Who would have thought a book told from the point of view of a dog during the holocaust would pack such a wallop of emotion, laughter, and new perceptions? I was hanging on every word and didn’t want it to end. ( )

This bestseller from Israel is narrated from the point of view of a dog. Caleb (the dog) is born into a Jewish family in 1930's Germany. Soon restrictive laws require that Caleb's family give him up to an Aryan family, and thereafter, Caleb has a "dog's eye" view of the Holocaust, ultimately ending up as a guard dog at Auschwitz. The author does an excellent job of commenting on the horrors and incomprehensibility of the Holocaust by having us view these events through the lens of an innocent.

Recommended.
3 1/2 stars ( )

Didn't know what this book was about when I borrowed it from the newly updated Kew Gardens Hill branch of the Queens Library. Perhaps something humorous? No, this book should really have been placed in the children's history section.

While there isn't an ideal way to teach a child about large scale hate and evil, I believe The Jewish Dog may be a good choice to introduce the topic to a child over 10 to learn a bit about the heavy topic of nazis and Jews, WWII, the Holocaust.

The sweetest feature in this book is how Kravitz balances out the heinous and wicked with the dominant themes of love, family, remorse and loyalty. Well done.

Good read. ( )

I picked this book up on a whim, during one of the end-of-year bookstore deals. For decades, Israel had only one major bookstore chain – Steimatzky – and all the rest were small mom & pop shops. Then, about a decade ago, Tsomet Sefarim grew as a competitor to Steimatzky and forced it to start reducing prices and offering special deals. Some pundits think the current situation, where the two chains compete fiercely against each other, although beneficial to customers, has hurt writers and devalued books in general. People buy because it’s on sale, not because it’s a book they really want to read. I confess this is how I picked this book. It simply sat on the shelf where I could get 2 for 1, or perhaps was it 1 plus 2 or 2 plus 2. Who remembers? (Which reminds me of this – sorry, Hebrew only).

Yet sometimes a book you never heard about and you read just because you happen to have it, turns out to be a gem. This is the case with “The Jewish Dog”, by Asher Kravitz. Or perhaps I should call it “Der Yiddisher Hund”, which is the Yiddish subtitle of the book.

The Jewish dog is the life story of Koresh, a dog born in 1935 to a Jewish family in Germany. Koresh’s life parallels the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe – from the rise of Hitler and the deportation and extermination of the Jews – and ends with the hope of rebirth of the Jewish State in Israel (it dies in Israel in 1947, right after the UN decision to grant Jews a homeland). The dog, an intelligent, observing animal, goes through various phases and owners in life, and even gets different names. It is through its life experiences that it imparts the reader with insights and understandings about the world and human nature, with a cunning that would dwarf many humans I know.

It is not possible to write about the plot of this short book without ruining it for those who have not read it. In fact, the little blurb on the inside flap of the book has the word “spoiler” written on the top as a warning (even though it doesn’t reveal too much). So I will only point out that Kravitz’s style is simple yet thoughtful, peppered with verses from the Bible and with subtle hints about the “big picture”, which is not how one would normally see the world through a dog’s eyes. He manages to deal with the most horrific period in history – the Holocaust – in a manner that is light and occasionally even comic, yet it does not belittle the enormity of the period it describes. I highly recommend this book. ( )

A view of the holocaust from dog's perspective.
Koresh is a happy Caucasian Shepherd, raised in a Jewish family in Stuttgart before WWII. He is witnessing anti-jewish policy and antisemitism turned against his masters, family Gotlieb. His life turnes upside down after a new law was imposed, forbidding Jews to own dogs. He was adopted by a German family and by twist of the destiny he found himself as a guard dog in the concentration camp Treblinka.
The story is written with wit but lacks a consistancy of style.
The narrator is Koresh himself and some passages are presented with inteligence of a grown-up adult and some with simplicity of a child.
One cannot tell for whom is the book targeted - young teenagers or adult audience. ( )