Michael A. Grodin
Focusing on the traumatization of the liberator as well as the survivor, Lerner tells two fascinating stories that are original in both form and content. Her writing is clear, straightforward, and compelling. A powerful and engaging book.
Robert G. Kegan
A towering achievement, Lerner's narrative at once brings us into hell along with its central characters and then lifts us out on the strength of their respective forms of courage and generosity. This meticulously researched story is nourishment for the soul.
Maud S. Mandel
Lerner's moving account underscores the ways luck, courage, and a wide range of factors outside her mother's control allowed her to survive. In doing so, Lerner uses the story of two people who never met to document the ways World War II made allies of strangers and transformed forever the lives of those caught in the maelstrom.
Michael D. Aeschliman
Dr. Bernice Lerner's new book deserves high praise and wide readership. Although the mind recoils at the immoral enormity of what she describes, the story of these two courageous individuals stands in sharp contrast to the darkness of the most evil period in human history.
Michael Berenbaum
Bernice Lerner's All the Horrors of War is a powerful and poignant tale that traces both the arc of the war and the history of the Holocaust. In this meticulously researched and detailed account, Lerner never lets the reader forget the humanity of the victims or their liberators.
Erica Brown
Bernice Lerner has given us a haunting account of her mother's adolescence in Bergen-Belsen, interspersed with the life of a British physician who set up medical facilities there at the war's end. Her book is well researched and informed by both heart and mind. I could not put it down.
From the Publisher
Focusing on the traumatization of the liberator as well as the survivor, Lerner tells two fascinating stories that are original in both form and content. Her writing is clear, straightforward, and compelling. A powerful and engaging book.—Michael A. Grodin, MD, Boston University School of Public Health, coauthor of The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation
By describing the fate of one Jewish girl destined to die under the most gruesome manner and the horror experienced by a British doctor and officer upon stepping into a Nazi concentration camp, Lerner humanizes an event that is often described only from one perspective: either that of the liberators, for whom the survivors were often dehumanized 'living skeletons' because of their deplorable living conditions, or that of the survivors, for whom the liberators were angels of mercy descended from heaven after months and years of utter dehumanization by their tormentors. A valuable and highly readable book.—Omer Bartov, Brown University, author of Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz
A towering achievement, Lerner's narrative at once brings us into hell along with its central characters and then lifts us out on the strength of their respective forms of courage and generosity. This meticulously researched story is nourishment for the soul.—Robert G. Kegan, Harvard University, author of In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life
Lerner's moving account underscores the ways luck, courage, and a wide range of factors outside her mother's control allowed her to survive. In doing so, Lerner uses the story of two people who never met to document the ways World War II made allies of strangers and transformed forever the lives of those caught in the maelstrom.—Maud S. Mandel, Williams College, author of Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict
Bernice Lerner has given us a haunting account of her mother's adolescence in Bergen-Belsen, interspersed with the life of a British physician who set up medical facilities there at the war's end. Her book is well researched and informed by both heart and mind. I could not put it down.—Erica Brown, Director, Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership, The George Washington University, and author of The Book of Esther: Power, Fate and Fragility in Exile
Bernice Lerner's All the Horrors of War is a powerful and poignant tale that traces both the arc of the war and the history of the Holocaust. In this meticulously researched and detailed account, Lerner never lets the reader forget the humanity of the victims or their liberators.—Michael Berenbaum, Director, Sigi Ziering Holocaust Institute, American Jewish University
Dr. Bernice Lerner's new book deserves high praise and wide readership. Although the mind recoils at the immoral enormity of what she describes, the story of these two courageous individuals stands in sharp contrast to the darkness of the most evil period in human history.—Michael D. Aeschliman, Boston University, author of The Restoration of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Continuing Case Against Scientism
Lerner seamlessly weaves two powerful personal stories into a unique and evocative page-turner. Her decade of prodigious research—from conducting incredibly sensitive interviews with her mother to scouring through Hughes's wartime papers—is the backbone of a gripping tale that is also intimate and moving. A completely fresh account, the mix of the journeys by a liberator and by a survivor is told from the intimate perch of the survivor's daughter. All the Horrors of War is a book of considerable scholarship and talented storytelling.—Patricia Posner, author of The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story
Patricia Posner
Lerner seamlessly weaves two powerful personal stories into a unique and evocative page-turner. Her decade of prodigious research—from conducting incredibly sensitive interviews with her mother to scouring through Hughes's wartime papers—is the backbone of a gripping tale that is also intimate and moving. A completely fresh account, the mix of the journeys by a liberator and by a survivor is told from the intimate perch of the survivor's daughter. All the Horrors of War is a book of considerable scholarship and talented storytelling.
Omer Bartov
By describing the fate of one Jewish girl destined to die under the most gruesome manner and the horror experienced by a British doctor and officer upon stepping into a Nazi concentration camp, Lerner humanizes an event that is often described only from one perspective: either that of the liberators, for whom the survivors were often dehumanized 'living skeletons' because of their deplorable living conditions, or that of the survivors, for whom the liberators were angels of mercy descended from heaven after months and years of utter dehumanization by their tormentors. A valuable and highly readable book.
