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Martin Bodek

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Zaidy's War: Four Armies, Three Continents, Two Brothers. One Man's Impossible Story of Endurance (Holocaust Survivor True Stories) Kindle Edition

by Martin Bodek (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 46 ratings

Part of: Holocaust Survivor True Stories (37 books)

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Benzion Malik was on a path of discovery. He was keen to learn about everything in life through the teachings of his faith and only something cataclysmic could throw him off this course. In 1939, the 21-year-old Benzion was called up to the Romanian Army. Little did he know that he would not be a free man until 1945.

During six long years, Benzion served in three further armies. He was forced into hard labor and was constantly abused because of his Jewishness by the Hungarian army. He was then made to serve the German army which simply needed disposable bodies to be targets for Soviet bullets. Finally, the Soviet army needed young men like Benzion to help with the effort to fight the Nazis.

None of these acts of service and servitude were easy. Benzion was in a continuous dance with death but clung to life through the goodness of strangers. When WWII was over, Benzion had to make the 2,600-kilometer walk home and narrowly escaped being poisoned to death by mushroom soup. At home he was confronted with the ruins of his family, community, and people. Yet, he was not defeated.

Lovingly written by his grandson, this book provides an account of a man’s resilience to not give up on the world after extreme destruction, but instead to help rebuild a community and practice Tikkun Olam - Repairing of the World - by believing in cosmic justice and leaving an imprint on his family, friends, and strangers for generations.

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About the Author

Martin Bodek was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and three children. He is an avid marathoner, Daf Yomi participant, Wordler, vexillologist, and halvah aficionado. He is a technologist by day, and a writer by night. He has been writing freelance for over two decades, mostly on Jewish interest topics. He is the co-creator of a popular Jewish news satire website called TheKnish.com. His work has been published in The Huffington Post, The Denver Post, The Washington Times, The Jewish Press, Country Yossi Magazine, Modern Magazine, The Jewish Link of NJ, The Jewish Book Council, bangitout.com, scoogiespin.com, jewcentral.com, and israelinsider.com. His work has also been translated for Germany's only weekly Jewish newspaper, The Jüdische Allgemeine. He has served as the beat reporter for JRunnersClub.org and as the surname columnist for jewishworldreview.com. The Emoji Haggadah, The Festivus Haggadah, The Coronavirus Haggadah, and The Shakespeare Haggadah generated much praise and media attention, and were covered in The Jewish Week, The Jewish Link of NJ, Jewish Vues, Vos Iz Neias, Jewish Book Council, NorthJersey.com, The Forward, Jewish Journal, J-Wire, Vox, The Jewish Press, The Jewish Fund, The Jerusalem Post, The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Jüdische Allgemeine, Moked, various blogs, eater.com, nj1015.com, New York Shakespeare Instagram Live, The Cindy Grosz Show, and The New York Times. This is his eleventh book. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0B9CCWP5G
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Amsterdam Publishers (October 12, 2022)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 12, 2022
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 14103 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 9493276457

Best Sellers Rank: #187,936 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #12 in Historical Russian Biographies
- #32 in Jewish History of Religion
- #35 in Holocaust Biographies

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4.5 46 ratings

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Martin Bodek

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Martin Bodek is co-founder of TheKnish.com - a Jewish version of The Onion. He is the beat reporter for JrunnersClub.org, an emerging Brooklyn-based organization for athletes. He researches surnames for Jewishworldreview.com (e-mail onsurnames@gmail.com with yours and he'll do the legwork for you!). He has been writing freelance for more than 20 years for The Huffington Post, The Denver Post, The Washington Times, The Jewish Press, bangitout.com and other sites and media outlets as well as Germany's only weekly Jewish newspaper, The Judische Allgemeine. His books have been featured at the YU Seforim Sale. He was born and raised in the wilds of Brooklyn, New York, has worked most of his life in the badlands of New York City and settled in the jungles of northern New Jersey with his strong wife and three above average children. As you can tell, he wants to be a writer if and when he grows up.

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Audrey B.

Inspiring Holocaust true story that is hard to put down

Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2023

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I read Zaidy’s War in just a few hours one night because it was such a gripping story that I found hard to put down. Author Martin Bodek deftly tells the tale of his grandfather’s remarkable survival during World War II under the most dire of conditions, all the while maintaining his human decency and his religious certainty. The writing is excellent and brings the reader directly into the drama, differentiating it from many other survival stories. The first half of the book is the story itself and the second half is reserved for interesting background material. All in all, an important contribution to our understanding of this time in history, and a beautiful tribute to a remarkable man.

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Martin M. Bodek

Guts: What Zaidy Had & What the Author Put In

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2022

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As the writer of this book, I'm certainly qualified to claim that I have read it. Matter of fact, I must have read and re-read each rewrite multiples of times. Therefore, I give myself permission to give the book a rating, as I would any other book I've read and recorded the reading here.

While I'm at it, I owe myself some commentary to entice you, dear reader, to read what I've written. In order to not bias you one way or the other, I won't comment on the quality of the book, but rather on the work that went into it, and you can judge for yourselves.

I put my heart and soul into it; I spent 19 years honing it; I spent 2 whole years translating the original Yiddish VHS recording into English; I did more research on this than I did on anything else I ever did research on in my life; I read all the seminal holocaust memoirs I could get my hands on; I seasoned myself as a writer by publishing my first 10 books before I dared to venture to do something this important; I'm extremely proud of it; The book is my "Yad Vashem" contribution to my grandfather, my family, and Holocaust Memory.

