Nightmares: Memoirs of the Years of Horror Under Nazi Rule in Europe, 1939-1945 (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust)

Rating:
Summary: Astonishing...this book should be required reading!
Review: Nobel Prize Winner Elie Wiesel's introduction to "Nightmares" as a testimonial that "must be read" is perfect in its directness and honesty.

I have never read an account of the Holocaust that was both so intimate in its portrayal of the horrors, and so complete in its explanation of how the Nazis created an infrastructure to carry-out their unimaginable cruelty and genocide.

Charmatz lived through more than anyone could expect a human to bear: the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz death camp, the Death March and forced labour at Dachau, along with many other "low points" along the way.

Charmatz's telling of his story is riveting not only because the scope of the horrors he witnessed first-hand represent the nadir of human evil, but because he relates his experiences with the eye of the award-winning journalist he later became.

The suffering portrayed is, at times, difficult to read. However, it MUST be read...to gain an understanding of the unimaginable evil that humans are capable of so that such horrors are never again perpetrated while the world sits idly by.

"Nightmares" should be mandatory reading in high schools.