Sunday, April 3, 2011

Mila 18 - Leon Uris

 It seems fitting to follow Leon Uris with Leon Uris! Mila 18 is probably his third best novel. It isn't quite in the league of Exodus, but if Exodus was a ten then Mila 18 is a 9.5. It isn't as long either, but then the Warsaw Ghetto uprising isn't quite the historical event that the birth of a nation is either.

So Mila 18 isn't Exodus, but it is an unforgettable novel all the same. In many respects I have written my reviews the wrong way round as I should have written this first and followed it with Exodus to mirror the chronology of the events themselves. Whilst they are separate novels and no characters are carried over it would pay to read Mila 18 first as it is based during the war. To do so would clarify so much of Exodus for the uninitiated in this period of history.
 
 The Warsaw Ghetto and its destruction actually happened. Uris though takes the reader back in time to the start of the war in 1939 and the coming of the Germans. The novel moves from the initial anti-Semitic laws imposed on the Polish Jews, then onto their round up and placement into the Ghetto. It is all historically accurate, and again Uris must be commended for his research and accuracy. The fate of European Jewry is too important and tragic to be played around with, and Uris is extremely sensitive to the history of the Holocaust ( It must be remembered that Uris researched, and wrote this novel only 15 years after the actual Uprising. Many books and documents have since surfaced that only emphasise Uris's care on the subject within the material he had to work with that was available to him).

 A great visual aid to this story is the fine film The Pianist. What you see in that film is what Uris describes in Mila 18. The Germans crowded upwards of half a million Jews into an area of several city blocks and built a wall around it to keep them in. At the time this was done the Germans were still debating what to actually do with them. The death camps weren't an instant decision and the Ghettos became a simple way of keeping the Jews together. Unfortunately, as they were an administrative problem, genocide became the preferred option to deal with them. The Ghetto itself made it easier for the Germans to herd them together quickly, and onto trains, which 're-settled' them  the camps ( most of the Warsaw Ghetto Jews were were gassed at Treblinka ).

 All this historical fact Uris goes into, and like Exodus he tells it from both sides of the fence. He uses actual German figures like Stroop, Globocnik, etc, who were directly involved in deporting and eradicating the Ghetto. But he also adds fictional Germans to tell of decisions from Berlin and to mirror the reactions of those orders in Poland.

 We see the Polish underground visited by Jewish fighters who wanted weapons, and the Polish attitudes to the Jew's plight exposed. They had little sympathy and gave as little help as they could, even refusing to take Jews into the partisan movement. Uris shows the reader how the Warsaw Jews were left to their own fate. Very few Poles did ever lift a finger to help them. To be sure the Polish people themselves were under Nazi tyranny to, but many also blamed the Jews for the fact that Germany invaded their country, and felt they deserved their fate, ( This of course was a feeling mirrored by many right throughout Europe. See the film Sarah's Key for a French take on the Holocaust ). The Polish Jews thought of themselves as Poles but were never really accepted as such by the general Polish population Again a feeling mirrored right throughout Europe).

 As the wall shuts out the rest of the world they are left to their fate, Uris goes into how quickly things degenerated. Jewish women prostituted themselves, children were sent through sewers to the outside to get food, disease became rampant, as did collaboration with the Germans. Anything went just to survive and it is brutal reading in seeing how low humanity got just to survive. Of course the Germans actually used this as a pretext to show to the world that the Jews really were scum and needed to be dealt with.

 As the Germans systematically start to ship batches of Jews off eastward the rumours of their fate reach the rest. It is haunting as they realise they are left to their fate and will be eventually wiped out. The choice comes down to one of succumb and go meekly, or fight and die with dignity. This of course divides them all and many have their faiths tested. It must be remembered that the uprising was by only a small number of Jews and not the whole Ghetto. The fighters received word that the Germans were going to make one last major sweep and transport he last fifty thousand survivors to Treblinka. It was this news that triggered the uprising by the approximately thirteen thousand Jewish fighters.

 They were poorly armed with captured weapons of differing calibres and sometimes only a few bullets per gun. They manufactured home made weapons and used extensive use of Molotov cocktails. Knifes, bare fists, whatever, these Jews showed a courage that was unbearably futile, but extremely heroic. They died in their thousands but held off the Germans for many weeks even though the Ghetto was virtually destroyed. It was an incredible achievement. Doomed from the start it has gone down in history as a stunning statement of sacrifice against tyranny. Leon Uris has put into a novelised form, an unpolished, and uncompromising book, which no reader will ever be able to forget.

 This may be a novel with many events fictionalised, but Uris has provided the world with as close as possible look at the times and atmosphere of a people who knew their fate, and stood up to it. It is a brutal, searing read, and Leon Uris was the best in the business at putting such events onto paper. Mila 18 is an unforgettable, and extremely important novel. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising is a part of the Holocaust, and one of it's most horrific, and yet inspiring events. If you really want to know what it was like to live through it all then you can't go past this book.

 Absolutely brilliant, and still as relevant today as it was when written. I guarantee that this is a novel that once read will never be forgotten, and in fact will you probably read it again. It is like nothing else you can possibly imagine, and again Leon Uris shows us his mastery of the historical novel.

