She’s certain that true love will only lead to tragedy—that is, until a chance meeting at Waterloo station brings Ian Devlin into her life. Drawn to the bold and compassionate British Army captain, Alison begins to question her fear of love as World War II breaks out, separating the two and drawing each into their own battles. While Ian fights for freedom on the battlefield, Alison works with the Dutch Underground to find a safe haven for Jewish children and priceless pieces of art alike. But safety is a luxury war does not allow. As time, war, and human will struggle to keep them apart, will Alison and Ian have the faith to fight for their love, or is it their fate to be separated forever?

    Through the tragic events surrounding the true hero of her story, Vuk, a charismatic boy that Klara is unable to not love, she is forced to come to terms with the life she was hiding from, decisions and consequences, and the inevitability and complexity of human interaction.

    fighter pilot, who after his escapades of shooting down German troops in France found himself shot down by them in turn, thence to begin an even greater adventure.Ted Fahrenwald was a 22-year-old daredevil pilot in the famed 352nd Fighter Group when he bailed out of his burning P-51 Mustang two days after D-Day on his 100th mission. Parachuting into the farmlands of Normandy, he was immediately picked up by the local Maquis, the guerrilla branch of the French Resistance. His rudimentary French, wily and gregarious personality, and backwoods skills allowed him to quickly make fast friends of these unruly outlaws, and he spent the next several months carousing and raiding with their band. But determined to rejoin his squadron, Ted left his new comrades to hike through the fields and forests of the most heavily occupied areas of northern France toward the Channel coast, and the advancing Allied liberation armies. Captured by the Wehrmacht, however, interrogated as a spy, and interned in a POW camp, the author made a daring escape just before his deportation to Germany. Nothing diminished Ted’s talent for spotting the ironic humor in even the most aggravating or dangerous situations, nor his penchant for extracting his own improvised and sometimes hilarious version of justice. The author recorded his swashbuckling adventures at age 24, after his discharge and return to the States. Afterward he went into business and never again put pen to paper. But his immediate reminiscence of his wartime experience—recently found—reveal a literary talent that is rare. At once a suspenseful page-turner and an outrageously witty tale of daring and friendship, this book brings to life the daily intrigues of the multiple sides of World War II.

    During both wars, fantastic atrocity stories were invented by Allied propaganda to create hatred of the German people for the purpose of bringing public opinion around to support the wars. The "Holocaust" propaganda which emerged after World War II further solidified this image of Germany as history's ultimate villain. But how true is this "official" story? Was Germany really history's ultimate villain? In this book, the author paints a different picture. He explains that Germany was not the perpetrator of World War I nor World War II, but instead, was the victim of Allied aggression in both wars. The instability wrought by World War I made the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia possible, which brought world Communism into existence. Hitler and Germany recognized world Communism, with its base in the Soviet Union, as an existential threat to Western, Christian Civilization, and he dedicated himself and Germany to a death struggle against it. Far from being the disturber of European peace, Germany served as a bulwark which prevented Communist revolution from sweeping over Europe. The pity was that the United States and Britain did not see Communist Russia in the same light, ultimately with disastrous consequences for Western Civilization. The author believes that Britain and the United States joined the wrong side in the war.

    Following a trial that lasted less than two days, she was found guilty and sentenced to death. She became the last woman to be hanged in Britain, and her execution is the most notorious of hangman Albert Pierrepoint's "duties." Despite Ruth's infamy, the story of her life has never been fully told. Often willfully misinterpreted, the reality behind the headlines was buried by an avalanche of hearsay. But now, through new interviews and comprehensive research into previously unpublished sources, Carol Ann Lee examines the facts without agenda or sensation. A portrait of the era and an evocation of 1950s club life in all its seedy glamour, A Fine Day for a Hanging sets Ruth's gripping story firmly in its historical context in order to tell the truth about both her timeless crime and a punishment that was very much of its time.

    This novel may even take Zone's place in Christophe Claro's bold pronouncement that Énard's earlier work is "the novel of the decade, if not of the century."Mathias Énard studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods in the Middle East. A professor of Arabic at the University of Barcelona, he received several awards for Zone—also available from Open Letter—including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Décembre.Charlotte Mandell has translated works from a number of important French authors, including Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, Jean Genet, Guy de Maupassant, and Maurice Blanchot, among others.

