Detroit Jewish News

52 June 23 • 2016 accounts of daily life in the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos of two Yiddish journalists who ultimately died in the Holocaust. Their frightening words fill 300 pages, includ- ing the Sept. 6, 1942, account of when 22 Jews were executed, "their hanging bod- ies swaying wantonly like twenty-two leaves fluttering from a with- ered branch." ■ In The Anatomy of Malice: The Enigma of the Nazi War Criminals (Yale), professor of psychol- ogy Joel E. Dimsdale examines four war criminals — Ley, Goring, Streicher and Hess — and asks whether they were fundamentally like other people or fundamentally different. ■ "It's a lie that Poles killed the Jews in Jedwabne," says Tadeusz S., a retired doctor from Warsaw. Though an eyewitness, he was one of many to cover up the events of July 10, 1941, a day when residents of the Polish town herded local Jews into a barn and set it on fire, murdering 1,600 men, women and children. The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Polish journalist Anna Bikont, is an astonishing act of investigation and documentation in the face of lies, denial and massive indifference. ■ The Nazi Hunters (Simon & Schuster) by Andrew Nagorski focuses on the men and women who worked to track down Nazi war criminals and bring them to justice, as the era of being able to do so is coming to a close. ■ Once loyal Hitler Youth participants, brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl became founding members of the White Rose, a group of students in Nazi Germany appalled by Hitler's mass slaughter of German citizens and determined to resist his regime at any cost. With archival photos and a thoroughly researched and well- told story, Newbery Honor win- ner Russell Freedman details the beginning of the movement and the lives of its members in We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement that Defied Adolf Hitler (Clarion Books). arts & life b o o k s ■ The title of Brenda Janowitz's new novel, The Dinner Party (St. Martin's), refers to a suburban Passover seder — peopled with two sets of potential in-laws, including a family of Rothschilds — that is indeed different from every other night. The holiday's themes of freedom and letting go relate to the characters' struggles. ■ On June 19, 1953, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg became the only Americans to be put to death for spying during the Cold War. The day Ethel was arrested, she left her two young sons with a neigh- bor and never came back. In The Hours Count (Riverhead), Jillian Cantor (Margot) weaves fact with fiction by creating the story of a fictional neighbor, Millie Stein. Knowing the Rosenbergs as an ordinary-seeming Jewish couple, Stein is thrown into a world of lies, betrayal, spies and counter- spies. ■ Told with compassion, The Houseguest (Counterpoint) by Kim Brooks, a vibrant debut novel, is set during the Holocaust, all around America. At the outset, a rabbi in Utica, N.Y., convinces a local junk dealer and his family to take in a European refugee, the volatile and charming actress of the book's title. As the characters feel the war approaching their own lives, they reach out in their own ways to fight. ■ Set against the backdrop of a starry cast of characters, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Muralist: A Novel (Algonquin Books), by B.A. Shapiro (The Art Forger) tells of a young American painter working for the Works Progress Administration. Inspired by historical events during the Roosevelt administration, The Muralist follows the protagonist as she works to define herself as an abstract artist, tries to obtain visas for her Jewish family living in German-occupied France — then suddenly vanishes in New York City in 1940. ■ Author Edward Lewis Wallant, compared to other Jewish American writers such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, died one year after The Pawnbroker (Fig Tree Books) was originally published in 1961. One of the first American novels to deal with the lingering trauma of the Holocaust — and inspired Sidney Lumet's 1965 film of the same name, which was the first American movie to deal with the Holocaust from a survivor's perspective, depicting the Nazi extermination camps as evoked in Nazerman the protagonist's nightmarish memories. Set in Harlem, The Pawnbroker, now reissued in a new edition, explores the fraught relationships between Jews and other American minorities. ■ Set in 1950s Brooklyn, The Two-Family House (St. Martin's) by Lynda Cohen Loigman is the story of two women and the two children to whom they give birth, two minutes apart in a 1947 bliz- zard, in the house their families share. The two mothers are mar- ried to a pair of brothers, and the novel follows their entangled lives. This sparkling debut novel is inspired by stories the author heard in her childhood. ■ Called a "modern-day Jewish Jane Austen" by reviewer Leah Rozen in People magazine, Cathleen Schine (whose ex- husband is New Yorker film critic David Denby) writes a funny novel about aging, family, loneli- ness and love in They May Not Mean to, But They Do (Sarah Crichton Books/FSG). When Joy's beloved husband dies, her adult children did not count on the reappearance of a suitor from her college days and on Joy herself to become as suddenly willful and rebellious as their own kids. ■ From the Yiddish for "choked with emotion," Verklempt (Doppel House Press), by Austrian journalist and former politician Peter Sichrovsky, is a collection of darkly humorous, often absurd and almost always touching Jewish-themed short stories. ■ Reed Farrel Coleman, who once said, "I have a great Irish name, though I'm of Ukrainian Jewish heritage," is the creator of the acclaimed Moe Prager crime novels featuring a Jewish ex-cop in 1980s New York. In Where It Hurts (G.P Putnam's Sons), Coleman introduces Gus Murphy, another middle-aged cop, in a book that is both a crime story and a meditation on grief and loss. FICTION continued from page 51 THE HOLOCAUST continued from page 51 D etroit won the reputation as the legendary "City of Champions" in the mid-1930s when the Tigers, Lions and Red Wings rose to the top of their sports, and home- town boxer Joe Louis ruled the ring. But all was not well in what was then the nation's fourth largest city. Tom Stanton's Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression- Era Detroit (Lyons Press) tells the true story of the Ku Klux Klan-like "Black Legion" that despised blacks, Catholics, Jews, union organizers and others — and murdered more than 50 people. While Detroiters cheered Tiger slugger Hank Greenberg, Bert Effinger, the "major-general" of the Black Legion, dreamed about releas- ing poison gas in the country's largest synagogues during Jewish holidays. One Black Legion murder occured in 1935 when member Harvey Davis wondered what it would be like to kill a black man. The group lured Silas Coleman, 42, onto their prop- erty in Pinckney, then chased him "like a deer" and shot him to death before celebrating with beers and shots of whiskey. Of Jewish interest are tales about Greenberg as well as prominent anti-Semites Henry Ford and radio priest Charles Coughlin. Stanton, who teaches journalism at the University of Detroit Mercy, is author of the acclaimed memoir The Final Season, about the last year of baseball at Tiger Stadium. For Detroit history buffs, sports fans and true-crime enthusiasts, Terror in the City of Champions is a fast, thrilling ride into a hectic, fran- tic time in the Motor City. * Death & Baseball The story of racist killers in mid-1930s Detroit told against the backdrop of our champion Tigers. David Sachs | Senior Copy Editor w t f c T o M a S S D

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