Liberation

The thing about rating a book under such a limited system such as a star rating is that on a personal level one can rate a classic as much as an obscure history tome. This is because in the end it is what one gets out of the book be it entertainment for the sheer enjoyment of a ripping yarn or for the information that is learnt. There have been plenty of fine books that I have learnt a lot from that I have rated highly but others have not. Fine. That is life.

But it has been an interesting read so far on goodreads as to how this book has been viewed. For what it is worth I do not particularly agree with any of the criticism. For a start I read that it was critical of the allies who were in fact the good guys. Well yes and in my opinion not once did the author question the integrity of The Allies. Several times he mentioned the good intentions of the allies be that the way they fought the Nazi's or how they liberated the camps such as Belsen. In fact on page 423 of my copy William I. Hitchcock writes with profound wisdom and sadness about the inability of the Allies to understand Jewish thinking as to their liberation and how it affected the future to this day with the issues that are the middle east. As he wrote “There is to be no “new life “ but a conscious carrying of the recent past into the future” The victims had had enough and with that were not going to be what the Allies wanted them be, be it nice and friendly and clean and thankful for the US nor was it going to accept the British trials at Belsen as “justice being seen to be done” in a civilised manner. Who needed civilised after what they had been through? I for one do not understand that but then I have not had to live in my own excrement for months on end while being tormented by a most vicious regime.

Parts of the first hand accounts in this book bought me close to tears. In some cases just for the naivety of the survivors. The French Jewess returns to Paris to be met by her brother who asks where her luggage was. Examples like this appear periodically and have made me realise that I too was as naive to the trials and tribulations of the displaced and I consider my self fairly well read on wartime history. As to the civilians caught up in the cross fire! could I have understood what it was like to see my neighbours dead? Understood even being wounded in crossfire? Understood undernourishment to the point of malnutrition? Understood any part of these horrors?

This book deserves high ratings just because of it's humanitarian attempt to expose the destitution of those that deserved better. Yes “us” allies did our best but be that as it may to be annoyed that we had criticism of our best is in my opinion disappointing in the least. The author of this book is to be congratulated at his attempt to make a wider audience think about war as more than a goodies and baddies* situation.


*This is a reference to a less than mature comment by the then leader of the opposition and now Prime Minister of Australia made in relation to the civil war in Syria.