     Yet, although D-Day had been a monumental success, their journey was far from over. How did the Allied forces drive back the Nazi’s from their strongly entrenched positions in northern France all the way to the German border? This is the main question that is answered with Martin Blumenson’s brilliant study, Breakout and Pursuit, which covers the period from 1st July to 11th September 1944. The allied forces had to work together to overcome tremendous difficulties as they fought against battle-hardened troops. Virtually every sort of major operation involving co-ordinated action of the combined arms is found: the grueling positional warfare of the battle of the hedgerows, the breakthrough of the main enemy position, exploitation, encirclement, and pursuit, as well as a number of actions falling under the general heading of special operations — an assault river crossing, the siege of a fortress, and night combat, among others. Blumenson states that he wished this book would be of interest to the general reader “who may be motivated by curiosity and the hope of learning in some detail about the conduct of the campaign, the expenditure of men and materiel, and the problems that face military leaders engaged in war.” Martin Blumenson was an American military historian who had been the historical officer of both the Third and Seventh Armies in World War Two. He wrote a number of prominent books on World War Two, including a biography of Patton and a number of campaign histories. He was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement from the Society of Military History in 1995. His book Breakout and Pursuit was first published in 1960 and he passed away in 2005.

    After King Henry forgets his promise to uphold the Provisions of Oxford, a young, powerful Marcher Earl, Talon Montgomery joins forces with Simon de Montfort leading an all out rebellion. Thanks to Montgomery's strategies, Montfort wins the day and takes Henry and his son, Edward Longshanks, hostage to ensure the Provisions are followed. Montgomery rejoices, knowing the Provisions will bring justice and law to a nation. It is only after the battle does Montgomery learn his precious eight year old daughter, Rose, has been abducted. Talon Montgomery now faces a terrible choice, turn against his allies and against everything he believes in or face the murder of his daughter.A widower, Talon's daughter is all he has. Desperate to counter their hold over him and certain his dead wife's curse is exacting her vengeance, Talon abducts the daughter of his Welsh enemy, Gwenillian ap Powys, only to discover he has brought into his home a fiery spirit of a young, beautiful woman who refuses to be cowed.But Talon's counter means naught. He has picked the wrong enemy and Gwen's father orders the assassination of his own daughter, placing Talon squarely in the middle and the risk of dying himself should he decide to protect her.Talon cannot bear to see such a strong spirit destroyed but neither can he find his missing daughter. His desire for Gwen grows daily. How can he protect the young woman with a death writ over her head when he cannot find his own daughter?

    When he set out to uncover their story, Jablonka had little to work with. Neither of them was the least bit famous, and they left little behind except their two orphaned children, a handful of letters, and a passport. Persecuted as communists in Poland, as refugees in France, and then as Jews under the Vichy regime, Matès and Idesa lived their short lives underground. They were overcome by the tragedies of the twentieth century: Stalinism, the mounting dangers in Europe during the 1930s, the Second World War, and the destruction of European Jews.Jablonka's challenge was, as a historian, to rigorously distance himself and yet, as family, to invest himself completely in their story. Imagined oppositions collapsed—between scholarly research and personal commitment, between established facts and the passion of the one recording them, between history and the art of storytelling. To write this book, Jablonka traveled to three continents; met the handful of survivors of his grandparents' era, their descendants, and some of his far-flung cousins; and investigated twenty different archives. And in the process, he reflected on his own family and his responsibilities to his father, the orphaned son, and to his own children and the family wounds they all inherited.A History of the Grandparents I Never Had cannot bring Matès and Idesa to life, but Jablonka succeeds in bringing them, as he soberly puts it, to light. The result is a gripping story, a profound reflection, and an absolutely extraordinary history.

    Stories about the sinking have becomelegendary - how the band played tothe end, how lifeboats were lowered half-empty - but amongst the films,novels and academic arguments, only those who were there canseparate truth from fiction. This book gives the story back to those people.After the sinking, inquiries into the loss of 1,517 lives were held in both the UK and US. The 1,000 or more pages of transcripts represent the most thorough and complete account of thesinking, told in the voices of those who were there. For the first time, these transcripts of the courtroom questions and answers have been specially edited and arranged chronologically, uncovering and drawing out the real drama ofthe Titanic's final night. Thewitnesses are transformed into characters in a much biggerstory, and the events are described from the perspectives of people inevery part of the ship, from a stoker in the boiler room escaping just before the watertight doors sealed behind him, to first classpassengers trying to buy their way onto lifeboats.This compelling book provides a unique insight into what really happened on the night, and the terrible, courageous, cowardly and tragic choices individuals had to make.

