Hope and Honor

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring Read
Review: A remarkable story wonderfully told. Had my complete attention and was fascinating in every respect. The best gripping memoir of a personal tragedy, perseverance and ultimate triumph.

Rating:
Summary: Great story about defying the odds - and a strong will
Review: How often are we supposed to remember the Holocaust? Seeing it through the eyes of a 7 year old, makes this one of the most profound survival stories ever. And kudos to Sidney's Mother, whose strength of will and ingenuity got them through history's darkest years. I honestly could not put this book down, and although Sid is an immigrant to this country, it made me proud of our constitution and mad at Hitler all over again.

Rating:
Summary: Incredible story!!!
Review: I just got the book the other day but finished it already. It's the first book I've read in years that I just couldn't put down. It is a facinating true story. This is a truly amazing tale and with some great humor. I loved it!

Rating:
Summary: A Remarkable Life!
Review: This is the gripping memoir of a child Holocaust survivor who immigrates to the US, enlists in the Army and works his way up to Major General in the US Special Forces.

The story begins with the horrors of the Lithuanian Holocaust death camp (Kovno) described through the eyes of a young, naive boy. Shachnow tries to make sense of his small world as his life quickly spirals downward. I found the brazen anti-Semitism displayed by Lithuanians alarming and disturbing. Shachnow watches helplessly as his mother is violently raped and family members are robbed, tortured, humiliated and brutally slaughtered, one by one.

To make himself less vulnerable to extermination, Shachnow performs excruciating work on a labor detail where a malicious guard bludgeons him unconscious with the back of a shovel. Rail thin and slowly starving to death, his hair and toenails begin to fall off from malnutrition but he narrowly escapes the death camp on the eve of it's liquidation. The Holocaust portion is without a doubt the most harrowing part of the book.

After immigrating to the United States, Shachnow must adapt to his new life in suburban middle-America. The Americanization of this young, unassuming refugee from post war Europe is at times poignantly heartbreaking and at other times laugh-out-loud hysterical. Still unable to speak English, he attends school for the first time in his life, tries Coca-Cola (tastes like medicine!), loves rock-and-roll, learns to play football, and does his best to fit in.

This book shines light on how important it is for immigrants to integrate in order to succeed. In one particularly heartrending episode young Shachnow discovers the disturbing truth that his father is a sad failure at assimilating into life in America. He surprises his unsuspecting dad by showing up at his "engineering office" only to awkwardly stumble upon him in the restroom, bent over, scrubbing dirty toilets in a janitor's uniform. Shachnow keeps his father's shameful job a secret from his family, but must work long hours after school to help them keep their heads above destitution and poverty.

The journey continues as Shachnow enlists in the US Army to escape his controlling and demanding family. He labors his way from Private to Sergeant, getting into fist fights and rowdy bar room brawls along the way. He gets his act together, attends Officer Candidate School and is sent to Viet Nam along the Mekong River with his Special Forces unit where he eludes death by a hair's breadth more than a few times, winning two purple hearts and a silver star in the process. Amazing.

The story rounds out as Shachnow is inducted into Berlin's "Detachment-A" -- a cold war, covert unit secretly imbedded into Special Forces. The true identity of this clandestine unit was concealed, it's existence denied, and it's missions classified. In order to blend in, Det-A personnel dressed in civilian clothing made in East Germany, grew their hair longer and learned to walk, talk and think like Easterners. They carried Eastern European documentation & identification and were on high alert 24 hours a day, every day. I would have loved to read more detail about these cloak-and-dagger operations but perhaps some of it is still restricted information.

During the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war, Shachnow is assigned the position of Berlin Brigade Commander. The story culminates with a great twist of irony as Shachnow's assigned military home is the same house that Nazi General Fritz Reinhardt owned and lived in during WWII. A residence where Hitler and his cronies attended parties and dinners. (Fritz Reinhardt was Hitler's Finance Minister).

An ordinary man caught in many extraordinary circumstances, Shachnow's story is told with straight forward warts-and-all honesty and a self deprecating sense of humor. All in all, a truly engaging and inspirational read.