Rating: 
Summary: Devastating, transcending, unspeakably beautiful...
Review: ...and that's no exaggeration.
This was assigned reading for a class on the Holocaust that I took as an elective in college many moons ago. Once I got around to reading it (near the end of the semester, of course), I was completely unable to put it down. I started it on Good Friday and read straight through the weekend. It shattered me. I was flat out weeping as I read that final page late on Easter Sunday (which, as a non-Jew, spun me around into a whole different perspective). I've been teary-eyed over a good book or two, but I had never read (nor have I since) any book that moved or affected me so profoundly. I find it hard to string together an adequate sentence to describe this book. I can only come up with images...vast, timeless, dream-like, sometimes surreal, but totally human and earthbound at the same time. Gently funny, lush, warm and tender, fluid, truly poetic, painful, pure, sacred, prayer-like. Schwarz-Bart is a master, a pied piper, and this book is a piece of literary art. Five stars just doesn't cover it.
Rating:
Summary: this book deserves to be printed in all languages
Review: As a young boy I read this book and it made an enormous impression on me. Since then I have shared it with friends and family all over the world. It's a wonderful novel style history of diaspora and human endurance. It takes you across many ages in a entertaining way even though the subject is heart-wrenching at times. After Schwarz-Bart wrote the book, he never suceeded in topping it. Then again, if someone can tell a story like this the way he did, you don't have to write anything ever again.
Rating:
Summary: A deeply moving and indelible picture of the Holocaust
Review: Difficult to describe and impossible to forget, this book takes us out of whatever 'normal' world we inhabit and casts us into the horror of the Nazi's 'final solution'. The story of a young Jewish boy - the 'last of the Just' - is so powerful, so full of pain and confusion, so beautifully written, so honestly realized, that the reader will never be able to forget it. The last section alone, where the names of all the death camps are listed, in the midst of a kind of elegy, is among the most moving pieces of prose I have ever read. Read this book. It will change you and stay with you when everything else you have read about the holocaust is forgotten.
Rating: 
Summary: Memorable odyssey of the Jewish child in the 20th century
Review: It is indeed strange how works about terrible events uplift the spirit. The level, the extent and depth of pain and loss that so many have suffered, especially in the century just past, with so many still suffering, often related to religious persecution, racism, or greed beggars one's ability to comprehend: especially those like me, born when I was, in a "new" country, "free" of many of the old ways, but not without some shame in the way those in power have maltreated our Aboriginal people. If nothing else, books such as this amazing volume by Andre Schwarz-Bart are essential reading to get our world in perspective. In the film Schindler's List some of the most memorable and rivettingly horrifying scenes are centred on the character played by Ralph Fiennes as the Commandant of a camp. In his world of the concentration camp, he has absolute power. He kills Jews on a whim, if he has indigestion, for target practice. To him they are insects. One of the most beautiful yet horrible moments in the book is when Ernie, running away, collapses into a meadow, sees the enormity of the sky, experiences emptiness, exercises power over the exquisite insects he encounters, a lady bug he rubs, squashes, and finally annihilates until nothing but dust remains. More and more insects he crushes, until exhausted. He reaches the bottom of the abyss, as a child, but rises to know the glory of love of a girl, at least once. The book has a biblical tone but is a strange and satisying mixture of poetry and unembellished factual passages. A memorable read.
