The Last of the Just (original 1959; edition 1960)

This is a very sad, but true partial history of the Jews until the Holocaust. Schwarz-Bart kept my interest, but i would have preferred no magic realism. he follows one family for centuries, and ends with ernie, a lamed vovnek, murdered in the holocaust. ( )

Powerful and moving. The journey through the generations is exhilirating. The outcome just heartbreaking. A beautiful book you will remember. ( )

Best book ever written about the Holocaust! ( )

The first third of the book is dedicated to the Levy family’s ancestry, an ancestry filled with legendary Lamed-Vovniks throughout the generations. The reader is shown how they have martyred themselves in the name of suffering for mankind. The last two-thirds of the book concerns itself with one person, and his name is Ernie. We watch Ernie grow from a child into a man, and through overwhelming imagery, see him suffer for mankind during the Holocaust.

Antisemitism runs rampant throughout the pages, from one son to the next, each holy man is faced with their own set of trials and tribulations. The reader is shown how the Eastern and Western European Jewish community has paid a price for over 800 years, the years since the eleventh century through the Holocaust. Jewish persecution has had its roots dug deep into the earth throughout the ages. As a cultural and historical resource The Last of the Just is invaluable. It gives the reader an awareness of how antisemitism has steadfastly taken hold throughout the centuries, without a let up. ( )

Read it as a teenager, was floored by it then, and remains memorable to this day some fifty years later. Firmly grounded in Jewish folklore of the thirty-six righteous men in every generation (in Hebrew called lamed vavniks) because of whom the world is preserved from destruction, a theme which runs through Schwartzbart's novel and gives it its binding cohesiveness to the very end which terminates with the Holocaust. Because of the multi-century progression of the narrative, to me it has never been simply another Holocaust novel per se. It is history, tradition, folklore, changing backgrounds and successions of assorted events along the way, even if the logical evolution of the novel heads towards its horrible denouement.

How sad it is that Andre Schwartbart who wrote this novel (I believe) in his mid-20s, never followed up his precocious ability with anything remotely commensurate with the so-exciting promise he then showed.

Serge. ( )