Pilot to crew. Bail out! Bail out!” On 19th October, 1944, 2/Lt Kenneth W. Simmons was forced to jump from the damaged B-24 aircraft while in a bombing raid over Germany. Once he landed he quickly became a ‘kriegie’, a prisoner of war, which he remained until General Patton’s men freed him in late April 1945. Much of these seven months of captivity were spent in the dismal conditions of the prison camp Stalag Luft II. Simmons provides fascinating insight into what life was like be an American prisoner of war in Nazi Germany, from undergoing interrogations to suffering cruelty and abuse from the guards. He records not only the mundane day to day life of the prisoners but also their private projects, from forging documents to using the latrine to dispose of waste material from their tunneling projects. “steadily interesting … due to the small details of everyday existence” Kirkus Reviews “The march of death … is one of the most impressive scenes to be portrayed of World War II.” Houston Chronicle “a story of hellish and holy experiences undergone by the men who became PW of the Nazis.” Daily Democrat Kenneth Simmons was an American airman with the 8th Air Force who was forced to bail out of his plane just north of Bad Kreuznach in Germany. His work Kreigie records his experiences as a prisoner of war and was first published in 1960. Simmons passed away in 1969.

    Medallion. While sitting in traffic heading to her great-grandfather's eighty-fourth birthday party, Hayden asks her dad why her great-grandfather speaks the way he does. What follows is a car ride she will never forget as she learns about his difficult childhood. From living in the Lodz ghetto at age ten to surviving the hells of Auschwitz and a death march from Gorlitz concentration camp at fifteen, Teddy Znamirowski faced unfathomable horrors, narrowly escaping death time and time again. Liberated at sixteen, he took on smuggling as a means to survive. It was not until the Bricha approached him and he became a lead operative - smuggling thousands of refugees across country borders - that he was finally able to begin his life again. Teddy's story is one of survival amidst horrific circumstances. The author does not sensationalize the suffering his grandfather and his family endured, but in this work of narrative nonfiction simply recreates this remarkable man's early life during one of the darkest moments of human history.

    She was an ordinary German schoolgirl from an average family thrust into the extraordinary circumstances of war. Her memoir vividly describes the price she, her family, and all the German people paid for Hitler's ambition. Relived through her memories, it is truly a story of childhood innocence lost, but also of survival through grit and courage. She endured air raids, bomb shelters, military training, capture, imprisonment, rape and harrowing escape. The author has created a razor-sharp, clear-eyed and tense narrative about her life during this frightening time, as well as the story of her early struggles as a German war bride settling into a new life in America. This is Dorchen, and she is a remarkable woman.

    It is the tale of how one newly takes on the world, having lived in the midst of corpses strewn about in the scores of thousands, and how one can possibly resume life in the aftermath of such experiences. It is the story of the child who decides, upon growing up, that the only career that makes sense for him in light of these years of horror is to become someone sensitive to the deepest flaws of humanity, a teacher of God’s role in history amidst the traditions that attempt to understand it—and to become a rabbi. Readers will not emerge unscathed from this searing work, written by a distinguished, Boston-based rabbi and academic.

    One year later, as the lilacs blossomed once again, she returned to her hometown of Szatmár and set her memories, raw and vivid, to paper. Her unflinching words convey the bitter details of the Szatmár ghetto, Auschwitz, the Schlesiersee forced labour camp and a perilous death march. At forty-eight years old, Anna had survived a lifetime of trauma, and as she wrote, she waited, desperately hoping her family would return.

    Clinging fiercely to his faith in God, the nineteen-year-old Unsdorfer faced the unspeakable horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald with courage and moral defiance, a testament to the abiding strength of the Jewish spirit.

    Anna, a traumatised Jewish refugee, meets Sam, a British army officer in wartime Palestine.The novel spans 100 years of Anna's life; born in 1914 in a comfortable secular family in Vienna, her childhood is secure and protected until increasing anti-Semitism changes everything. A naive early affair causes a crisis. Anna escapes to Palestine carrying a secret buried deep within herself - one she cannot acknowledge for many years.When Anna and Sam meet, both are overwhelmed by unexpected love, but can they survive the challenges thrown up by their complex life together? Sam is posted to post-war Berlin and Anna must adjust to living in the land of the enemy. Her struggle results in psychological trauma, affecting her relationships with all those she loves. Will she succeed in overcoming the ghosts and secrets of her past and find some resolution?

    soldiers were taken from a German POW camp and transported by cattle car to Berga, slave-labor camp for European Jews. Inspired by this shocking and little-known event, K.J. McCall weaves fact and fiction in a story that begins in a small Pennsylvania town in September, 1941 when America is still at peace and much of the world is already at war. Corbin O’Connell is then just a high school senior, stuck on the family farm, snared by the conniving Velma, hopelessly in love with Daisy, his best friend’s girl. All he knows of the war is what he sees in newsreels. But everything changes on December 7, 1941, and 1942 finds him standing in line to register for the draft only two weeks after graduation. He’s headed for big trouble and doesn’t know it. To him the war is simply a convenient escape from his troubles and, blind to reality, he’s eager to enlist. But he will see. Far from home, he’s swept up in world conflict, and life veers off in its own mad direction when he’s captured by the Germans. Back then one had no choice in the matter, thrown into the war of all wars just by being born. There was no getting around it – not if you were Eighteen in 1942.

