The Gazebo

by: Alexander Lebenstein (as told to Don Levin)

Published by: AuthorHouse

Reviewed by Andrea Sisco

When Don Levin shared a small part of Alexander Lebenstein’s story with me, my heart began beating rapidly. Here was an important story being written that the world needed to hear. I waited for Mr. Lebenstein’s book and when I received it, I put it aside for a few days. I admit, I had to ready myself for the intimacies of a man’s life that I knew would be shared between the covers of The Gazebo.

The Gazebo is one Jewish man’s horrific experiences in Nazi Germany during WWII, but it is so much more. Mr. Lebenstein shares his life after the war. It is his journey to integrate the brutality of a people against the Jews and his path to forgiveness (not necessarily to Germany itself) for the sake of Germany’s children.

Mr. Lebenstein’s story is gut-wrenchingly real. It’s not sugar coated. His pain is fierce and continues to this day, but in his pain and anger he has been able to connect with Germany’s children and put aside his feelings and needs when he travels there to talk to the young people of his experiences. He’s bravely shouldered a burden, endlessly, so that “they” may understand and never repeat the sins of their grandparents.

From a young boy hunted by the Nazis to a man celebrated in the town that abandoned him, Mr. Lebenstein educates whoever will listen to him so that the past will never be repeated. The Gazebo is a must read.

One knows they’ve experienced horror when the mere sound of dry leaves scraping the ground frightens them sixty years after they first heard the sound.

Armchair Interviews says: This is a must read.

Author’s Web site: http://www.TheGazeboBook.com – A DVD presentation of Alexander Lebenstein speaking to students about the sights and sounds he observed as an eleven-year-old boy during the horror surrounding Kristallnacht, on November 9-10, 1938. On this “night of broken glass” (Crystal Night), a pogrom in Nazi Germany, 91 Jews were murdered and 25,000–30,000 were arrested and deported to concentration camps. Jews saw the destruction of more than 200 synagogues and the ransacking of thousands of Jewish businesses and homes–an attack that was a part of Führer Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic policy.