SOURCE: “Survival Declined,” in Nation, Vol. 222, No. 24, June 19, 1976, pp. 760-61.

In the following review, Shechner applauds Borowski's emotionally restrained narrative style and detached voice as appropriate to the author's task of “bearing witness” for those who did not survive the Holocaust.

The most persistant activity of American Jews since the war has been their inexorable thrust into the heart of the American middle class and the adoption of such attitudes and habits as characterize a proper bourgeoisie. But the increased comforts they enjoy have not been proof against the recurrence of old nightmares or assurance that they might not awake one morning from uneasy dreams, like Kafka's Gregor Samsa, to find themselves victims once again. At critical moments, usually following bad news from Israel, a wave of anxiety passes through the culture, as a result of which old ironies and habits of assimilation are disclaimed and everyone announces...