Rating:
Summary: Memorable odyssey of the Jewish child in the 20th century
Review: It is indeed strange how works about terrible events uplift the spirit. The level, the extent and depth of pain and loss that so many have suffered, especially in the century just past, with so many still suffering, often related to religious persecution, racism, or greed beggars one's ability to comprehend: especially those like me, born when I was, in a "new" country, "free" of many of the old ways, but not without some shame in the way those in power have maltreated our Aboriginal people. If nothing else, books such as this amazing volume by Andre Schwarz-Bart are essential reading to get our world in perspective. In the film Schindler's List some of the most memorable and rivettingly horrifying scenes are centred on the character played by Ralph Fiennes as the Commandant of a camp. In his world of the concentration camp, he has absolute power. He kills Jews on a whim, if he has indigestion, for target practice. To him they are insects. One of the most beautiful yet horrible moments in the book is when Ernie, running away, collapses into a meadow, sees the enormity of the sky, experiences emptiness, exercises power over the exquisite insects he encounters, a lady bug he rubs, squashes, and finally annihilates until nothing but dust remains. More and more insects he crushes, until exhausted. He reaches the bottom of the abyss, as a child, but rises to know the glory of love of a girl, at least once. The book has a biblical tone but is a strange and satisying mixture of poetry and unembellished factual passages. A memorable read.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant, moving book
Review: My Dad told me to read this book, and when I finally did, it was well worth it. It tells the story of a legend of a dynasty, so to speak, of just men. They are people who cannot abide by injustice, and often sacrifice their lives for the sake of justice. Young Ernie Levy is recognized as the just man of his generation at a very young age. He grapples with the mixed blessing and curse of being a just man, and feeling others pain, for the Nazi's have just come to power and have begun persecuting the Jews. The story tells how Ernie tries to come to terms with his lagacy at the same time as the Nazis release their unimaginable horror over Europe. The end, where the words of kaddish, the prayer for the dead, are interpsersed with the names of the death camps, the author shows us how great, and how terrible it is to be one of the 36 rightious people of the world.
Rating:
Summary: One Powerful Book!!!
Review: OK, you've read many holocaust books, probably seen several movies, been there, done that. This one is different, and different in so many ways that you'll never believe you've read one before. Of course there are not many that start the story in 1105, that's different. There are not many that try to fix the story in a context that is greater than the ending. This one does that, and makes it so strong that you can not put it down. First the context, the myth if you will. There are in the world 36 `just men' that take on the suffering of the world, that are the reasons God allows the world to continue. There are among these men, some number of `unknown just' who see the world differently from most of us. That when one of these `unknown just' dies his soul is so cold that God must hold him in his fingers for a thousand years so that he can open to paradise. Ernie Levy is one of those men. A thousand years of history, two thousand years of suffering are all concentrated in the story of one boy, the movement of a family from Poland, to Germany, to France, to extermination. It's all so simple. It's all so wonderfully told. The story of a people, the story of a family, the story of a man, the story of the twentieth century, all in so few pages. I hope you'll take the time to read it.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: The Last of the Just is one of the most moving,powerfully written and unforgettable books I have ever read. Why more people don't know about this book is a mystery to me. It tells the story of persecution of the Jews from the middle ages to the Holocaust and of the six men who are chosen to bring justice to the world. Read this book and you will never forget it. It is a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Jewish history as a story of suffering
Review: The legend of the Thirty- Six Just Men , the Lamed Vov whose righteousness sustains the world is at the heart of this work. It traces a family of such Just Men through generations of suffering, and climaxes with Ernie Levy, the Last of the Just whose sufferings in the Shoah( Holocaust) bring the story to a climax and an end. The powerful and painfully poetic conclusion of this story is one of the most moving in Literature. In one sense it might be said that the work presents a one- sided view of Jewish history. But it does tell the story of Jewish suffering through the generations and in the Shoah with incredible compassion and feeling. And it arouses in the reader too a deep identification and sympathy with that history, and with the story and ongoing life of the Jewish people.
Rating:
Summary: The Last of the Just
Review: The story explores the spaces where God does not exist. It can motivate the reader to pray for God rather than to Him; and it is a certainty that when God and Ernie Levy meet face-to-face, that God will blink first. The book is a single-catagory masterpiece which reveals the nature of humanity and anti-humanity. It is both a triumph and a tragedy. Ernie Levy is triumphant; God is a tragic failure. Buy the book. Read it. ...
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