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Plunder
Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure | Menachem Kaiser
8 posts | 7 read | 10 to read
From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family's apartment building in Poland--and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaiser's brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather's former battle to reclaim the family's apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as "The Killer." A surprise discovery--that his grandfather's cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex--leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance--material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
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Anna40
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Pickpick

Menachem‘s grandfather,a Shoah survivor,fought to reclaim a building the Nazis had taken from his father.Menachem decides to continue the legal battle his grandfather started and embarks on an almost Kaskaesque journey through Polish law.When he comes across Abraham Kaiser his grandfather‘s cousin who was also a survivor,wrote a memoir&is worshipped by Nazi treasure hunters,he gets sucked into their surreal world.I loved this memoir for its depth.

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MidnightBookGirl
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I‘m reading the tagged book for #truecrime #bookclub later this month, and the Hubs is gaming.

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Cinfhen
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Mehso-so

#MixedFeelings #NonfictionNovember

Parts of this book, a grandson‘s quest to reclaim owned property from his family‘s estate in Poland (which was lost to them during the Holocaust) was excellent. The parts of this book about Polish Nazi “treasure” hunters were at first interesting but soon became tiresome. And then at the very end, the author makes another swerve which could have been satisfying but he chooses to leave the reader wondering.

Cinfhen If you read this @jlhammar I‘d love to hear your thoughts!!!! 1y
jlhammar Interesting review! I'm hoping to get to it sometime in the year ahead. 1y
73 likes2 comments
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Cinfhen
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#UpNext I‘m already LOVING this memoir/ history ♥️🎧✡️ #JewishLit #NonfictionNovember

jlhammar I have this waiting on my shelves. Looking forward to it! 1y
Cinfhen Im not really sure how this book ended up on my radar @jlhammar and while I loved the beginning it‘s starting to drag a bit - I feel like a big chunk of the middle is filler, which is a #petpeeve of mine - I‘ll keep u posted 1y
73 likes5 stack adds2 comments
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GinaKButler
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Up next!

Our book club is made up of moms that became friends volunteering at our kids‘ school, so we don‘t meet during the summertime. This year we each submitted a fiction, non-fiction, and beach read and voted for each category...this was the non-fiction pick! I‘m looking forward to reading about Poland, where my ancestors from...one day I‘d love to travel there!
#bookspinbingo

17 likes1 stack add
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Erynecki
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Pickpick

The search for lost legacies, the effort of tracing memory, & the hope of recovery, especially in Poland, is an emotionally complex undertaking. I know from first hand experience and it is, in part, why I chose to act as a historian and not a claimant. This meandering story of family, an apartment, treasure hunters, and the author‘s reckoning with it has heart and probing insight into what it means to physically and metaphorically dig up the past

LeahBergen Wonderful review. Stacked! 3y
Texreader Excellent review 3y
charl08 Sounds fascinating. Adding to my list. 3y
12 likes2 stack adds3 comments
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Augustdana
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Happy weekend!! It‘s sunny but cold so I‘m gonna drink my tea and chill. Apparently it‘s May.

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Twocougs
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Pickpick

Fascinating story of one Jewish man‘s story to try and reclaim his family‘s apartment in Poland. Some twists and turns I didn‘t see coming. I appreciated it honesty and self reflection.