Readers' reactions to and comments on The Neighbor’s Son have been overwhelmingly positive to date. Here are just a few examples:

Dear Liesel:

Thank you so much for speaking at our Emunah event this past week. Yours is a very interesting and brave story which left us all spellbound and moved. I hope it provided some healing for both the audience and you as well.

I have completed reading your book. What an account! You have led such an extraordinary and colorful life. Your book kept me turning the page and my family was glad when I finished it so I could get back to them. I hope to keep in touch with you and look forward to your next book.

Thank you again for choosing Emunah as a vehicle for your speeshes. Emunah does such outstanding work and it is a very worthwhile cause for you to be involved in.

Jani Cooperberg
Elaine Frankel

Nazis have often become stock villains to those of my generation, born some three or four decades after the last shot of World War II was fired. The Neighbor's Son provides an invaluable perspective. There is evil here, but it's in the last places you will ever expect.

Wether it's a glimpse into the lingering poison hatred leaves even on those barely young enough to remember it, or as a reality check on the severity of the problems we all face, images and scenes from this book ended up staying with me after I set it down.

After reading this, if anyone tells you that your minor squabbles with family or trouble finding an apartment constitutes an existential crisis, please set them straight.

Appel's writing style is sparse, effective and simple. This allows the compelling events of her life to come through.

And on that count, there's practically no end. Even after the fateful visit by her former neighbor, Liesel's life involves her brother's miraculous desertion from the German navy, her own entanglement in the brutal Congolese infighting of the 1960's, racial prejudice and corruption in Palm Beach, and a succession of failed love affairs.

Throughout, it doesn't have the fictionalized feel that many memoirs end up with. Appel readily sees her own flaws and ardently refuses to package the twisted paths of life into easy resolutions. That unflinching honesty gives the uplifting moments the reality they need and the punch-in-the-gut revelations the impact they demand.

Her search, decades-long by now, continues today, as Appel, the last living member of her immediate family, seeks to end her long quest by finding the neighbor's son.

The scenes where she searches on the barest rumor are some of the hardest to read, as she not only digs back through layers of painful memories, but does so with no easy or certain point of resolution in sight.

Life's stories not only are stranger than fiction, but they have a habit of never really ending at all--and who knows what the next chapter will reveal?

David Forbes
May 9, 2007

This is the best book I've read this year - it is beautifully written, and the story is gripping. It is 'human' in the best senses of the word. I had tears in my eyes on more than one occasion. I can’t wait for the next one. Liesel Appel knows how to say important things so they can be heard.

Eileen Barker, Professor Emeritus of Sociology
with Special Reference to the Study of Religion,
London School of Economics

The Neighbor's Son is a compellingly honest and important work. It is written with both passion and compassion, shedding light on a too little known dimension of the Holocaust legacy on certain members of the German second generation. The concern of some and the indifference of most is attested through Liesel Appel's own witness. I hope that her book appears in German. Also, her description of the prejudice and duplicity rampant in the Palm Beaches of the 80's--and not totally absent today--is right on the mark.

Professor Alan L. Berger, Raddock Eminent Scholar
Chair of Holocaust Studies at Florida Atlantic University.

As the daughter of a holocaust survivor, I was particularly fascinated by Liesel Appel's riveting memoir. I grew up consumed by my parents' and relatives experiences, never imagining that children of perpetrators would be engulfed by their own legacy of guilt and responsibility. Liesel's extraordinary journey is the journey of love and redemption. For those of us struggling with minor and mundane changes, Liesel's account of her personal trajectory is utterly inspiring and transformational. Highly recommended!

Yitta Halberstam, distinguished co-author of
the Small Miracles series as well as
author of other inspirational books

Liesel Appel's book is heart gripping, chilling, and almost hard to believe--that decent, caring people like her parents gave in to the most evil forces and thereby denied even to themselves that they were in fact participating in genocidal atrocities. How is it possible to delude oneself so totally? Her father a much revered educator to boot! Hadn't her parents been taught the basics of an ethical civilization: "Thou shall not kill" and "Treat your neighbor as thyself?"

Liesel Appel brilliantly succeeds in her wrenching endeavor to lay bare the loss of her parents' humanity - despite the fact that she was a coveted and much beloved child, especially by her Papa, the adored hero of her early childhood. In describing this process of dehumanization of her parents and other adults around her, she is unreservedly forthcoming and unflinchingly honest. Not once does she escape into abstract evasions. Besides, this book shows us the nature of her soul stripped down to its very [sweet and caring] essence and thereby she gives witness to her own deep humanity-despite having been raised by deluded, hateful [criminal] Nazis who notwithstanding that they thought of themselves as belonging to the "people of poets and thinkers" abandoned their own judgment of what's right and wrong and discarded any notion of empathy for those they considered THE OTHER. In this process, Ms Appel's parents voluntarily became thugs of the lowest kind. By describing how painful it was for Ms Appel to see her adoring parents for who they were, I want to express my gratitude for her courage to embrace the truth rather than run away from it.

Ursula Duba, author of Tales from a Child of the Enemy (Penguin 1997), the essay Germany: The Legacy of Bystanders, Cowards, Informers, Desktop Murderers and Executions (Yale 1999) and Inherited Pain and Defective Genes: Descendants of the Shoah and the Third Reich

In her moving and beautifully written autobiography The Neighbor's Son, Liesel Appel writes of a lifetime spent coming to grips with her native Germany and its World War II legacy. Born in 1941, Liesel writes that her parents “lavished so much love and attention on me that it helped me to develop in mind, body and spirit.” Her father, in particular, made an impression on the young girl because he “exuded such strength and confidence.” As the war progressed, he always ensured that his daughter felt safe and secure.

