Book Review: Milkweed, a novel by Jerry Spinelli (2003)

The cover of  Milkweed, a novel by Jerry Spinelli, 2003.

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli might seem to have an unlikely plot for a young adult novel. It is set in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. The narrator is a young Gypsy (Roma) boy who thinks his name is “Stopthief,” since that is what people yell after him. Eventually his friend Uri gives him the name of Misha.  

Misha is an orphan and doesn’t remember much about his family. He lives with other orphan boys, who are all Jewish, and they steal whatever they need to survive. At the beginning of the novel, World War II has begun, but the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw has not been established yet.  

Misha is ignorant of the political situation brewing around him, and he swings from admiring the Nazis, whom he calls Jackboots, to wanting to be Jewish, and eventually he voluntarily enters the ghetto. Misha befriends a Jewish girl named Janina, and once he finds a place where he can sneak under the ghetto wall, his thievery of food helps her family survive.  

The novel succeeds in large part because of Spinelli’s ability to channel Misha’s voice. Every new experience stirs wonder in Misha, and Spinelli communicates this very well. Although the reader knows what the terrible fate of the Warsaw Ghetto will be, Misha has no idea. The mounting tension and dread are supplied not by the narrative itself, but by the reader’s own engagement with the text.  

Milkweed is a beautiful and haunting novel about a sad and difficult subject. Spinelli ably conjures up a bleak world where the most pressing concern is where your next meal is coming from.  

Book Review: Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi, also known as If This is a Man (1947, first English translation 1958)

1996 paperback reissue of Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi. First published in Italian as If This is a Man, 1947, and first translated into English in 1958.

The Italian writer and chemist Primo Levi, 1919-1987.

One of the best classes I took in college was an English class called “Literature of the Holocaust.” We read a variety of genres, mostly written by Holocaust survivors. Primo Levi was one of the writers who I was most struck by in that class. Levi was an Italian chemist from Turin who spent more than a year in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Levi’s first book about his experiences during the Holocaust was titled If This is a Man, and was published in Italian in 1947, making it one of the earliest books written by a Holocaust survivor. If This is a Man was published in English in 1958 as Survival in Auschwitz. Levi’s book slowly acquired a growing audience over the years, and in 1963 he published his second book, The Truce, known in the United States as The Reawakening, which chronicles Levi’s long journey home after the liberation of Auschwitz. Levi published several more books during his lifetime, retiring from his work as a chemist in 1977 to devote himself to writing full time. Levi died in 1987 due to injuries from a fall from his third-story apartment. There has been debate among Levi’s biographers as to whether his death should be considered a suicide or accidental.

In Auschwitz, Levi saw mankind at its worst, and in Survival in Auschwitz he presents us with an unvarnished look at the atrocities committed by the Third Reich. Levi summed up the entire experience of the Holocaust with this anecdote:

“Driven by thirst, I eyed a fine icicle outside the window, within hand’s reach. I opened the window and broke off the icicle but at once a large, heavy guard prowling outside brutally snatched it away from me. ‘Warum?’ I asked him in my poor German. ‘Hier ist kein warum’ (there is no why here), he replied, pushing me inside with a shove.” (p.29)

“There is no why here” would have been a fitting motto for the gates of the death camps. Levi also writes of a fellow inmate who had written on the bottom of his soup bowl, “Ne pas chercher a comprendre,” French for “Do not try to understand.” (p.103)

Levi has some eloquent passages about how time moves in the camp. “When one waits time moves smoothly without need to intervene and drive it forward, while when one works, every minute moves painfully and has to be laboriously driven away.” (p.104) After finishing a day’s work, Levi writes, “We have bored our way through all the minutes of the day, this very day which seemed invincible and eternal this morning; now it lies dead and is immediately forgotten; already it is no longer a day, it has left no trace in anybody’s memory.” (p.133)

Levi knows that luck played a large role in why he survived Auschwitz and others did not. His training as a chemist helped him, as he was part of a small group selected to work in a laboratory that supplied labor for the German company IG Farben. This allowed Levi to work inside during the winter of 1944-1945. Levi’s tales of constantly having to repair parts of the factory after it had been bombed by the Allies make clear the Sisyphean nature of his labor. As Auschwitz was being evacuated by the Germans, Levi was in the camp hospital, which meant that he was not part of the brutal forced marches that killed many prisoners. The Germans simply left invalids like Levi behind, and he was able to survive until the camp was liberated by the Russians on January 27, 1945. 

Survival in Auschwitz is an essential book for anyone who wants to get an idea of what life inside Auschwitz was like, told by an astute observer of the human condition. The current edition of Survival in Auschwitz also features as an afterword a 1986 interview with Levi, conducted by Philip Roth. Roth’s interview reveals to the reader Primo Levi’s proud humanity.