Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag

I read "Man is Wolf to Man" three years ago, and it haunts me to this day. I had read many accounts of WWII Europe, the Holocaust, and the Gulag, but none so acutely personal and sensitively written as Bardach's. Currently I'm reading "When God Looked the Other Way" by Wesley Adamczyk, a narrative of Polish deportees to the Soviet Union told from a similarly youthful perspective. Historians, soldiers, politicians, and students should place these books at the top of their reading list.

I grew up in Iowa City around the corner from Dr. Bardach. I delivered his newspaper when I was a kid and used to see him and his wife at local tennis clubs. That's all I knew about him-until I was 30 and my parents were reading his book. When they told me what it was about, I was stunned! I couldn't put the book down. His story is riveting. How on earth does a Polish Jew in WWII go from a hard labor camp in Siberia to being a renowned surgeon at a large teaching hospital in the middle of Iowa? It puts life into perspective and will remind you that anything is possible. Dr. Bardach truly lived the American dream.

This book is the most daunting first hand account of the Gulag that I have read. Voices from the Gulag and Through the Whirlwind are also well-written accounts. Man is Wolf caputures the brutal experience with power and eloquence. From a literary standpoint it is a simple read but from a human perspective it is devastating. I had to stop reading on anumber of occasions to keep from being in enveloped by the horror of the book. This book will change your perspective on human nature, WWII and Eastern Europe.

This is one of those rare non-fiction books reading more like a gripping novel that's hard to put down. As with most books, it's best if you save the foreword for last. The second chapter is one of the most depressing accounts that you'll ever come across, but it's worth sticking with the story to the end.The writing and translation is absolutely impeccable. I felt like I personally experienced each of the author's highs and lows in the Gulag as they were related. This is a rare look inside the system that swallowed up so many of the best and brightest people. It is too bad that Hollywood is so obsessed with the dozen or so screenwriters who lost their jobs in 1950's America to the anti-communist investigations because any one of the many films devoted to their plight would have been better served by profiling just a single member of the millions who perished in the Soviet Gulag.

This book is devastating in its depictions of the gulag's horrors, the bizarre and fascinating societal elements of the gulag, and the courage of its survivors. Bardach endured hell and then converted his experiences into a work worthy of deep contemplation. Although I read his account about a year ago, certain passages are still extraordinarily vivid in my mind -- an effect that few books can deliver. Bardach's memoir compelled me to read more gulag literature. I rank his remarkable contribution ahead of Ginzburg's Journey Into the Whirlwind and behind only Varlam Shalamov's amazing Kolyma Tales.