I hope you get out of it what I put it into it.

2 people found this helpful

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E.C.H.

A fascinating story and I wanted MORE

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2023

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This is an incredible story. And the personal piece of it makes it that much more poignant. And the way Bodek ties in his Zaidy's story into his community and his family is really distinctive and powerful.

I WANTED MORE. It's a hard thing to capture what someone was thinking and feeling 70 years after their experience, but more of the emotional toll would have given the story more weight. Here, Bodek's expertise in humor writing (seriously, checkout the emoji Haggadah) gets in his way, and the book sometimes feels too light for the story.

There were also times when it could have been clearer who the book was for. The breakdown of roles in Auchswitz was helpful, but then the holiday of Shavuot wasn't explained. In that way, this book was clearly for observant Ashkenazi Jews with familiar with the Satmar rabbinic dynasty, a smattering of Yiddish, and basic WWII history. The challenge with taking on a story set in the middle of that complex, rich Venn diagram is ensuring all the loose ends are explained and defined and sourced. Which took me back to my sole critique - MORE PLEASE. More detail, more sources, more explanation, more feeling.

One person found this helpful

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Bettie Denny

Jaw-dropping moments in this loving tribute

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2023

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There are jaw-dropping moments (no spoilers here) in Martin Bodek’s multi-layered tribute to his grandfather, the kind of stories that become mythic. ZAIDY'S WAR begins with an easy-to-read, almost breezy account of a terrifying time, informed by the author’s youthful admiration of his grandfather’s WW2 experiences coupled with an adult understanding of what it actually meant. Included here are chilling details of a Nazi killing center gleaned from the first-hand accounts by other family members. When the narrative abruptly ends, about halfway through the book, I admit initial disappointment. What follows are transcripts of interviews with Zaidy that, surprisingly, I found fascinating. Hearing Zaidy (Benzion) in his own voice gave me a deeper understanding of his character, the nature of being a Hasidic Jew, and the work it takes to transform the wandering recollections of an elderly person into a cogent narrative. Later charts and lineages are easy to ignore, but don’t. When you realize that the author’s 10th great-grandfather is the Ba’al Shem Tov, a Jewish mystic and healer regarded as the founder of Hasidic Judaism, you recognize the heft of Bodek’s heritage.

One person found this helpful

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Darya Silman

We need to remember Holocaust

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2022

Deeply personal story of survival and hope despite the unbearable conditions.

'Zaidy's War: Four Armies, Three Continents, Two Brothers. One Man's Impossible Story of Endurance' by Martin Bodek can become an incredible plot for a Hollywood movie. It's a book about serving in Romanian, Hungarian, German, and Russian armies during WW2, staying alive through starvation and hard work, and, after the war, living with the knowledge that almost all your relatives were killed in Auschwitz. The book covers the lives of Benzion and Eliezer Malik, two Romanian Jews whose family perished during the Holocaust. By focusing on one family's perspective, the book describes Jewish everyday life, rooted in centuries-long traditions, before the war and how this life was disregarded during the war. WW2, like any other major conflict, brought everything dirty on the surface, resulting even in authorized cannibalism in a Russian military camp, as per Zaidy's words.

However, the book's strength as an undeniable, raw testimonial to Holocaust and war atrocities is leavened by the material's presentation. Half of the book contains the story of two brothers, mainly Zaidy's, transcribed from tape recordings by Zaidy's grandson Martin Bodek. While the book stylistically starts as a fairytale, it quickly descends into an easy-to-read, conversational narrative, sometimes bordering on a plain retelling of Zaidy's words. The second part is the word-by-word record of the tapes, with all inconsistencies and family chit-chat. As a layperson, who loves memories, I swallowed the first part very quickly; the second part just repeated the first. Still, I believe that we need to collect stories like Zaidy's to stop the coming of WW3.

"Let the world learn - and never forget - the name, the life, and the legacy of Benzion ben Reb Aharon Malik."

I received an advance review copy through BookSirens, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

One person found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Judy Wright

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 20, 2024

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Another heart breaking story they get worse all the time I have tears in my eyes reading all of their stories

Mrs. Helen J Mays

Heartwarming: a tribute to a survivor and a lost generation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 24, 2022

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Martin Bodek has written an unusual and heartwarming tribute to his beloved Zaidy, his maternal grandfather, Benzion Malik. This cleverly constructed account of Zaidy’s unlikely survival during six long years of war is well structured and absorbing. The first part is a chronologically consistent biography of Zaidy’s extraordinary journey from his call up in 1939 to the Romanian army, his subsequent pressed service into slave labour for the Hungarian and German forces and finally conscription into Soviet forces until the end of WWII. Chronicling the horrors of war and the many personal losses Zaidy suffered is just the first part of the story. The tale is leant authenticity in the next section detailing the transcripts of several interviews the author conducted with his grandfather in old age. The consistency of an old man’s failing memory, prompted by his daughter and grandson serves to underscore the accuracy of Martin Bodek’s account. Finally, the appendices bring to life the extended family and their tribulations in the notorious Nazi death camps. The book highlights triumph of the human spirit and the life of a remarkable man who survived to live an honorable life of decency and to raise a large, faithful and loving family. Absorbing and well worth reading.

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Zaidy's War: Four Armies, Three Continents, Two Brothers. One Man's Impossible Story of Endurance (Holocaust Survivor True Stories) Kindle Edition

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