But Liesel cannot reconcile her parent’s love for her with their extreme hatred for Jews. “In my ordinary, loving German home I was taught a most deadly culture, so despicable and wrapped up in deceit, that to free my conscience from its impact had to mean to free myself from every German part of me.” As a teenager she flees the pain by running away to England.

Liesel Appel’s honest and sensitive narration illuminates the complex effects that hared, prejudice, and racism have on both victim and perpetrator, but especially on the innocent. The Neighbor’s Son holds hope and understanding for all who have suffered at the hands of hatred, and charts one courageous woman’s road to redemption.

Bookwire, November 14, 2005

Uplifting!! Inspiring!! The true story of the author's personal journey from young innocence forever lost to a passionate and lifelong quest for justice. For me, a German by birth, it was a heart-wrenching return to postwar Germany with intense gratitude to Liesel Appel for her ongoing determination and fortitude to seek justice. She exemplifies the words of the late Mahatma Gandhi: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Liesel Appel - a woman to be admired, a must book to read.

Carol H. Treiber, contributor to
Chicken Soup for the Soul

You will not be surprised to hear that I simply HAD to devour your book (kept me up late two nights in a row).

Yours is a very compelling story and written with great skill and writing ability. So I just could not put it down, once I started.

As you know from MY story, I have considerable insight and recollection of what went on in Nazi Germany. My knowledge is first-hand, as I witnessed the fast conversion of ordinary citizens to ardent and blindly dedicated SA and other Nazi fanatics, all for the glory of the Vaterland (but also for the greedy and criminal domination of other countries and of course hatred of all the "undesirables" such as Jews, Communists, "depraved" artists, gypsies, etc). All this, of course, before you were even born.

Yet for me it is a valuable revelation to hear this whole scenario from the other side (yours). In recent years I have more and more realized that the Nazis equally inflicted horror, destruction and psychological trauma on their own followers. Yet yours is the first intimate story that I have seen describing "how it felt" (and feels).

Thank you so much for baring and sharing it.

Walter Reed

From a young girl’s shock at the discovery of the Nazis past of her German parents, to a young woman’s coming-of-age witness to the injustices of nations, to a mature woman’s courageous determination to tell her story to the world, Liesel Appel’s The Neighbor’s Son is one individual’s fascinating memoir of a journey to moral truth, a mirror of universal truth for us all. A fascinating and exciting tale.

Robert Eaton Kelley, fictionalist, editor and author
of The First Book of Timothy, amongst other works

Liesel Appel's lifelong determination to see justice done is inspiring. It takes an awesome amount of courage to confront your family and birth nation, the source of your life and childhood teachings, and say "What you did was wrong." Liesel does just that in this book, and the result is humbling to me. This woman has had an amazing life, and she tells about it with a straightforward honesty that makes for a very compelling read. My dad and I, who usually differ in our taste in books, both had a hard time putting it down.

Karen Nilsen, December 9, 2005

Liesel Appel's consuming empathy for society is an emotional rollercoaster for anyone who has an interest in Germany, civil rights in England, the European dominance in the Congo, the challenges for an interracial couple coming to the United States, and the day to day struggles of finding religious peace. All of these experiences are seen through the eyes of a woman who's trying to come to terms with the guilt she feels for her families involvement in Germany in the 1930's and 40's.

Frances Ewing, recent graduate
from Communications College

"Courageous" is the word that often came to mind as Liesel Appel bared heart and soul in her personal story. Because of long ties with German friends, it reminded me in a poignant way of the guilt and shame that robbed multitudes of their pride and sense of patriotism. Sadly, as a result, those positive sentiments were often not passed on to their offspring. The book reveals the author's daring and brave journey as she fought against the cruelties of prejudice and her intense path as she seeeks and finds her own peace.

Peggy Manz

I was totally taken by this book. exeptionaly well written and hard to put down. just tells you how a little girl growing into a woman, carries guilt and shame through her whole life, comes out a survivor and finds the strength and ability to write about it. My Coment : exellent, a must read.

This book was written by a co-worker of mine. I had no Idea what kind of life she has had! I am in a state of shock...or awe...or respect...or all of the above! I very much recommend this book to people who have an interest in "personal history."

The author is Liesel Appel. The Back cover summery...

"What if you awakened one day and realized your parents were part of unspeakable evil? Do you turn away from them and therefore yourself? The unique coming of age story of Liesel and her preoccupation with finding her neighbor's son is extremely eventful and takes the reader from postwar Germany to England, Africa and the United States. It explores the interconnectedness between victim and perpetrator and touches on universal themes of family, forgiveness, guilt and justice. This candid account of a family's history combined with a flawed protagonist's sexual history will strike deep emotional responses in a thoughtful reader.

I, myyself am not finished with the book....but WOW! I had NO idea that this quiet person I have worked with had this history behind her. I respect her greatly and hold her higher and greater in my heart now that I have read part of her struggles. I am in a state of shock...and raw respect of her! She is wonderful!

Ki

I have finished reading Liesel Appel’s book. I couldn’t put it down and read it all from cover to cover in 24 hours. It blew me away. She is incredibly brave and very resilient and deserves to find her neighbor's son. I cried...and cried... There are so many things I want to discuss with her. She has been through many hells and yet been untainted by them, retaining the heartfelt hope of that child who walked in the forest with that youthful innocence.

Berni, UK

Your book is extraordinary and compelling. Your care in conveying your and others’ experiences flushes out a complex and harrowing history, all the more significant because of their position in world events. Importantly, you offer a new perspective on issues still unresolved and end in generosity and hope. Your often inspired phrasing, manipulation of time, and astute use of foreshadowing contributes to the book’s impact.

Imogene Zimmermann, Teacher