Dear Mr. Frankl,
Please find herein a few comments and notes on the draft of your book, which I liked very much since its concept is objective, written in a fine style, and in any way very interesting for a potential reader. It is important to mention, that sources you used included memoirs, historical archives, editions and you also mastered a methodology of oral history very well indeed. You presented the most important facts of the history of a Jewish community in Zilina, including so called “small history” – life stories of some individuals, both Jewish and non Jewish people, with their common, close or distant, relation to Zilina.
Internal structure of the book is sometimes a mix of chronological and thematic approach which causes you to repeat some facts or to go too much in some details. However, this is not a negative comment at all. Repeating some of the facts does not harm the book’s quality and preciseness.
These are basically my comments on the draft of the book, which I consider to be of a very good quality and should be published as soon as possible.
Bratislava August 10, 2008
Ivan Kamenec
Institute of Historical Studies of SAS
