Reviewers' and Readers' Comments

Ursula's Amazing Story, February 19, 2005
Reviewer: G. Reid (Connecticut)

"If you can't change it, don't complain." Life is not about events, but it is about people. Life was truly a challenge. To escape Hitler the author and her family escaped to Shanghai, China, She learned to live one day at a time. She had a spirit of dreaming of America. America was a beacon of hope for her during this trying time.

The author grew up in China as an escapee form Hitler's Germany. In china she learned to be grateful for everything. She had escaped to China as a child of ten. there with her parents she live with 20,000 other refugees in horrific conditions. But she had and her parents survived. The story is told with wonderful courage, sensitivity and even some humor. The author has learned not to hate but to love people, in spite of the hell she suffered caused by Nazi Germany. According to the author the most important emotions to have are love and gratitude. She lives her life with love of people and gratitude for all persons who have helped her during those difficult years.

For those who are interested, there is an author event available on C-Span2 TV for this book.

Superb, December 28, 2004
Reviewer: DG (Syracuse, NY) What a stunning an well written account of Ursula's amazing story. A must read.

Couldn't put it down, November 29, 2004
Reviewer: Lisa219 (Boston, MA) While many would choose to wallow in the despair of loss of family and home at the hand of the Nazis, Ursula Bacon tells her fascinating and terrifying story with grace and optimism. As a child of 10 she escapes with her parents to Shanghai after all other countries close their doors to European Jews trying to escape the horrors of WWII. There, they joined 20,000 other refugees and lived in horrific conditions. But they survived. Told with humor and sensitivity, this story is inspirational.

Quick and powerful, March 25, 2004
Reviewer: A reader

This book is a quick read as there is no one highlight, no one climax...the book is chock full of horrid surprise, history, and wisdom-filled insights. This is being made into a movie currently. Vivid, powerful, a must read.

Inspiration, History and a Study in Contrasts, April 28, 2002
Reviewer: Peggy Lumpkin (Lake Oswego, Oregon, USA)

Wow! I was in tears by the second page. I ordered takeout and left dishes in the sink just so I could keep reading this compelling glimpse into a lesser known aspect of World War II. I'm not a history buff, but Ursula Bacon's story drew a sketch of the war at such a personal level that I couldn't stop reading. The book covers the eight year period during which an aristocratic Jewish family fled Nazi occupied Germany to Javanese occupied Shanghai, only to be trapped in a detention center when Japan joined the German Axis.

Lest you think the subject might be depressing, let me assure you that it is quite the opposite. The courage, enthusiasm, and even humor that this family mustered to deal with their adversity is inspirational. I especially enjoyed how the author shared the spiritual insights she gained during this period. She blended her Jewish background with Catholic schooling, enhanced by teachings form a Buddhist monk and her own intuition. The result is that she could feel compassion for those who would victimize her. That's a lesson most of us can't achieve in a whole lifetime of petty annoyances. yet, this young girls managed to love the enemy that treated her as a "sub-human" and "lowest form of ,life" to use her own terms.

I believe this book would appeal to a wide variety of people at any age. Some of the images portrayed will stay with me forever—the bombings, the squalor, the beauty, The author's style vacillates between conversational and lyrical. The way she dealt successfully with the contrast between her former life of unimaginable opulence and then her ordeal with abject adversity was stunning. I already find myself taking guidance form her Buddhist teacher, Yuan Lin, who always reminded her, "Remember, it's all the same."

Shanghai Diary, the little-known story of the Shanghai Jews, April 16, 2003
Reviewer: Rachael Clearwater, author (Portland, Oregon, USA)

I started Shanghai Diary, I found that I simply couldn't put it down. I hadn't known the story of the Shanghai Jews in the (Shanghai) ghetto, and I was riveted by the well-written story of Ursula Bacon's eight years as a young girl in Shanghai, where it was nothing to see a dead baby girl thrown on a heap of trash and where day-to-day existence was harsh and often degrading.

Despite all of this, Ursula's family managed to maintain their dignity and prevail. To me it was a story of great courage. When she left Shanghai at the end of the war, far from being devastated by the experience, Ursula took away the lesson that she had seen first hand what hate can do, and she would never hate anyone as lon as she live. The book was so moving that I had to sit quietly and reflect for quite some time after I read the final page.

Reader: Sally Williams, Denver, Colorado

An extraordinarily well written, superb account of terrifying events, challenging life changes, hardship, humor and the power of the indomitable human spirit. A true can't-put-it-down must read, Shanghai Diary will keep you between laughter, tears, unique people and their unforgettable words of wisdom; a timeless must read.

A great read!
Reviewer: A reader

Among the many interesting and fascinating moments of the book are the descriptions of everyday Chinese life, with its stench, its obsessions and superstitions. These come through more clearly for a Western reader than if written by a Chinese, who takes such privations as normal. A great read.

Ursula Bacon and her Shanghai Diary
Thursday, August 12, 2004

She used to write a novel each year. "When it was done," Ursula Bacon said, "I'd burn it." She'd trudge out to the incinerator in her back yard and send the plot, the characters and the pale reflection of herself on its way. "My neighbors would say, 'She's either electing a pope or burning another book.' I wasn't electing a pope."

She had a story that didn't deserve some and cinders, a story Anne Frank would have love, a diary of anther young girl held hostage by the war at the other end of the world. When she was finally ready to unravel it, in fits of memory that would begin at midnight in her Sherwood farmhouse, her work was done in 90 days.

The smell of peanut oil and burnt tofu cakes. The feces and the flies. The Tiger Heat. "I was a child. I was so curious," Ursula said. "I was os open to all the new things coming my way. You don't forget the details. Nothing has ever left me. Overcompensation stayed with me. I've kept them alive by telling the children about it at the dinner table. I's never been buried."Better yet, this story was never burned.

Shanghai Diary is the scrapbook of the eight years Ursula spent as a refugee in that raucous, rancid port, a city where you could just as easily find piroshkis in the Russian cafes as dead baby girls thrown out with the morning trash.

She spent most of those years living with her parents in an 11-foot-by121-foot room, often one of 12 people sharing the same "honey pot," kept afloat above the chaos and despair by her father's optimism, her mother's elegance, the Buddhist teachings of a man named Yuan Lin, and the daily reminders of roly-poly Rosa Goldberg, parked on her three-legged stool in the shade on one of Shanghai's urine-stained, garbage-strewn lanes. "Go out and make a miracle today, God's busy, He can't do it all."

Shanghai Diary is a reminder that you can craft something that will endure form something you have endured.

"The story was there all the time," Ursula said. "It was time to honor the people who came into my life and all the gifts they left behind for me. It's the power of perseverance. The passion for life. It is as my father said: 'The world is full of wonderful people, and I know them all.'"

TOP