By Chance Alone / Max Eisen

 

By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz by Max Eisen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Memoirs like this one are important documents. November, when we observe Remembrance Day, seems to be an appropriate time to read a Holocaust narrative. The people who lived through this hell are aging, their health was compromised by the concentration camp conditions, and we won't have them with us forever to bear witness to these events of WWII.

We would like to think that the brutal treatment of Jews during the war is a rare thing, but I think we have seen enough genocides and general cruelty since then to determine that this impulse seems to lurk within all of us. It is a tendency that we must struggle against, trying to be kinder and more accepting of our fellow humans, even those who are different from ourselves in some way. A change from xenophobic to xenophilic.

If you are interested in reading other powerful accounts of this subject, I would recommend Night by Elie Wiesel or Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Another option is The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi. For younger audiences, the graphic novel Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Siegelman is a good option. There is also the old standby, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (but I couldn't force myself to read it as a young person, I waited until I was an older adult before I appreciated it.)

These days, when truth seems to be a matter of choice rather than actual events, we need books like this one more than ever.


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