Reason read: book club selection
This book is about Holocaust survivors, Nazis, and it is set in Chicago/Poland
copyright is 2010. I felt that the book starts out really slow and is almost annoyingly slow but after the story is slowly and painfully set up, the next part moves faster and there is much more action. This is a debut novel by the lawyer author. ( )

An emotionally moving book involving the fictional story of Ben, a Holocaust survivor and his final battle against a Nazi who was once his brother. ( )

Eighty-three-year-old Ben Solomon had retired from his job the Chicago Park District. While he wasn’t an opera fan, he bought a ticket to an opening night gala of Lyric Opera of Chicago. He also brought a World War II vintage luger, hidden in his in his belt.
Elliot Rosenzweig, a well-known Chicago philanthropist, had been a Civic Opera regular attendee for several decades.
At the reception, Solomon approached Rosenzweig and inches from his face asked him “What did you do with all that jewelry?”
When Rosenzweig denied knowing what Solomon was talking about, Solomon pulled out his pistol, pressed it against Rosenzweig’s forehead, and said “Look at me, Otto. It’s Ben Solomon. Here we are, together again, just like when we were kids. Never thought you’d see me again, did you Hauptscharfuhrer Piatek?”
Rosenzweig denied the accusation, said he was a camp survivor, and showed the tattoo on his left arm.
Solomon was arrested. It turned out the luger was an unloaded display weapon, lacking a firing pin...
The remainder of ONCE WE WERE BROTHERS moves between 2004 in Chicago and the days of the Shoah in Poland.
As Hitler’s actions against the Jews began, Solomon’s parents took in Jews trying to escape. One night, there was a knock at their door and a man and his son, Otto, told them a priest said the Solomons could help them even though they were not Jewish, Otto was left with them where he was considered part of the family and community.
As the persecution against the Jews increased and the situation worsened. people began trying to hide their belongings and flee to safety. Meanwhile, Otto’s parents became active in the Nazi movement. They contacted the Solomons and said they wanted Otto back. Otto was unwilling to go because he felt more attached to the Solomons. Eventually, however, the Solomons thought it would be a good idea for Otto to go back to his parents and become involved in the Nazi movement so that he could alert them to upcoming dangers.
Things did not work out the way they planned. Otto became a very strong Nazi. (His reasons for doing so are revealed near the end of the book.)
ONCE WE WERE BROTHERS provides a unique perspective on life for Polish Jews and Otto during the Shoah as well as tells what happened to the Solomon family and Otto after the war including how he became the wealthy and extremely well-connected Jewish philanthropist.
My only criticism is that the time line isn’t realistic. Catherine Lockhart, the lawyer he wanted to represent him after his arrest, was very busy, short on time, and reluctant to add to her workload.. Solomon, however, insisted on telling her the entire history of their relationship and his experiences during the Shoah and took many hours, over several weeks, to do so. In reality, relating the story would not have taken nearly that long. It was a literary device that could have been more accurate.
It is an engrossing story providing information not often mentioned. ( )

This is a debut novel from this Author and was recommended to me for review by a Polish survivor of the camps.

I was pulled into this book from the first chapter, and found myself returning to read more at every opportunity I got. However, the characters portrayed in the book came across as being rather flat. The person I perceived as being the main protagonist was under-developed and could have been given so much more depth by the Author; there seemed to be so much more that could have been written into his background that would have turned him from the old befuddled fool that came out of the pages into a strong and resilient character that showed the human spirit can endure things we never think possible. Certain players in this novel professed to know nothing about the Holocaust, and this added an air of incredulity to the novel. I felt that if the Author had invested more time into the development of their characters, and explored the complexity of the human soul, they would have turned this book around and made it into something more than it actually is. Readers need to be aware that there are also some characters thrown into this book that are never heard from again, making one wonder what the point of including them in the first place actually was. Unless the Author was trying in some way to reflect how people suddenly ‘vanished’ during these years, it may have been better not to include them at all rather than to leave the reader wondering what happened to them and how the events taking place affected them. I really couldn’t connect with any of the characters in this novel, and that is not because I’ve not walked the path they did, it was just because they were so one-dimensional with no endearing traits at all.

Taking place in two eras, World War II and the present day, it was hard to accept that they were part of the same novel. In writing this book it is apparent that the Author spent a great deal of time researching the historical aspects of the pogrom in Poland, but not nearly enough time as some of the things that are written as facts are actually a little off skew. Despite this the historical parts of the book are extremely well written, and it was these parts more than anything that made this a page turner for me; to the point where when the storyline returned to modern day, I just wanted to hurry through them to get back to the past. In comparison to the skilful way in which the Author wrote about World War II, its run up and the way it affected the Jews in Poland, the modern day storyline was rather weakly written, and it is in this portion of the book that I found the plot to be rather predictable.

I wouldn’t say this was a must read for anyone that is interested in this period of time, and the depravity that accompanied it in some countries in Europe, but I will recommend it as a book that breathes a new life into a dismal subject as it looks at this whole area from a different viewpoint. Unfortunately, it could have used the talents of an expert editor in many places to polish out the rather amateurish feel it had, and this is what led to my rating it as I have.


Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2014/02/03/review-once-we-were-brothers-ronald-h-bals...





This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
( )

As holocaust stories go, this one was only partly believable. I think Otto was painted as too good in the beginning to have turned so horrible in the end. He not only participated, but he relished his participation. The singleness of his corruption did not always fit with the actions he sometimes took...after all he had opportunities to kill Ben that he did not take.
Despite this, I found the book interesting and kept reading to the very end.
I suppose another problem for me with stories of justice found is that when the atrocity is committed in a man's youth and he lives to a ripe old age and profits from his sins, is there really justice? Didn't he get away with it? Don't we have to believe in a higher power and a later reckoning to believe in justice at all? ( )