The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley, 1818-1841 Review

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The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley, 1818-1841 ReviewTo read this is to know Venerable Catherine McAuley. Her heart and her spirit are on these pages. I highly recommend it to anyone who seeks a relationship with her.The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley, 1818-1841 OverviewCatherine McAuley (1778-1841) founded the Sisters of Mercy in Dublin in 1831. Her letters are essential primary sources for readers interested in the life and works of this remarkable Irish churchwoman and in women's history and Irish church history more broadly. Whether McAuley is writing to family members, bishops, her solicitor, priests, lay coworkers, or Sisters of Mercy in Ireland and England, her letters reveal striking details about the church and society of her day as well as about her own spiritual convictions and unstinting personal service to poor, sick, homeless, or uneducated adults and children.The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley, 1818-1841, is a new, fully documented edition of more than 320 surviving letters written by, to, or about McAuley during her lifetime. Drawn from archives worldwide and arranged chronologically, the letters are carefully transcribed and generously annotated, with brief narratives introducing each group. In her letters as well as in those of the other correspondents, one sees a delightfully human, affectionate woman; a compassionate, persistent servant of the poor and neglected; an astute businesswoman; and an unpretentious, humorous friend.This edition of McAuley's correspondence is readily accessible to general readers and demonstrates not only her important role in the founding and amazing spread of the Mercy congregation in her lifetime (now numbering more than 10,000 members globally), but also her personal contributions to the pastoral development of the church in Ireland and England. Scholars and other readers will gain fresh insights into many prominent ecclesial leaders in the years 1828-1841, including Daniel Murray, archbishop of Dublin, and Thomas Griffiths, vicar apostolic of the London District. They will also find in these engaging letters one woman's grass-roots experience of certain social, economic, and ecclesiastical arrangements of her time and place.

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Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography Review

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Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography ReviewQuite simply, this was a joy to read.
Ballard tells of his childhood in Shanghai, internment there under the Japanese, his university years in England, right through to his writing career and the joys and tragedies he's experienced as a father and husband, and his love of family life.
What makes this book appealing is that it's not only well written and direct, but also that Ballard tells his story with an honesty and poignancy that is so rare in many autobiographies today.
This isn't about Ballard the writer, but about the circumstances and events that shaped and formed his personal values and beliefs.
You don't have to have read Ballard's fiction to enjoy this book either (although his Shanghai reminisces provide a fascinating insight into Empire of the Sun, the novel based on his internment experiences).
What stands out above all else is his enjoyment of childhood and subsequent selfless devotion and enjoyment of family through all the joys and tragedy he experienced.
His life affirming views on childhood, fatherhood, and single parenthood set this book apart from those hundreds of other autobiographies available that only tell of how individuals found (or lost) their fame or fortune.Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography Overview'Miracles of Life' opens and closes in Shanghai, the city where J.G.Ballard was born, and where he spent the most of the Second World War interned with his family in a Japanese concentration camp.In the intervening chapters Ballard creates a memoir that is both an enthralling narrative and a detailed examination of the events which would profoundly influence his work. Beginning with his early childhood spent exploring the vibrant surroundings of pre-war Shanghai, Ballard charts the course of his remarkable life from the deprivations and unexpected freedoms of the Lunghua Camp to his return to a Britain physically and psychologically crippled by war. He explores his subsequent involvement in the dramatic social changes of the 1960s, and the adjustments to life following the premature death of his wife.In prose displaying his characteristic precision and eye for detail, Ballard recounts the experiences which would fundamentally shape his writing, while simultaneously providing an striking social analysis of the fragmented post-war Britain that lies behind so many of his novels. 'Miracles of Life' is an utterly captivating account of an extraordinary writer's extraordinary life.