    Hiding in Plain Sight: Eluding the Nazis in Occupied France is an unusual memoir about the childhood and young adulthood of Sarah Lew Miller, a young Jewish girl living in Paris at the time of the Nazi occupation.

    This elite rural educational program provided the fundamental building blocks which would stay with them the rest of their lives. Their education went beyond the traditional home economics and child rearing as we have all come to believe. Through a myriad of enriching experiences, these girls developed their interpersonal mental, physical, and spiritual skills. Their challenging assignments included thought provocative discussions, problem-solving activities, and team-building experiences, which ended in their daily prayer. By the time these girls graduated at the age of 14, they could move into their chosen vocation from agriculture, hospitality, retail, office work, or full home management and child care. They had an exact understanding of their responsibility and duties to their state and in their work place. It was a great honor to be chosen for Landjahr Lager."This is the most authentic book I have read about the girls in the Hitler Youth. You capture the essence in detail." Irmgard M. Nagengast"To be alive today and see a book written about our time in Landjahr Lager Seidorf brings back wonderful memories." Eleanor (Nelly) Mohler Landjahr Madel"What a beautiful tribute to your mother. I will always remember our time together in Landjahr as if it were yesterday." Steffi Pucks Landjahr Madel"Your book gives an intimate accounting of the Hitler Youth girls as seen through a child's eyes. This book takes me right back in time." Ellie Musial Landjahr Madel"

    But one evening he follows Catherine Steiner, a guest at the exclusive lakeside resort where he works as a bellboy, into the forest. Unknowingly he dives into her life, changing his forever.Her husband is a wealthy industrialist with the power to create – or crush – Zeno. Despite Catherine’s protests, Zeno moves to Budapest and takes a servant’s job in the Steiner house, shining her husband’s shoes while hearing the family’s secrets.All Zeno and Catherine have are precious hours in a secret apartment, tucked above the uneasy streets of a city at war, their affair a flimsy wall against a future no one can see or predict. Until it arrives.

    Bernard Wasserstein’s original and provocative book presents a new and disturbing interpretation of the collapse of European Jewish civilization even before the Nazi onslaught.On the Eve is the portrait of a world on the brink of annihilation. In this provocative book, Bernard Wasserstein presents a new and disturbing interpretation of the collapse of European Jewish civilization even before the Nazi onslaught. In the 1930s, as Europe spiraled toward the Second World War, the continent’s Jews faced an existential crisis. The harsh realities of the age—anti-Semitic persecution, economic discrimination, and an ominous climate of violence—devastated Jewish communities and shattered the lives of individuals. The Jewish crisis was as much the result of internal decay as of external attack. Demographic collapse, social disintegration, and cultural dissolution were all taking their toll. The problem was not just Nazism: In the summer of 1939 more Jews were behind barbed wire outside the Third Reich than within it, and not only in police states but even in the liberal democracies of the West. The greater part of Europe was being transformed into a giant concentration camp for Jews. Unlike most previous accounts, On the Eve focuses not on the anti-Semites but on the Jews. Wasserstein refutes the common misconception that they were unaware of the gathering forces of their enemies. He demonstrates that there was a growing and widespread recognition among Jews that they stood on the edge of an abyss. On the Eve recaptures the agonizing sorrows and the effervescent cultural glories of this last phase in the history of the European Jews. It explores their hopes, anxieties, and ambitions, their family ties, social relations, and intellectual creativity—everything that made life meaningful and bearable for them. Wasserstein introduces a diverse array of characters: holy men and hucksters, beggars and bankers, politicians and poets, housewives and harlots, and, in an especially poignant chapter, children without a future. The geographical range also is vast: from Vilna (the “Jerusalem of the North”) to Amsterdam, Vienna, Warsaw, and Paris, from the Judeo-Espagnol-speaking stevedores of Salonica to the Yiddish-language collective farms of Soviet Ukraine and Crimea. Wasserstein’s aim is to “breathe life into dry bones.” Based on comprehensive research, rendered with compassion and empathy, and brought alive by telling anecdotes and dry wit, On the Eve offers a vivid and enlightening picture of the European Jews in their final hour.

    The story of Irena Sendler, a Catholic woman who saved at least 2,500 chilren from death during the Holocaust.

