Book-The Wall

Author John Hersey was a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, best known for his small first person account of the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, called Hiroshima.

And when he writes historical fiction, as he does in The Wall, it is very close to actual events. Based on the real documents found buried inside the destroyed Jewish ghetto of Warsaw after WWII ended, it tells the story of the Jews who were trapped there by the Nazis who took over Poland in 1939, and the escalating determination to wipe out these people by their oppressors.

But The Wall also is about, not just destruction, but a determination to survive under the most harrowing of conditions. Hersey writes this novel as if it were the journals of one of the characters. He observes and reports on the events of the community...from the trivial to the momentous. He also documents the noose tightening around the community as the years of the war go by, and the Nazi determination to destroy all Jews grew ever stronger.

At times the book is utterly heart-breaking. Tears were in my eyes as the underground fighters had to kill a baby to keep its cries from leading the Nazis to their hiding place, which would have been death for all of them. And yet...somehow Hersey is able to write into this always an underlying hope...a ray of life...a value that while there is life, there is still hope.

Many of the events that Hersey fictionalizes here actually happened, or events very close to them did. That he able to humanize these horrible atrocities, that he is able to individualize this mass destruction, is a gift of a master storyteller and journalist.

The Wall is a devastating work...because of the reality right behind the fiction. It is also an uplifting work, because of the hope that is in life.