Book review - In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

🔯🔯🔯🔯 (out of 5)

A friend bought this book for me after we visited the new Holocaust Memorial in Dallas, Texas.  When he recommended it to me, I mentioned I was familiar with Erik Larson, having read several of his works.  I had not read this one simply because I was not interested in pre-World War II history.  It was important enough to him that I read it so he bought it for me.  I’m glad he did because I always enjoy Larson but also the book tells a different point of view of Germany under Hitler’s reign just prior to the Holocaust and WWII.

The subjects of In the Garden of Beasts are American Ambassador to Hitler’s Germany William Dodd and his daughter Martha.  Dodd’s wife Mattie is mentioned very little and seemingly played no role in any events, except as bystander, in the book.  The son Bill Jr. is not much more involved.

Much of the book is devoted to the daughter Martha and her sexual exploits, as she enjoys the perks of being the U.S. Ambassador’s daughter.  Life is one big party and she cannot imagine the atrocities being committed against the Jews by the Nazis.  A little anti-Semitic herself, Martha enjoys several lovers and playing them against each other.

I was confused as to Lawson’s choice of Ambassador Dodd as the main subject matter.  Dodd’s appointment, although controversial, was not scandalous.  It seemed the main reason he gained enemies in Washington was because he couldn’t force Germany to pay back the money the U.S.  The State Department could not, or would not, believe the reports of attacks against the Jews in Berlin, despite repeated efforts by Dodd to enlighten them to the horrors he knew to be factual.

Other than this, there is nothing spectacular about Dodd and his family, besides being helpless witnesses to the events unfolding around them and being unable to convince anyone in the U.S. that the worst was yet to come.

As with all of Larson’s books, In the Garden of Beasts contains intimate details of the events, gleaned from hundreds of resources.  You can imagine you’re standing in the Tiergarten area of Berlin watching soldiers march by, and feeling the underlying terror of the city.

I give it 4 (Jewish) stars out of 5 since the main character only provided a minor portal to a majorly important time in history.

Day 7 (cont.) - Berlin, Holocaust Memorial

Thomas took us to Berlin's Holocaust Memorial. Above it looks like all the stone blocks are of the same height.

As you walk among the blocks, you find the ground rises and falls.

The architect presumably wanted to remind visitors how easy it was for people to disappear during the Holocaust.

Here, Fuzzy demonstrates the art of not being seen.

Do we stop at Dunkin' Donuts or not?

Under Three Empires - The Thorns and Roses of a Life by Izyaslav Darakhovskiy

I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Darakhovskiy in the gift shop at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC where he was signing copies of his book. I spoke to him for a few minutes and felt that he was a warm and personable man. He had a friendly and affable demeanor.

I thought his book would be a biography of his life under Nazi German, then Communist USSR and finally the United States. But it was more of a social commentary on life under those three empires.

It would seem logical that someone exposed to oppression under the Nazis and Communism would be bitter and jaded. That is not the case with Dr. Darakhovskiy. He gives an even-handed and mostly impartial glimpse into the political and social environments under the evil empires. One can forgive Dr. Darakhovskiy when he tends to step up onto his soap box, since even then he shows great restraint and professionalism when discussing the events that took the lives of his mother, sister and many other family members during the Holocaust. These horrendous events would try anyone's ability to persevere and move forward.

He paints a candid and interesting view of Americans when he covers his immigration to this country. He received a great cultural shock when realizing an American's obsession with wealth and how it clearly defined one class of people from another. Coming from a country where salaries were determined by a government scale to a country of free enterprise, Dr. Darakhovskiy found the disparity of the distribution of wealth to be almost incomprehensible.

Even this did not cloud Dr. Darakhovskiy's views of the United States. He talks for many pages on the wonderful Americans he met after settling in Rochester, NY who helped him adjust to a culture and a country that were vastly different from anything he had seen before and beyond his wildest imagination.

He wrote about the frustration and barriers to getting employed and the typical responses from potential employers he dubbed as "masterpieces of bureaucratic writing." But many people can attest that these remarks are not reserved for immigrants. We've all heard these same statements.

The only fault I found with the book was the editing. Dr. Darakhovskiy should consider another publisher for his next work. I have never read a book with so many spelling and grammatical errors. I understand that the editor may have wanted to keep Dr. Darakhovskiy's own words pure, but as he doesn't have a firm grasp on the American language, grammar and proper word usage are more important to the reader than verbatim. Some sentences just did not make sense, and this is where an editor can give us at least an idea of Dr. Darakhovskiy's message.

I'm glad to have met Dr. Darakhovskiy and read his book. It is a pleasure to read and if you're not careful, you might learn something. It is a must-read for scholars or anyone interested in the Holocaust or Eastern Europe and Russia.

(This article was previously published on ezinearticles.com)