    As a teenager, Anastasia Saporito discovered that truth as she and her family found themselves exiled, vulnerable, and no longer able to call on their social standing and accumulated riches as the Soviet and German armies converged during World War II. Saporito recounts in vivid detail the difficulties of her childhood as the daughter of White Russian aristocrats forced to flee their native Russia for refuge in Yugoslavia. In Ancient Furies Saporito skillfully depicts her family, her own struggles as a girl coming of age in war-torn central Europe, and the devastation incurred as a result of Nazi actions toward civilian populations of occupied countries. Personal recollections form the basis of this memoir, but the trials and tribulations faced by this young woman shed light on the often-hidden experiences of the once-wealthy elite of central and eastern Europe as the Nazi war machine tore much of that region asunder. Through the words of her teenage self, Saporito brings a different civilian experience of World War II into the open.

    The answer most commonly quoted by SS men accused of atrocious crimes after Germany had surrendered in 1945. But who gave those orders? Who was the mastermind behind the sophisticated machinery which allowed men from normal family backgrounds to kill on such a scale? The right man at the right time, fate steered Heinrich Himmler to take control of an organization destined to carry out Hitler s racial policies. This study not only sets out in detail how Heinrich Himmler s daily routine allowed him to implement Nazi strategy, but it also provides illustrations of the man behind much of it, both at work and at home. Of all the personalities of history demonized by postwar writers, Heinrich Himmler ranks among the most reviled. His legacy is one of hatred, violence and cold blooded murder on a vast scale. A Jekyll and Hyde character, variously described by his generation and those who followed as charming, loyal, polite, a pedant, an eccentric, an organizational genius, a fool, a desk killer and a loving father. The camera allows us into his world, albeit temporarily, and we can equate his busy, but mostly mundane schedule with contemporary images frozen in time.REVIEWS "text as engaging as the illustrations, and highly recommend this marvelous book to all who think they've seen everything about Heinrich Himmler.Military Advisor"

    The imagery shows the SS s murderous activities inside Belsen, and also reveal another disturbing side to them relaxing in their barracks or visiting their families and loved ones.The book is an absorbing insight into how the SS played a key part in murdering, torturing and starving to death tens of thousands of inmates. During the latter part of the war as many as 500 a day were perishing from the long-term effects of starvation as well as the resultant diseases. There is a wealth of information on how the camp was run and all aspects of life inside the camp for the inmates are covered. The final episode of Belsen is witnessed by British soldiers of the Second Army, who were completely unprepared for what they encountered when they arrived at the gates of the camp. Inside the camp they found some 10,000 unburied dead in addition to the mass graves already containing 40,000 more corpses.This latest Images of War book captures the shocking story of those that ran Belsen, those that perished, and the troops that liberated the living from their hell."

    Every day a fight for survival. Terror has gripped the beautiful city of Amsterdam, following the Nazi invasion. With the help of the Dutch Resistance, desperate mother Cilla is forced to send her young son and nineteen month old baby daughter into separate hiding places. Cilla’s own years in hiding are shadowed by fear about her children. Are they alive? Will her daughter remember her and will she even want to come “home”? A gripping story of love and loss in a world of turmoil. Based on a secret, true story told for the first time after seventy years. “One day soon I will get you back and I will never let you go again. Never.” “This is the most compelling Holocaust story I think my students will ever read/” Vivan Kesenbaum, high school teacher, Boca Raton, Florida “I loved this book. It was so vividly told and I absolutely loved the ending.” Izzy Pactor, aged 11, London “It’s a really great book that taught me a lot about the war.” Joelle Deutsch, age 12, London

    He runs for cover – his first escape in a series of encounters with destiny. Imagine the Adventure: The boy and his brother work for the SOE, an underground branch of the English Intelligence Service. When the resistance movement is uncovered, they quickly escape through the mountains of Crete, hiding from the enemy in broad daylight. Danger looms everywhere.Imagine the Glamour: The boy trains to be a spy for the OSS (the Office of Strategic Services), the SOE’s newly formed American intelligence counterpart. Imagine the Peril: While on his undercover mission in Salonica, the boy constantly risks his life, operating a wireless radio in plain view. Will the German police ever discover him?Imagine the Courage: If captured, the boy resolves to take a poison capsule that will quickly end his young life, rather than endure torture. Often, he finds himself seconds away from that dreaded event.Imagine the Victory of living to tell the tale at age 91…It’s all true! No imagination is necessary. This is the stuff of movies—a must-read story about the Game of Life.The author’s story, along with those of other agents, was featured in the documentary Camp X: Secret Agent School, a production by YAP Films, and was aired on HISTORY Channel in Canada and other networks worldwide.

