Robert Satloff

Growing up as I did, attending a Jewish school that wanted us to know all about the holocaust, praying a synagogue with Holocaust survivors, hearing family stories about my grandfather being the first into a concentration camp (because he spoke Yiddish; he's never talked about it), I knew lots about the horrors of the Holocaust, to a degree where hearing the litany repeated again was almost deadening. Getting a fresh perspective on this can bring back the emotions associated with it, but with the number of different angles taken so far, it's hard to do well.

It came as a surprise to me, as well as to the author of the book, that no one had ever taken a look at the Holocaust through the lens of what happened in North Africa, where both the Germans and the Vichy French had footholds. The real point of the book, however, is to try to identify an Arab who helped a Jew during the Holocaust; Satloff writes a couple of times that such a story would serve as a constructive response to some of the anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial/minimization that takes place in the Arab world. Specifically, the book is Satloff's response to 9/11; if one can find these connections between disparate peoples and point them up, perhaps it'll be harder for such tragedies to happen in the future.

The book itself is a mix of wider-scope history, personal stories, and travelogue. Satloff's style tends to shift a bit between the different parts, but that's probably a plus; he steps out of the way of the wider-scope Holocaust history material and lets the terrible nature of it speak for itself, he can be evocative with the personal stories, and he gives a sense of his enthusiasm during his search during the travelogue portions. Vichy France and Germany both had persecution campaigns and labor or torture camps for Jews during World War II, and Satloff argues it was only a matter of time before the Germans got around to the genocide in North Africa; it was only that they lost that prevented them from doing so.

The history part is essential to understanding the book, but mostly, it shines during the stories of the survivors and Arab rescuers, and with the associated travelogue of finding the stories and telling the tale. Really, as much as the stories are interesting, they aren't that different from others of the type; the players are different, and it doesn't diminish the power of it, but if you've read Holocaust books before, you've heard their like.

No, it's the travelogue part, Satloff's hunt through North Africa and around the world for these sites and stories and documents to lay out his argument, and the difficulties he met both with Arabs and Jews who just want to put this part of their past behind them, if for different reasons. The former want no complications in what is viewed as a tragic but European affair, and the latter, particularly those still in the North African countries, want to not stick out as much as is possible. While a postscript tells of some changes in both positions subsequent to the publishing of the book, the story along those lines remains very interesting and well-written.

Holocaust books are heavy reading, but this one has at least an optimistic goal, and is very interesting for all that. It's not for everyone, but you could definitely do worse for non-fiction than this readable and enterprising tome.… (mehr)