What do readers think of Once We Were Brothers by Ronald H. Balson? Write your own review.

Polish immigrants do not speak English as if they went to graduate school. The device the author uses to fill out the novel by having Ben drag out his story is ridiculous, as is a lawyer giving up her career to take his case. Of course the story of Polish Jews during the Holocaust is heart breaking but bad writing spoiled the book for me.

Although the premise of the story was interesting, a holocaust survivor filing a civil suit against a former Nazi, I found the story to be predictable and cliche. The dialogue between the characters was not as well written as it could have been. The narrative from the protagonist at times seemed to be descriptions of scenes from Holocaust films. It was an ok book, I wanted to finish it to see if I had the correct prediction of the ending. I did. I would recommend it if someone wanted to read an easy, light historical fiction.

This was a complete miss for me. First of all, the writing left a lot to be desired. The dialogue was excruciating, and the didactic nature of the 'testimony' was ham-handed. Secondly, there were too many things in the story that didn't seem plausible or understandable. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the characters were pretty well either all good or all bad which stuck me as over-simplistic and rather silly. Overall, the book reminded me of a bad propaganda film from the 1950s.

I really hate to give bad reviews, but this book fails on a couple of levels. First, the writing is pedestrian. Secondly, the plot is difficult to accept. There are numerous inconsistencies and logical difficulties. Perhaps most troubling to me as a seasoned reader of this period (Poland during the Nazi period), the author gets the history wrong. I could almost go no further than page 44 when speaking of 1935 and Heydrich's secretary, Balson suggests she "knew about the plans for the Final Solution! It just gets worse after this. A well educated attorney that needs the basics, and I mean basics, of the Holocaust explained to her. The entire mechanism for the unfolding of the story is terribly "clunky"

I am by no means an expert on the holocaust (though I do have a personal interest) but I was startled when the author gives us as fact that the “Final Solution” was already being planned as early as 1935. There is a lot of debate about the plans to annihilate all Jews, what people were instrumental, when it was first spoken of, and how it was to be accomplished. But no one disputes that even the idea of the “Final Solution” was not conceived of before the war began. I could not get past this very basic error, could not trust the author to not make other mistakes. I recommend that readers give this work a miss and read other books by Mr. Balson skeptically.