    Yet the complete account of his life and fate can only be told now - and for the first time in this book - following access to the Russian and Swedish archival sources, previously not used. Wallenberg was a Swedish businessman, recruited by the War Refugee Board to rescue thousands of Hungarian Jews. Once in Budapest, he created and distributed so called 'protective passports' among the Jewish population, thus managing to save up to 8,000 people. Through the 'safe houses' and clandestine networks that he established around the city, many thousands more were saved from the concentration camps. Yet, when Budapest was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945, Wallenberg was arrested, taken to Moscow and disappeared into the Soviet prison system. Using previously unseen sources, Bengt Jangfeldt has been able to reconstruct the events surrounding Wallenberg's capture almost hour by hour and, for the first time, he is able to shed new light on why Wallenberg was arrested and what happened to him after he disappeared.

    These authentic stories offer an entertaining and insightful window into Middle Eastern culture from one of region’s most beloved folk heroes.

    This biography, supported by extensive new research, describes the eventful and complicated life of one of the great literary figures in world literature. Sue Prideaux organizes Strindberg's story into a gripping and highly readable narrative that both illuminates his work and restores humor and humanity to a man often shrugged off as too difficult.Best known for his play Miss Julie, Strindberg wrote sixty other plays, three books of poetry, eighteen novels, and nine autobiographies. Even more than most, Strindberg is a writer whose life sheds invaluable light on his work. Prideaux explores Strindberg's many art-life connections, revealing for the first time the originals who inspired the characters of Miss Julie and her servant Jean, the bizarre circumstances in which the play was written, and the real suicide that inspired the shattering ending of the play. Recounting the playwright's journey through the "real" world as well as the world of belief and ideas, Prideaux marks the centenary of Strindberg's death in 1912 with a biography worthy of the man who laid the foundation for Western drama through the twentieth century and even into the twenty-first.

    But with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, she found herself swept up in a flood of startling revelations from her mother's earlier life. As she pored through old photographs and documents, she began to ask questions about secrets and omissions. The answers she found both shocked and inspired her, and would irrevocably transform her view of her mother, herself, and the meaning of family legacy.From Berkeley, California to New York City, to Leipzig, Germany, this compelling memoir takes you across continents and lifetimes."The Woman in the Photograph" will make you wonder about the men and women in your own photographs and how your life has been shaped by events you know little about.

    Neal's collages. Edition of 10. Contents broken into nine chapters. Back cover says: A visual exploration of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities which consists of Marco Polo's descriptions of fifty-five imagined cities to his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, and the dialogue between them that follows. Using a composition of materials and objects pasted over surfaces, often with unifying lines and colour, this is a response to the descriptive ideologies therein about how cities can be encountered and how the same city can be encountered in a multiplicity of ways.

    Our production will capitalize on the presence of the actor, sophisticated costumes, and precise lighting design to create razor sharp imaginary worlds. Only the minimal necessary elements of set and props will be constructed in order to bring the audience into our collectively imagined worlds. The onus of discovering, sharing and ultimately inhabiting these worlds lays with the ensemble of twelve actors. Though the reader of the script may glimpse the interconnectedness of the “menu,” each audience, seeing only one combination of the nine possibilities, has but one experience of the journey, or meal. By rehearsing and presenting all nine versions of the play, the ensemble will bring the consciousness of all to the performance of each.

    When her family was sent to the Warsaw ghetto, Elsa joined a community farm and was recruited by the Underground. Despite her deep belief in destiny, Elsa refused to bow to her fate as a Jew in war-torn Poland.

    An old lady with a limp and an accent, she is invisible to most. Certainly no one recognizes her as the warrior and revolutionary she was, when again and again she slipped into the Jewish ghetto of German-occupied Vilnius to carry food, clothes, medicine, money, and counterfeit documents to its prisoners. Often she left with letters to deliver, manuscripts to hide, and even sedated children swathed in sacks. In 1944 she was captured by the Gestapo, tortured for twelve days, and deported to Dachau.Through Epistolophilia, Julija Šukys follows the letters and journals—the “life-writing”—of this woman, Ona Šimaitė (1894–1970). A treasurer of words, Šimaitė carefully collected, preserved, and archived the written record of her life, including thousands of letters, scores of diaries, articles, and press clippings. Journeying through these words, Šukys negotiates with the ghost of Šimaitė, beckoning back to life this quiet and worldly heroine—a giant of Holocaust history (one of Yad Vashem’s honored “Righteous Among the Nations”) and yet so little known. The result is at once a mediated self-portrait and a measured perspective on a remarkable life. It reveals the meaning of life-writing, how women write their lives publicly and privately, and how their words attach them—and us—to life.

