Le sang de l'espoir - Relie

by Samuel Pisar

French

Genres: Holocaust, Memoir, History

363 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Samuel Pisar was born in Białystok, Poland. His parents and younger sister perished during the Holocaust. Pisar was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Majdanek, Auschwitz and Dachau. At the end of the Second World War, he escaped during a death march and was rescued by American soldiers.

After the liberation of Poland, he was rescued by an aunt living in Paris. He was later sent to Melbourne, Australia where attained a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 1953. Later, he travelled to the United States and earned a doctorate in law from Harvard University. He also holds a doctorate from the Sorbonne.

In 1950, Pisar worked for the United Nations in New York and Paris. He returned to Washington in 1960 to become a member of John F. Kennedy's economic and foreign policy task force.

Pisar's memoir, Le sang de l'espoir (Of Blood and Hope) in which he tells the story of how he survived the Holocaust, received the Present Tense literary award in 1981. He has also written a narration based on his experiences and his anger at God, for Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 3 ("Kaddish"). After 9/11, Pisar wrote Dialogue with God, in which he expresses his concern for the future of mankind.

Reviews

[Micebyliz]

I am reluctant to disagree with someone who is deceased, and particularly someone who was a survivor, but in this case i just have to. There are several things i cannot let go. I will only cover two of the most important here.
The first one is on page 76 when he is discussing the brothels that the Nazi's set up in the camps and elsewhere. I have read accounts and other material concerning these brothels and it is not the experience that he describes, far from it. I was horrified that he seemed to think that rape was a kindness of human feeling. Really? "a kapo who has been violent and cruel suddenly plants a tender kiss on a girl's lips (a girl, no less) and sinks helplessly and quietly away from her arms." are you not sick? "some wisp of human feeling can be found"...right after he raped her.
The second thing is he uses the R word which is also something to make all of us sick and i will not tolerate it in any circumstance. So i had a hard time finishing this book. Sure he was respected lawyer and scholar and many other things but he had a lot to learn apparently. Did he not know that the first people killed were those with disabilities? That women suffered differently than men?
Come on!!!

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 4 out of 5]

This stunning memoir by an Auschwitz survivor who was liberated by an African-American soldier when he was just sixteen and went on to become an international lawyer of great renown and confidant of diplomats, artists, filmmakers, and politicians worldwide is a must read for today's age. The harrowing accounts of Samuel Pisar's Maidanek and Auschwitz days, which began when he wisely chose to wear long pants and thereby caused himself to be counted as an adult rather than a (disposable and exterminable) child, is followed by the almost comic account of his manic post-war, racketeering, black-marketeering existence in war-ravaged Germany with a pair of fellow survivors who are brothers to him in all but blood.

Reunited with the remnants of his family in Melbourne, Pisar dedicates himself to study and the Socratic method, and ultimately completes a post-doc at Harvard, marries an American, and begins to serve in the United Nations. His circle of influence only expands and he became a leading proponent of "conquering" Cold War enemies by engaging with them and, in particular, by conducting a robust economic exchange with them.

Gradually disillusioned, Pisar returns to the first principles learned in the extermination camps. Never one gratuitously to share his tale in his post-war years, he decides (among other things) writes this powerful memoir--in part to celebrate the last of his "brothers" to die, when Pisar becomes, in his words, "a survivor of survivors." Most pertinent to 2018, he wrote the memoir "to convey to as many as I could how, not so long ago, a proud civilization had collapsed physically and morally before my very eyes... and left behind only cruelty, suffering, and destruction."

The man's clear-eyed, utterly unsentimental, and camp-fed grasp of the world can be unsettling: "Those who lack the basic necessities of life are ready to give up their freedom and their civil rights for a crust of bread if this will help them prolong their wretched existence by one more day. This is a naked truth, which I saw with my own eyes." Publishing in the late 1970s, he predicts a "global Auschwitz of the future."

Nevertheless, Pisar does not feel sorry for himself: "I never felt the least desire to burn down the world in anger and protest over my fate ...On the contrary, I felt impelled to take my place in civilized human society and contribute what I could to the cause of justice and peace, lest the horrors I witnessed revisit our world in some new unpredictable form." To the contrary, he reports a preoccupation with what he calls "more immediate, more concrete demons," which are the same demons that continue to torment America in 2018:

"They are the anxious edge in people's voices when they speak about the security of their jobs, the erosion of their savings, the cost of their health care and their children's eduation. They are the tragedes reflected in the daily press ... They are the helplessness of politicians in face of disorder, the spreading lack of confidence in the ability of democratic institutions to cope. ... today the enemies are manifold; they are everywhere and nowhere; they are difficult to locate, difficult to resist, and difficult to contain."

(The masterful construction and punctuation of that last sentence alone is made me want to have Pisar's children.)

In words that have even greater resonance now (think: Parkland survivors), Pisar exhorts us to "establish a new kind of relationship between generations .... a relationship that places the same confidence in young people when it is time to live and create as their elders have placed in them when it was time to destroy and die on the great battlefields of history."

Ultimately, notwithstanding the horror of his youth and the disillusionment of his later years, the lesson Pisar draws and the view he maintains is unabashedly positive: "[A]s long as hope pulsates within us like blood, redemption is possible."

The only reason "Of Blood and Hope" did not get five stars from me was that Pisar lost his way in the last third of the book, pacing-wise, when describing some of his adult challenges and interminable jaunts around the globe hobnobbing with celebrities and politicians--all of which blurred in a messy and imprecise critique of various global initiatives (which reflected, ironically, his "lost way" and disillusionment, but at too great length.

[Hélène · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incroyable récit (témoignage) de survie d'un enfant juif polonais, seul ds les camps de concentration. Survit avec 2 autres compagnons (Auschwitz, Dachau,...), puis comme semi-délinquant ds l'Allemagne chaotique d'après-guerre. Sauvé par sa tante (Paris), puis par ses oncles en Australie. Ceux-ci lui font faire des études (à 17 ans, jamais eu d'école!). Passionné par les études, université de Melbourne (droit), bourse pr Harvard. Carrière de conseiller politique aux plus hauts niveaux.
Livre de Françoise
Livre de Françoise

[GrzechuG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Niezwykła biografia, wciągająco opisana historia życia obejmującą wielkie i tragiczne wydarzenia XX w. Autor urodzony w moim mieście, w Białymstoku, przy ul. Dąbrowskiego, w kamienicy którą mijam niemal codziennie. Wola życia i determinacja autora powinny być prawdziwą inspiracją dla każdego.

[Anne Bakker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read, although in the last part of the book the author is a bit bragging about names and stuff

[Emilly M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ej ja to skończyłam, nie wiem czemu nie dodałam, polecam tą książkę jeśli ktoś lubi taką tematykę, znów nie wiem jak ocenić ;//

[Lucía Delgado · Rating 1 out of 5]

" Survived three concentration camps and a death march."
Why do people still read these "autobiographies" is beyond me.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The phenomenal autobiography of Samuel Pisar, a child Holocaust survivor who became a well-known lawyer and international consultant. The writing style was incredibly beautiful, even as he described the horrors of the concentration camps and the thievery that kept him alive afterwards. Long lost relatives saved him from a life that certainly would have turned out differently; as they humanized him again and made sure that he received an education both inside and outside of the classroom. Many lines stuck with me long after I finished the book.

[Nancy Loftis · Rating 5 out of 5]

An inspiring true story of a man who endured a tragic youth and went on to use his experiences to encourage others!