Saturday, 26 January 2013
Kazik - Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter
I got Memoirs for Christmas this year because it looked very interesting, but I had a difficult time getting into it. It was well-written and interesting, but lacked quite a bit of detail.
Often when I was reading Memoirs I was struck by the thought that I would really like to read a book about Kazik that was not written by him. Largely this is because he tells the story as though writing for people who already know the people and places that he is talking about. As a result, he leaves out quite a bit of the back story of the people involved, which makes it somewhat difficult to follow in places. The editor does their best to add footnotes explaining who people are and what happened to them, but the result is a somewhat disjointed narrative, taking the reader out of Kazik's story and into a dry mini-biography of the person in question. Another reason why I would be interested in reading an expanded account of Kazik's story is because he goes into very little detail about himself and his own motivations. It is left unclear why he joined the fighting when so many didn't, and how he specifically came to be a leader in the movement.
All of that being said, Memoirs was still quite interesting. The personal stories, while sometimes told out of context, were riveting, as was Kazik's perspective on life within the Warsaw Ghetto.
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