Rating: 
Summary: The misuse of medicine?
Review: This is a really fast-paced and intriguing courtroom book with a rather unique approach the the subject. We're introducted to Dr. Adam Kelno first, the doctor later accused of misusing medicine in a horrific way in the camp he was forced into, and he isn't depicted as a bad guy at all. I came to really like and sympathise with him; he wasn't presumed to be guilty or a bad person, because as of yet we just didn't know what really went on when he was a doctor in the fictitious camp of Jadwiga. Only in Part Two do we get to know Abraham Cady, and we feel equally sympathetic towards him. We don't know who the bad guy is supposed to be until we get into the courtroom, and even then it's not till close to the very end that we find out which of the two of them is the guilty one. We like them both so much that until the evidence starts piling up, we don't know if Cady is really guilty of libel (or at least sloppy research) or if Dr. Kelno was truly carrying out those radiation and sterilisation procedures in the sadistic way he's accused of doing. As for the reviewer who wanted to know why real names and places weren't used, I think it's because this is a work of historical fiction, not a nonfiction account of war crimes or the misuse of medicine in the Nazi camps. One has more leeway when using fictional characters and settings than in using real people, and telling this story in the mode of historical fiction instead of straight nonfiction narrative doesn't take away the emotional truths and deep impact of what happened.
Rating:
Summary: Uris' best book!
Review: This is Leon Uris' best book -- far better then Exodus, in my opinion.Abraham Cady learns of his Jewish heritage from his father -- that most of his family had been exterminated at the Jadwiga concentration camp. After becoming immersed in his faith after his father's death, Cady decides to write a book called The Holocaust. In it, he accuses a surgeon, Dr. Adam Kelno, as being one of the doctors at the Jadwiga camp that did experiments on other human beings and was a war criminal. Dr. Kelno finds out about the book, reads it, and decides to sue Cady in court and prove that Cady is a liar. It is a book of deep feeling and gripping suspense; one that deals with the Holocaust and the repercussions that happened so many years later after families found out what actually happened to their relatives. It's a brilliant book -- highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Impossible to put down
Review: This was the first Uris novel I ever read and is probably the most enjoyable book I have read by him.The book tells the story of how a Polish doctor Adam Kelno sues American author Abraham Cady after he is named as having being involved in heinous warcrimes during the holocaust.The real triumph of the novel is that Uris puts a human face on the evil of nazism and shows how anti-semitism can corrupt a basically sound man to such an extent.The novel is gripping from start to finish and part of its appeal is you are never sure what twist awaits around the corner.Sheer genius, a literary talent at his most dynamic and brilliant best.
Rating:
Summary: Astounding, stirring and evocative
Review: Very few times we read a book that makes you wonder what would we have done if we were involved in a similar situation the book relates. I wonder if I would have sympathized with the Nazi, or would just ignore Hitler and his madness?Would I have felt the hatred of a nation or live in unspeakable terror? Would I have believed the horrors of Treblinka and Auschwitz or would I have dismissed them as blatant lies? Would I have believed a former Nazi doctor who performed dangerous medicine in a Nazi concentration camp or would I have believed the numerous victims who were brought to trial to witness against Dr Kelno? Did he expiate his actions by saving lifes in Borneo and improving living conditions for the Ibans? You really have to read the book to reach your ouw conclusions. I have never thought that I would have asked these questions myself. We tend to jump to conclusions sometimes too quickly. Well, Leon Uris doesn't. You have to read this book and feel it yourself. You have to let Uris to take you from Nazi Germany to that court room in UK and witness the trial that I am sure will keep you thinking throughout its entire duration.
Rating:
Summary: What will the verdict be?
Review: What will happen to the Plaintiff in this case at Queen's Bench Courtroom Number Seven? What will the verdict be? Things can go either way right up until the jury foreman tells us, and that is part of what makes this novel so great. The Courtroom drama is excellent, and Uris does a fine job of showing us how expert legal cross-examination during the course of a trial can turn a Plaintiff into a Defendent. It's superb stuff. He keeps us guessing and re-guessing.
The issue at stake here in QBVII cannot be over-estimated. A doctor is being tried in order to establish whether he can be held accountable for atrocious operations he performed while he was himself a prisoner of Jadwiga Concentration Camp. Did Dr. Kelno purposely mutilate and torture the Jews that were brought to him? If so, was this intentional? What were his options? Is he, in fact, an Anti-Semite? Were his actions based on racial hatred/prejudice?
Wow, I was completely taken up with this book and fascinated with its sobering subject matter. I was page-flipping long into the night... the whole "Oh-just-one-more-chapter-just-one-more-chapter" thing.
At one point the narrator says "There is in us all that line that prevents us from fully understanding those who are different." This is so true, and this book makes each reader ask themself... "In a similar situation, what would I have done?"
Great characterization and suspense from a superb author.
Rating:
Summary: My Review Does Not Ruin The Plot
Review: When reading the liner notes for this book, you expect to read the same horrors we have all been exposed to when exploring the events surrounding the Holocaust. While the more harrowing events can never be allowed to be forgotten, what is wonderful about this book is Uris never takes you on a frightful train ride in a closed-in boxcar or makes you watch a baby being murdered. Instead, in typical Uris fashion, he focuses on a completely different aspect of the Holocaust (I won't ruin it) that allows us to travel from London to Borneo to Poland to Czechoslovakia to the southern United States to Sausalito, California. He cleverly divides the book into four gripping sections (again, I won't ruin it by describing those sections), the final of which will have you SNATCHING the pages out of the book you will be turning them so fast. Uris' background in the military, as always, provides a superb picture of "comraderie" (sp?) as the two "teams" in this book (noted on the liner notes, so I didn't ruin anything) rally together on their individual sides to try to win their case. While it is not overtly "military", certainly we gain a sense of "a commander and his soldiers" as each team puts together its defense. Having read Battle Cry, Topaz, Trinity, Redemption and now QB VII, I can safely say that this is a theme that quite successfully runs through many of Uris' books. Do not take this book with you on vacation. You won't see a THING for having shut yourself in your hotel room to finish it! Read QB VII after a hard day at work or on a lazy weekend when you can't stand the site of your car. My only gripe, and it's minor, so he still gets 5 stars: Uris tends to refer to the Holocaust as the WORST thing that has ever happened in recorded history. As an African-American whose recently-deceased great-grandmother's parents and older sister were slaves, I beg to differ and (somewhat) take offense. Certainly, Africans were dragged from their homes as the Jews were, traveled MUCH farther distances with the same lack of food and dignity, were separated from their families, were raped, beaten and murdered for making eye contact with the wrong person, were imprisoned over their LIFETIMES with no chance of "surviving till the war ends", were often chained to each other and/or something in their surroundings (imagine needing to go to the bathroom when you are chained to something or someone) and had little chance for developing a Resistance or an Underground, as they were punished by death for learning how to read. But, this is Uris' book and his point of view, to which he is entitled. He tells his story well, entertains without greatly offending (think Gone with the Wind), and presents his work CLEARLY as fiction where, happily (or else all books would sound alike) sometimes anything goes. Definitely as 5-star novel!
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