The Wall

This is truly an amazing book about the Holocaust, in particular, life in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, and the eventual uprising. The style in which it is written took me a bit to get used to, as it is written in the form of diary entries written by a self-styled archivist in the ghetto, who included his own ruminations in the entries. It was a bit of a slog in the beginning, taking me at least a hundred pages to get used to that narrative style.Once I adapted to it and got to know some of the characters, I found myself totally immersed in their daily lives and was hooked. Though it is a fictionalized account, it reads as if were non-fiction, as it rings true because it is based on well-documented actual events and people. Moreover, there really was an archivist in the Warsaw ghetto, whose writings were recovered in part after the war and form the basis for the narrative style of this book.The newly formed Warsaw ghetto hums with teeming life, as the jewish populace adjusts to their new living situation. They are initially lulled in what will prove to be a false sense of complacency, as they are seemingly unaware of the horror that ultimately awaits them. The characters to whom one is introduced run the gamut from the best to the worst humanity has to offer, a microcosm of the macrocosm. They each struggle to come to terms and cope daily with their increasingly horrific conditions and escalating restrictions. Soon enough, the reality of their situation becomes abundantly clear. As in real life, some rise to the situation, and some do not.All of this leads to the Warsaw ghetto uprising. It is an unfolding drama that will hold the reader in its thrall. The only issue I had with the book was the ending, as it rather abruptly concludes in May of 1943, while the war is ongoing. An epilogue detailing what happened to the remaining characters would have been nice, if only so that the reader could have some closure. There is some very limited information in the prologue, primarily focused as to what ultimately happened to the archivist. An epilogue would have been the icing on this sumptuous cake.

I have to say, John Hersey is a great writer and this probably one of the best books on the holocaust. The writing style took a little getting used, but gradually, you really feel like you are living behind the ghetto wall. This is probably one of the most realistic accounts of the Warsaw ghetto and the ultimate uprising, as these are very real people living in an extraordinarily bad time, and doing what they can to survive. There are no superheroes here, or the super-perfect and physically stunning flawless characters which inhabit so many books of this type. What is most interesting, and so politically incorrect, is the squabbling that went on between the Jewish groups--rather than unite against a common and deadly enemy, they chose to argue and fight amongst themselves, almost until the end.I really felt like I knew these people, as they lived, died, married, and survived. The book is based on the actual notes kept by Emanuel Ringlbaum, who is the "real" Noach Levinson, the fictitious narrator and diarist of this book.But I gave the book 4 stars for 2 reasons. One is that the book dragged on longer than it had to. This is a big book, about 650 pages, but the last 150 could have easily been condensed to less than half that. It is ironic that the most "exciting" part turned out to be the most boring. Towards the end, when the ghetto is being emptied of its last survivors and the Jews are armed and fighting back, the book begins to crawl along slower than a dead garden slug. The entries are repetitious--same thing repeated over and over again. The musings of Noach are dull, and very little happens. The interactions between the characters, and the portraits of their daily lives has vanished, and now they are hiding in bunkers and little more. And this goes on for over 100 pages. I began to skip paragraphs then whole pages at a time, trying to move this along.At the end, just when about 40 survivors are about to get out, there is a delay, so they are stuck below ground for another 24 hours. Why? The author threw this in so that Noach could do "interviews!" Talk about boring. I skipped those after trying to read through one of them, and then finally, they are out. The survivors, the characters that we have come to know intimately, are now free in the forest and meet up with partisan groups. But then the story ends, abruptly. What the...?There is no closure, no epilogue, nothing, to tell readers what became of them. It is only May 1943, and there are two very long years of war left. What happens to the characters? Where did they go? What became of those who were living on the Aryan side? What about David--did he ever make it to Palestine? In the prologue, we learn the names of two characters who survived and one who died before the end of the war, but that's it. I can't fathom Hersey's reason for doing this. It was such a letdown, not to have any closure or know what happened, where the characters went, if they survived the war and where they ended up.

John Hersey's The Wall is a fictionalized account of the Warsaw ghetto (November 16,1940 to May 16, 1943). The emphasis is on the whole historical experience, not just the uprising (April 19, 1943 to May 16, 1943). Hersey has a handful of his characters escape on May 10, 1943, so that there is someone left to tell the story and to allow the reader to sense the flicker of hope which the characters express. The narrative technique is brilliant. The story is told in the form of an archival record written by one of the survivors and dug up after the war. This technique allows multiple first person accounts as recorded through conversations of the archivist with the handful of people who form a "family" as the Germans compress the ghetto and with members of the Judenrat where the archivist works. It's like having numerous narrators, but the point of view remains consistently focused by the archivist and the author in the role of "editor" of the records. By carefully positioning the characters within the ghetto (some in the Judenrat, some in the Socialist Bund, some on work details), Hersey allows the reader to "see" and understand the ghetto and its horrors from several perspectives. The dual filtering of the stories by the archivist and editor allow the reader to encounter the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto without being repulsed by them. The characters grow, develop, and learn from their experiences and the archivist relates those changes even as the ghetto changes and life becomes more difficult. It's an engrossing and emotional account which follows the historical sequence closely. Hersey is a compassionate story teller, and the reader develops a strong emotional attachment to many of the characters.

Not as enthralling as I expected. Undoubtedly some very interesting studies of the people, their attitudes and daily life in the ghetto, but a little turgid to read continuously . It reads like a diary, not to be confused with that of Anne Frank; I find myself wanting to extract single person profiles and produce an academic research paper. The whole book is of course a piece of academic research itself.However, I know I shall pick it up again. We have all, perhaps, by now seen too many films and documentaries of this period..........as a young child living through the Second World War, I was absolutely riveted/later horrified by the stories which emerged some ten years later, then the films and so on.

Hersey's fictional acccount of the last days of the Warsaw ghetto is based on a real life archive collected and hidden by Emmanuel Ringelblum.This extensive material was buried in the ghetto in metal boxes and milk churns which were recovered intact after the war, with the exception of onechurn believed still to be beneath the present-day Chinese embassy in Warsaw.Hersey's narrative, written in diary format with copious notes, is not particularly easy to read, but is, nevertheless, able to hold the reader's interestto the end, and his considerable research into contemporary East European Jewish life, language, ceremonies etc. is quite remarkable.One small criticism might be his quite frequent use of rather odd English (some not even in the dictionary!).On the whole, I would recommend this 600-odd word book to any reader new to this tragic subject.

A classic of the 20th Century!

I could not put this book down. The plot is very clever, and the events as documented by the narrator are frightful, especially considering they are all historically accurate.This is undoubtedly one of the best books I've ever read.