BOOK REVIEW: ‘Journey to Nowhere’

But after all, Ms. Figes is also a person who was damaged by what the 20th century’s politics inflicted on its people. Not by the United States or by Israel, although you wouldn’t know it from her misplaced outrage in this book. Certainly not as badly as many of her compatriots, but hurt nonetheless, and as W.H. Auden wrote in his poem “September 1, 1939”:

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

Those wise lines provide some explanation of why Ms. Figes should write as she does, but there can be no excuse or justification for the foul screed she has produced, which dishonors Edith - and most of all herself.

Martin Rubin is a writer and critic in Pasadena, Calif.