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I Am Alive :The horrifying eye witness account of Auschwitz & Birkenau Review

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I Am Alive :The horrifying eye witness account of Auschwitz & Birkenau ReviewMy review is based on the original (1961) edition. Kitty Hart was a Polish Jew who had lived in Bielsko (Bielitz) in then SW Poland. During the 1939 German-Soviet conquest of Poland, she observed German fifth column activity. Germans shot at Poles from rooftops, rioted in the streets, etc. (p. 14). In common with countless eyewitnesses, Hart reported Luftwaffe planes strafing columns of defenseless refugees. (p. 15).
At one time, she, as a Jew, fled from the Nazis into a local forest and successfully hid in the straw of the loft of a forester's cottage (with his permission). Unlike Jan T. Gross and his fans, Hart, who actually went through the Holocaust, appreciated the chilling effects of the German-imposed death penalty for the slightest aid to Jews: "Apparently the Germans had been, and the forester was told that the dogs had followed tracks of several people to the house. They made a search and finally departed unconvinced. They warned the forester that if any Jews were found hiding he would receive the first bullet." (pp. 26-27).
In time, Hart felt safer to be deported to Germany as a Polish forced laborer. She noted how the Poles were forced to wear the "P", and were forbidden to have any casual interactions with Germans. (p. 33).
She feared that her Jewishness would be discovered, and that is what happened. The German authorities took her to Gestapo headquarters, and then got her to admit that she was using a false name by tricking her into believing that her mother had already confessed to them using a false name. She was sent to Auschwitz but, instead of being dispatched to the gas chambers, was admitted as an inmate.
Hart gives gruesome details about the arrivals, the selections, the mass gassings, the infants thrown by the Germans directly into the fire, the clouds of black smoke from the crematory ovens and the overflow open-air pyres, and the stench of burning flesh, etc. She also notes how the Germans periodically sent inmates, of all nationalities, who were too sick to work, to the gas chambers. (pp. 70-71; 110-111).
The economic benefits of the Holocaust to the Germans have often been overlooked. For a certain stretch of time at Auschwitz alone, the haul was staggering. Hart comments: "At the bottom, on the left-hand side, by the last huts, was a huge heap--it really looked like a mountain--as high at least as a three-story building. Piled on the heap were goods of every description all jumbled up, suitcases, loose bundles of clothing, shoes, prams, food and even toys. These were the belongings of those already dead." (p. 85). When the stepped-up gassings and cremations of Hungarian Jews began, Hart suggested that: "Once again wealth will flow to the now ruined `Fatherland'". (p. 102).
Holocaust materials often mention Poles enjoying themselves on a carousel within sight of the burning Warsaw Ghetto. This is taken out of wartime context, and the reader is led to believe that this implied Polish hostility, or at least callousness, to the Jews and their suffering. In actuality, it was an attempt at normalcy in the face of the unending tragedies. In fact, the inmates of Auschwitz also tried to escape the horrors by enjoying themselves, as Hart relates: "We would dance and sing and even formed a little band. We began to laugh and joke again...This was surely the craziest set-up in the whole world. All around us were screams, death, smoking chimneys making the air black and heavy with soot and the smell of burning bodies. I think our main fight was for sanity so we laughed and sang with the burning hell all around us. It was incredible, we lay sunbathing and not two yards away, divided only by a thin fence, columns of people of all nationalities were passing by on their way to the sauna and to the gas chambers." (p. 92). Certainly, Hart, who was Jewish herself, was not disrespecting the dying Jews by her conduct.
The "Jews are getting burned like bugs" remarks by some Poles during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, rather than a mockery of the Jews and their plight, may actually have been a form of nihilistic gallows humor in the face of the overwhelming, monstrous events. Hart, for example, observed such gallows humor in reaction to the horrors of Auschwitz: "Someone inside our block made up a dance and named it `UNDER THE SMOKING CHIMNEYS'." (P. 104). Obviously, no one was making fun of those who had been murdered and were now being cremated.
The Germans transferred some Auschwitz inmates to Gross Rosen. Hart was among them. With the camp evacuated, in early 1945, ahead of the advancing Red Army, Hart observed columns of Silesian Germans fleeing westward (p. 130, 133). In time, the American Army liberated her.
I Am Alive :The horrifying eye witness account of Auschwitz & Birkenau Overview

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