 Mila 18 was an actual address. The book states it was the last bastion of Jewish resistance in the Ghetto but Jurgen Stroop, the German commander designated to wiping out the ghetto, states in his after action report that over thirty points of resistance were destroyed after Mila 18 on May 12th 1943 alone. It has become myth that Mila 18 was the last and even today tour guides state this historical error. Below are some good links of interest pertaining to the uprising.

A link about the novel itself:

15 comments:

  1. good review :), maybe i will give a try to this book

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  2. Thanks!! Yes this is a superb historical novel and Leon Uris was one of the best at this type of genre. I've read it numerous times over the years and highly recommend it!

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  3. Excelent novel. I'm agreed with you, after Exodus, at the same place as Armageddon.

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  4. the book is not accurate when it comes to Polish attitudes to Polish Jews. There were attempts to get weapons in and the Polish underground army tried to get messages out to the US and the UK, but these were ignored by the UK and US. In 1942, AK sent Jan Karski on a secret mission to personally carry the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to the mostly disbelieving Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

    Only in Poland did the Nazis say that if a family harboured Jews, the ENTIRE family would be executed. Yet many were saved.

    On November 10, 1941, the death penalty was expanded by Hans Frank to apply to Poles who helped Jews "in any way: by taking them in for the night, giving them a lift in a vehicle of any kind" or "feed[ing] runaway Jews or sell[ing] them foodstuffs."

    25% of those in the Vad Yesham are Poles. Don't forget Żegota the Polish Council to Aid Jews. Żegota's express purpose was to aid the country's Jews and find places of safety for them in occupied Poland.

    Leon Uris' characterization of Polish conduct in WWII is utterly wrong -- and seems the sum of attitudes of a person looking in. In contrast Szpilman (the Pianist) described better his countrymen's attitude to Jewish Poles.

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    1. I would imagine that there are truths in both those viewpoints, anonymous. Mila 18 is an excellent read, but Exodus is an all time great historical novel.

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  5. I have read both exodous and mila 18 a number of times over the course of my life and I have found them both equally absorbing, I am neither Polish or Jewish but can empathise with both as a rational human being and feel that they could benefit the modern generation greatly and should be on the education sylibus as literature and history.

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    1. I agree wholeheartedly. I have not yet read Exodus but will, as soon as I can get hold of a copy. I was very deeply affected, heartbroken and inspired by Mila 18 - I am Jewish and know that members of my maternal family were murdered by the Latvians and the Nazis in the early years of World War Two. I also know that a few of our family members were in a ghetto. I think Uris was a master of fiction and an incredibly strong and devoted writer. What courage it must have taken to write such an intense, tragic yet uplifting story.

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  6. Uris did not do justice to Poles.
    Yet Poland also produced the greatest number of rescuers. To date, more than 6,350 non-Jews in Poland have been recognized by Yad Vashem, more than any other country, Israeli Ambassador Zvi Rav-Ner said.

    Yad Vashem's statistics show that after Poland, the Netherlands has the most number of "righteous" — 5,204 — followed by France's 3,513.

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  7. Uris did not do justice to Poles.
    Yet Poland also produced the greatest number of rescuers. To date, more than 6,350 non-Jews in Poland have been recognized by Yad Vashem, more than any other country, Israeli Ambassador Zvi Rav-Ner said.

    Yad Vashem's statistics show that after Poland, the Netherlands has the most number of "righteous" — 5,204 — followed by France's 3,513.

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  8. Irena Sendler (née Krzyżanowska), also referred to as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland, nom de guerre "Jolanta" (15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008),[1] was a Polish nurse and social worker who served in the Polish Underground in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II, and was head of the children's section of Żegota,[2][3] the Polish Council to Aid Jews (Polish: Rada Pomocy Żydom), which was active from 1942 to 1945.

    Assisted by some two dozen other Żegota members, Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, saving those children from the Holocaust.[4] With the exception of diplomats who issued visas to help Jews flee Nazi-occupied Europe, Sendler saved more Jews than any other individual during the Holocaust.[5]

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  9. I read "The Wall" by John Hersey, published in 1950.
    I also read "Mila18" by Leon Uris, published in 1961.
    Am I the only one who feels there was plagerism involved.?
    Please let me know what you think.

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  10. I read "The Wall" by John Hersey, published in 1950.
    I also read "Mila18" by Leon Uris, published in 1961.
    Am I the only one who feels there was plagerism involved.?
    Please let me know what you think.

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  11. I haven't read Mila 18 but I loved Trinity by Uris. Knowing what I know about the Polish people,I am inclined to believe that the Polish People were on the whole, probably more helpful than hurtful. And regarding the plagiarism I have a tough time with that, as I know two or more peoples can have the same thought and not even know each other.

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  12. Given that this novel was written in the early 60's, he not only writes about Catholics that save children and the truth of the Home Army and the Soviets that did nothing, but he writes accurately about the language used by the Nazis' that is still used today. Blame people for all the evils you project upon them. Not "American" , they hate the Bill of Rights, it's their lack of love of country that allows us "to defend ourselves". This novel should teach everybody why "pride" is one of the deadly sins, not to mention avarice and envy. The Alt-Right should read this book, not as a template, but as a hint that their language, ideas and mind set will always fail.


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  13. Poles, Poles, Poles. Nobody does justice to the Poles. Except maybe the people who honestly appraise them. Like Andrei Androfsky? Only fools and apologists would argue his portrayal. During WW2 , " Poles" did practically nothing for Jews. To save your own sense of pride by PERVERTING history, ef-off, you scum.

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