The Fires of Lilliput: A Holocaust story of courage, resistance, and love Paperback – 10 Jan. 2022

So hard to review this book. Harrowing, heartbreaking, powerful. I can't find the words. It was truly a struggle to read and to continue reading to the end. But it needs to be read. The true horror of war and the inhumanity that war brings is horribly clear in this moving work. It's a book I will never forget.

So this is described as a holocaust story of courage, suffering and love. Well it's certainly about the holocaust but I wouldn't call it a story. There's a lot of courage and suffering but again, I wouldn't call it a story. And there is love. When I read the blurb, I gathered (perhaps incorrectly) that the 'story' was about the possible sanctification of a man who displayed the stigmata and the attempt to verify this through contact with a jewish woman who knew him during the horrific events around the holocaust.What I'm getting is a phenomenal amount of detail about the growth of the holocaust and the fighting and killing of millions of jews. And a lot of other detail about oh, Strauss, Himmler, people with sweaty shirts, various german officers and famous people. I've read pages and pages of detail about the fighting between jews and germans in Warsaw and pages and pages of brief descriptions of countless atrocities. And when I say pages and pages, I'm up to page 277 (of 525) and while the proposed saint and the woman who knew about him have earned some of those pages most of theirs were mainly about the above atrocities and daily suffering and deprivation.I like it when a story gathers vast amounts of apparently unrelated information and then pulls loose ends together in a surprising way and makes an unexpected shape out of all that stuff.Instead, I'm getting atrocity exhaustion and I'm losing confidence in the author to pull the whole thing into a shape of any kind.On the other hand, I began to care about those people - that saint and that woman (of whom I have heard nothing for about 50 or 100 pages).I just don't know whether to go on reading.

I could not put this book down. It takes you into the darkness of life in the Warsaw ghetto. But throughout you can feel the glimmer of love, hope and survival

I strived with this book as I was interested in the content of the narrative. Unfortunately at about 35% I reluctantly gave up as the reading was becoming a chore rather than a pleasurable activity.

I have only read an excerpt of this book that was posted on my Facebook Timeline by the Publishers, however, as somebody who is well read on the subject matter, I would advise any buyer, or reader of this book to exercise caution when taking in some of what is written in it. I specifically refer to the actions of the SS Guards who were responsible for inserting the Zyclon B prussic acid into the roof openings of the Gas Chambers. The book has the Guards opening one of the vents, looking down it at the dying Jewish folk and taunting them. Given the nature of Zyclon B, to do such a thing would have quite likely killed the perpetrator, as the fumes from the gas would be inhaled by him, hence why these people wore a gas mask while undertaking the task. So, looking down the opening and shouting down it, just would not have happened.This is the only bit of this book that I can comment upon but it raises the point that if the author is prepared to take liberties with this process, what else does the book take liberties with? The Holocaust is not a suitable subject for tinkering with. What happened in the Death Camps must not be embellished, or tinkered with, if we do this, especially in works of fiction, it can lead the less well read person astray. What happened at Auschwitz (and the other Death Camps) was heinous enough, to take “artistic license” with the processes there, only provides ammunition to those “nay sayers” who would have us believe that the Holocaust either never happened, or that it wasn’t quite as bad as history has recorded it to be.This novel maybe fictional but that doesn’t give it the right to tamper with factual goings on. I did comment on the Facebook posting, chiding the author and publishers about all of this but the publishers immediately removed my comment.

The author did an excellent job telling a very sad but true story from our world history. Easy to follow along but terrible to read the conditions of the Jews and others. A horror story that must never be repeated nor ever forgotten.

This author does describe from a distance; one is drawn into the very heart and soul of ordinary people who accomplished extraordinary things during ultimately stressful times.

I read most of it and will read thru to the end as I don't like to scan. The violent and true parts were what really happened. The fiction was too far out for me

This is an interesting book. The fictional story of a a Catholic saint, a stigmatic, who was a simple person, and through his very simplicity he protected, cared for, and saved the lives of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, and then in the camps. The conditions in the Ghetto and the camps are plainly and powerfully described, as are the actions of the characters for good and evil. It is a reminder of what people can endure and survive. I also learned something about stigmatics and the procedures for making a saint, as well as the desire of the Catholic hierarchy to find saints within the Holocaust because of their refusal to speak with one voice against the Nazi nightmare in 1938, when it might have mattered. I did not enjoy this book. It is not that kind of book. But it remains with me.

The author is an excellent story teller and his character development is both deep and creative. It was not difficult for me to connect with the people of this story, even the ‘villains,’ - a imperfect example, but one nonetheless of Arendt’s thesis of the banality of evil. If an author can achieve this in a work on the Holocaust then I am excited by their capacity for drawing the reader into the realistic dynamics of the period. That said, I have given the book 4 stars rather than 5 because without a more specific offering of moral guidance, a reader might over-empathize with the villains in this book who are based upon the very real SS, H.Youth, silent bystanders, complicit anti-semitic clergy, actively violent police and civilians, non SS camp guards, etc.There are moments where I felt irritated by historical inaccuracies but then I recalibrated and reminded myself that this is not a history book it is a work of fiction :) Let’s just say that there are events that express an optimistic hindsight.The author took on a lot with this work and given the scope I am so very impressed with the dynamism he conveyed and tracked throughout. Clearly a professional. While reading of these events isn’t fun, I would say that I enjoyed this book quite a lot. There were nights that I didn’t want to put it down. The author writes about remarkable acts of love and courage that felt so uplifting to read about right now. I do recommend this book.