boat and took over an Israeli hotel complete with hostages. His story is the colorful one of a man forced to defend his country while desperately hoping to see peace.

3.Chariot of Fire: Israel Tal: Major General Israel Tal is well known as "the father of Israeli armor" since he not only organized Israel's armor into an effective professional fighting force that achieved overwhelming victory in the 1967 Six Day War, but later headed the design program that created Israel's homegrown tank, the Merkhava (Chariot). The story of the use, development, and later manufacture of armor is a fascinating one. Another often overlooked detail is that while Tal is often credited as the creator of the Merkhava, another engineer is also given credit who well deserves it, Brigadier General Israel Tilan.

4.His Brother's Keeper: Eliazer, Moshe, and Amos Joffe: While the first three stories are typical stories with military heroes albeit from unconventional viewpoints, this story begins the divergence from usual hero stories. It tells the stories of a family and their experiences in defending Israel, but also of the pain and suffering of one family and particularly of three brothers. Among the most poignant aspects of the story are the brothers' dedication to one another, even going so far as to check up on one another in the middle of combat. Tragically, one of the brothers is slain during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and one of the brothers goes above and beyond the call of duty to find his body and return it to his family for proper burial. "His Brother's Keeper" is very much a human-interest story.

5.The Strangest Tale: Ilan Eschel: Ilan Eschel's story is one that shows Israel's determination to survive no matter the odds. Much like Avigdor Kahalani, the famed Israeli tank commander, Eschel suffered crippling wounds several times and returned to service after each dehabilitating wound thought unrecoverable. The story culminates in his returning to his home kibbutz to his own funeral after being mistakenly reported dead.

6.Guni and Raya: Guni and Raya Harnick: Raya Harnick is an Israeli English teacher, a well known Hebrew language poet, one of Israel's most vociferous peace protestors, as well as the mother of the late Guni Harnick. This story is one of the longest in the book and tells the story of Raya's life from raising Guni Harnick to be an Israeli patriot to his death at the Battle for Beaufort during the 1982 Operation Peace for Galilee. The story also details her protests against the 1982 Operation Peace for Galilee and the members of the Israeli government she holds responsible for her son's death. The story reflects Raya Harnick's politics as a member of Peace Now (Gush Shalom), a radical Israeli peace organization, and holds much less human interest than the other stories because of it's obvious political stance. This story was the weakest in the book.

7.A Will to Live: Smadar Haran Kaiser: Smadar Kaiser is a woman who has lived with unimaginable tragedy, the loss of her entire family (a husband and two young daughters) in a terrorist attack. Rather than send her life in constant sorrow, she dedicated the rest of her life to not living in fear and vowed that within a year's anniversary of the tragedy, she would remarry and raise another family, a vow, which she faithfully kept. Her story is probably the most emotionally laden of the book and it's hard to even conceive of the terror she has endured. Despite being the victim of Arab terror, Smadar hold no hate for her oppressors and hold that unless both Arab and Jew can overcome the tremendous pain that they have endured that no peace is possible. I disagree with some of Smadar's politics, but her story nevertheless is a very inspirational one.

I recommend this book, but not highly do to the author's attempt to minimize taking a stand on issues that desperately need people to take decisive and moral action. I gave this book four stars for this sad shortcoming.

Review by: Maximillian Ben Hanan

As a teacher of European History, I must recommend this book whole-heartily to all students of the Holocaust. Peter Hellman does an outstanding job in portraying the unsung heroes of World War II. That not all Christians turned their backs on the Jews of Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Especially good for students in areas of low concentration of Jews, because it looks at the acts of bravery from an aspect of people helping people, and that can be relayed to all peoples and races.

A dialogue between a parent and an inquisitive and fairly sophisticated child, this book presents itself as a model for discussing the horrors of the Holocaust with older children. Fair enough. I personally did not care for the selective history exercised in several of the passages, including the only-in-passing reference to other groups persecuted ("20,000 gypsies" is all that is mentioned, when there were in reality millions of gypsies, Catholics, Communists, homosexuals, mentally & physically handicapped and others exterminated), and some stinging criticism of the rest of the world for passively ignoring the situation (omitting some of history's most courageous and altruistic efforts, such as the evacuation of the nation's Jews by the people of Denmark). Read carefully first, then use your own judgement about what to share and what to revise for your own children. Selective or revisionist history is, after all, what books like this are supposed to be fighting against.

"Auschwitz Explained to My Child" is an excellent starting point for explaining the Holocaust to an older child or an adult. This book is a quick read. It provides an overview of the concentration camps, the ghettos, and gives a very brief history of anti-Semitism. This is not a complete reference but does gives some basic answers to questions including: the difference between a concentration camp and a death camp; an overview of the census, roundups and deportations; information on why all the Jews could not flee Europe; a reference to the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto; as well as a brief explanation of the ideology behind Hitler's "Final Solution". This is a great resource for young adults, people who want quick answers, or those who have a short attention span.

This is an enjoyable book for a fans of Hellman's who also like to cook. She collaborated on it with her acolyte Peter Feibleman shortly before her death in the mid-eighties, and the reminisences and food insights that frame the recipes in her half of the book (it's split into "His Way" and "Her Way") have the fuzzy yet engaging and opinionated quality that characterizes her memoirs. I've cooked out of this book many times. One chocolate cake recipe that involves bourbon and almonds is a particular favorite of ours. Reading EATING TOGETHER, you can almost hear Hellman barking at you from beyond the grave for daring to cut into a baked Idaho potato with a knife, or failing to save the duck fat, or slicing the Virginia ham too thickly. But great cooks do tend to feel strongly about the preparation and serving of good food. If Hellman fabricated in her memoirs, it can at least be said of her that she knew her way around in the kitchen, and turned out two or three classics of the American theatre.