THE TENTH WITNESS
Leonard Rosen
A True--5-Star Read
Publicists and readers alike have often asked me if I ever write negative reviews. The answer is simply, “No.” I will not take the time to read a badly written book and then waste more time writing a nasty review. Is this a 6th sense of mine? Don’t know!
Let me say that Leonard Rosen’s book, THE TENTH WITNESS, is not just a good book; it is a great book. As a reviewer, I was smitten by this book long before I ever reached the end of the first chapter. Maybe it was Rosen’s writing style; maybe it was the horror of the books World War Two atrocities that goaded me on but this book caught me within its first pages.
On page 46, one of Rosen’s characters speaks abruptly:
“Listen to me. Never underestimate the importance of blood.”
This sentence grabbed the arteries leading to my brain. I wondered if I felt the same way about blood-lines. Do they really mean that much? Are they forever? Are they more important than life itself?
In THE TENTH WITNESS, a young explorer of the deep, Henri and his partner build an extremely durable steel platform above a sunken treasure ship, The Lutine. Allegedly, the vessel sank with countless bars of gold waiting to be claimed by whosoever located the wreck and escaped with its treasure.
Henri, a budding engineer, and quite by accident, becomes infatuated with the wealthy daughter of the bazillionaire whose steel he used in building his stalwart diving platform. Immediately, Henri finds that the German steel magnate and his uncle are unusually interested in him and his ocean rig, particularly when divers find the rusting shaft of a World War II submarine.
Because of this peculiar interest, Herni begins to examine their backgrounds knowing that his new lover’s father and uncle were both alive during Hitler’s reign of terror against the Jewish nation. Were their steel production plants under the crazed Nazi Hitler the source of the family’s exorbitant wealth?
Henri’s best elderly life-long friend dies. While mourning the man, Henri becomes awestruck by statements made by the deceased man’s wife and friends. They claim that he survived one of Hitler’s notorious steel labor camps; he had survived The Third Reich and truly deserved an honorable moratorium send-off. For Henri, the world War was years ago before his youth.
Henri uncovers just what kind of horror his deceased friend endured in the tortuous labor camp. He searches one informatory after another hunting the truth about his female lover and her family. What he discovers will haunt you like it did me. It not only brings Henri to the edge of death but it also taunts you, the reader, to speed through the pages of this terrifying but realistic story. As a reviewer, I was alive then; I saw the pictures in my Dad's newspaper.
Leonard Rosen has a way with words that cry out to one’s inner being:
- “… a dull line at the horizon cracked open like the eye of a drunk after a bad night … (45)
- … I walked along the rows of headstones … a newborn’s wailing … a hole in the ground … dirt thudding onto a box … (49)
- … spouses, over decades … tend to look alike, with their slack faces and ears and noses … oversized and attached with putty … (167)
- … Blood is blood … when the body rattles is beyond our ken no matter which flag drapes the coffin … (182)
- … Forty years ago this place was hell on earth—and these people, and their parents and grandparents, let it happen … (197)
Some situations in THE TENTH WITNESS are somewhat crimped off—just a bit too short when several pages or even a chapter could have better explained the author’s intent. Yet, in the end, that might be a good thing—true evil in an exposed form is so shocking it that it could easily turn away a reader.
If you are looking for a good read, no, a GREAT read, pick up a copy of Leonard Rosen’s, THE TENTH WITNESS. This is a tale that ALL should read, especially the young who have only heard of the Holocaust but had not lived with it or, God forbid, through it. This chilling tale with its well spoken characters will incite you with revulsion—wrath that a “civilized” nation could call itself, “The Third Reich”—a rule of slaughter and killing that would last 1000 years.
What will last for 1000s of years, perhaps forever, was its ignominious downfall; hopefully, whomever or whatever you and I call God, will see that it never spreads its Nazi disease again!