    Full of tragic and compelling experiences such as life in Siberia, Warsaw before World War II, the German occupation, the Warsaw Rising, and life in the Soviet Ostashkov prison, Kaia was deeply involved with the battle that decimated Warsaw in 1944 as a member of the resistance army and the rebuilding of the city as an architect years later. Kaia's father was expelled from Poland for conspiring against the Russian czar. She spent her early childhood near Altaj Mountain and remembered Siberia as a "paradise". In 1922, the family returned to free Poland, the train trip taking a year. Kaia entered the school system, studied architecture, and joined the Armia Krajowa in 1942. After the legendary partisan Hubal's death, a courier gave Kaia the famous leader's Virtuti Militari Award to protect. She carried the medal for 54 years. After the Warsaw Rising collapsed, she was captured by the Russian NKVD in Bialystok and imprisoned. In one of many interrogations, a Russian asked about Hubal's award. When Kaia replied that it was a religious relic from her father, she received only a puzzled look from the interrogator. Knowing that another interrogation could end differently, she hid the award in the heel of her shoe where it was never discovered. In 1946, Kaia, very ill and weighing only 84 pounds, returned to Poland, where she regained her health and later worked as an architect to the rebuild the totally decimated Warsaw.

    Few today would doubt Hesse's artistry or his importance to millions of devoted readers. But just who was the author of Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Demian?Gunnar Decker weaves together previously unavailable sources to offer a unique interpretation of the life and work of Hermann Hesse. Drawing on recently discovered correspondence between Hesse and his psychoanalyst Josef Lang, Decker shows how Hesse reversed the traditional roles of therapist and client, and rethinks the relationship between Hesse's novels and Jungian psychoanalysis. He also explores Hesse's correspondence with Stefan Zweig—recently unearthed—to find the source of Hesse's profound sense of alienation from his contemporaries.Decker's biography brings to life this icon of spiritual searching and disenchantment who galvanized the counterculture in the 1960s and feels newly relevant today.

    Incredibly, he lives in plain sight among his enemies for almost three years.Eighteen-year-old Sasha flees from the Nazi-occupied Dubno ghetto days before the mobile killing squads of the SS massacre the remaining Jewish inhabitants. He attempts to save himself by posing as a gentile in the very heart of Hitler's Germany. Close calls, unexpected challenges, and hair-raising encounters punctuate each day on the run. As he moves from town to town and job to job, Sasha's quick wit and some twists of fate allow him to survive--at least until the next time. Meeting no other Jews, he fears he may be the only Jew still alive in Europe.Sasha, a Jewish youth from Ukraine, runs from the Dubno ghetto in October of 1942, at the urging of his mother, who knows that any day the Germans will come for them and kill them. To survive, he uses falsified identity documents to join a transport of non-Jews conscripted for compulsory labor in Germany. In the homeland of his enemy, he hides in plain sight for almost three years.He is repeatedly forced to flee when suspicions and rumors that he might be Jewish threaten his life. Each day he faces new challenges: whether he is being questioned by the Gestapo after running away from a job or being examined by a German physician who may well discover that he is circumcised.He lives with the loneliness and isolation of not being able to share with anyone the secret of who he really is, as well as his daily fear of being discovered. He must constantly remain on guard with everyone: his co-workers, his German bosses, and even the woman who professes to love him.This incredible memoir documents one young man's determination to remain alive during the Holocaust. It is a narrative of anguish, identity confusion, triumph over adversity, and ultimately a final escape to the West to reclaim the identity and ideals of his youth.Sam Genirberg immigrated to the United States with his wife and child in 1948. Settling in California, his career path progressed from chicken farmer, to owner and manager of a popular ice cream store, to highly successful land developer. Over the years, he has been active in the Jewish community and has remained a steadfast supporter of Israel. He and his wife, Rose, have raised three children. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, continues to be involved in property management, and frequently talks about his Holocaust experiences to Jewish groups and high school students in his community.

    After fleeing Germany with his family, he escaped to the United States. He then worked as a chicken farmer, joined the army, trained as an interrogator, jumped as a D-Day paratrooper, helped liberate a concentration camp, and fought to rescue the country of his birth. Following a distinguished career as a history professor in the U.S., he chose to retire in Berlin, where he spent his last years talking to German schoolchildren about what it was like to grow up Jewish under the Third Reich, and working to promote tolerance and peace. Winner of a 2013 Independent Publisher Book Award: Gold Medal, Best Adult Non-Fiction Personal Ebook.