Reviews for Shepherd's Pie: Farmer into Priest

The average rating for Shepherd's Pie: Farmer into Priest based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-08-23 00:00:00 Joseph Rolli Disturbingly fascinating. Truly. The format of the book was, at times, difficult to decipher. Yet, when considering the colossal amount of research this project took, and the fact that it was translated from French, I am not only forgiving but so very deeply appreciative! About an SS officer, Kurt Gerstein, one of ten officers who were believed to have witnessed more of the deplorable atrocities than any other during the Holocaust, is tormented by his knowledge, his own responsibility, and his conviction as a Christian to expose to the world details about the Final Solution and what was really happening in the concentration camps. Few believed him. Acting alone, he deflected, wherever he could, and doing so most often clandestinely, the onrushing fate of the Jews. I kept asking, could he have done more? Surely. Then quickly, my mind questioned how one individual—because he did seem so very alone with his unaccepted testimony of horrors—could possibly fight a grossly systemic raging monster. Crumpled by aloneness in his reasoning, helpless in effectiveness, a grief-stricken conscience, a tortured soul, he allegedly committed suicide. Ugh! So many times, I wanted to jump into the book and help him out of that dark, evil pressure cooker. It’s reports like this that make me realize I probably missed my true calling. I should have become a political psychologist—a Messianic political psychologist for ministry. Because I-so-want-to-be a part of the healing process for the mind and the heart of those Kurts and Kurtinas in the world, who are destroyed by regret in the name of war and genocide! This subject is what drives my compassion and fuels my passion. Tragedy upon tragedy! Haunted by this book, it kept me up last night. It made me weep.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-07-04 00:00:00 Joseph Rydzewski I wish I could remember how I originally heard about this book, at sometime I had written down the title and, though relatively unknown and I believe long out of print, I was able to find a used copy. The story this book tells, in short, is utterly devastating. As others have written more elaborately it is the story of Kurt Gerstein, a deeply moral and religious man who witnessed first hand and up close the practical and horrific means in which the Holocaust was carried out. This deeply sensitive man did, in his mind (a clever mind and a terminally troubled mind) what he saw as his best hope, given his situation, to do what he could to tell the truth to anyone in a position of influence that would listen. Sadly, we all know the incomprehensible outcome of the Final Solution and in many ways Gerstein was one more victim. He was failed by his fellow man and, (in my mind) "God" himself. The story itself is remarkable but I must comment on how well written and researched it is by the author, Pierre Jeffroy (who I frankly know nothing about). There is a clever and slightly cynical tone to this fascinatingly readable book (and the translator who does so from the original French did a brilliant job). The story of Gerstein, the "Spy for God", will stay with me given its immense power and tragedy. Hopefully people will continue to read this book.