    Yet during this period geography was not all that separated them. Increasing divergence in political opinions and eventual war between their countries meant letters contained not only family news but personal perspectives on the individual, local, and national choices that would result in the most destructive war in history. This important collection, first assembled by Irmgard Gebensleben's daughter Hedda Kalshoven, gives voice to ordinary Germans in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich and in the occupied Netherlands. The correspondence between Irmgard, her friends, and four generations of her family delve into their most intimate and candid thoughts and feelings about the rise of National Socialism. The responses to the German invasion and occupation of the Netherlands expose the deeply divided loyalties of the family and reveal their attempts to bridge them. Of particular value to historians, the letters evoke the writers' beliefs and their understanding of the events happening around them.This first English translation of Ik denk zoveel aan jullie:  Een briefwisseling tussen Nederland en Duitsland 1920-1949, has been edited, abridged, and annotated by Peter Fritzsche with the assent and collaboration of Hedda Kalshoven. After the book's original publication the diary of Irmgard's brother and loyal Wehrmacht soldier, Eberhard, was discovered and edited by Hedda Kalshoven. Fritzsche has drawn on this important additional source in his preface.

    This book tells the remarkable story of how the grandees of Anglo Jewry persuaded the British Government to allow them to establish a transit camp in Sandwich, in East Kent, to which up to 4000 men could be brought while they waited for permanent settlement overseas—known as the Kitchener camp. The whole rescue was funded by the British Jewish community with help from American Jewry. Most of the men left their families behind. Would they get their families out in time? And how would the people of Sandwich—a town the same size as the camp—react to so many German speaking Jewish foreigners in their midst? There was also a well organized branch of the British Union of Fascists in Sandwich. Captain Canning, a virulent anti-Semite, lived there. He and his grand friends, including the Prince of Wales, used to meet there to play golf. This background adds to the drama of the race against time to save lives.

    Though Hess had been one of Hitler's closest confidantes he was immediately denounced as a traitor in Berlin. Imprisoned in England, he was questioned by British MI6 and Churchill himself. The documents he had brought with him were confiscated and have not been made public to this day. Hess was tried at Nuremburg at the war's end and imprisoned at Spandau in Berlin, one of only seven former Nazis held there. The other six were all released, but Hess lingered there alone until his death in 1987, possibly by suicide, possibly not. The official report on Hess has always been that he acted alone, but many historians question this conclusion. In Night Flight to Dungavel, award-winning historian Peter Padfield presents striking new evidence that spurs a wholesale reappraisal of the mystery: what actually happened, what role was played by Churchill and British intelligence, and what has been this episode's significance as a real turning point of the war. Expertly woven into a compelling narrative that touches on Nazi sympathizers among the British aristocracy, possible British foreknowledge of the "final solution," and the mysterious circumstances of Hess's death in Spandau prison, Night Flight to Dungavel is among the most important and gripping stories of World War Two.

    The story of the capture, imprisonment and survival of Gertrud Baltutt, a German civilian in East Prussia who was transported into forced labor in the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.

    During the four years of Occupation she transformed from a teenager in search of fun and frivolity into a capable, fearless young woman, risking her life in service to her country and the Resistance. Always modest about her actions during the war, Andrée has been decorated by the French government for her bravery. Now her moving and courageous story is brought vividly to life, told for the first time by her own daughter.After the German invasion of Paris in June 1940, nineteen-year-old Andrée Griotteray found herself living in an occupied city, forced to work alongside the invaders. Unable to stand by and do nothing, her younger brother Alain set up his own resistance network to do whatever he could to defy the Nazis. Andrée risked her life to help him without hesitation.While working at the Police Headquarters in Paris, she printed and distributed copies of an underground news sheet and stole blank ID cards that were passed on to men and women attempting to escape France. She travelled across France, picking up and dropping off intelligence ultimately destined for the British and Americans, always fearless in the face of immense pressure. And then, one day, she was betrayed and arrested.Based on Andrée's diaries from the time and conversations over the years, Francelle Bradford White recounts her mother's incredible story: the narrow escapes and moments of terror alongside a typical teenager's concerns about food, fashion and boys.This fascinating story tells of one woman's struggle and of the bravery that ultimately led to her being awarded the Médaille de la Résistance, the Croix de guerre and the Légion d'honneur.For more information, visit www.andreeswar.com"An interesting book... touching in its juxtaposition of war news with a young woman's preoccupation with clothes, boyfriends and, as the war went on, the search for food." -- Barbara Dryden, blogger

    Because of their Jewish faith, the family is robbed of most of their possessions while her father is imprisoned. When he is released, the family is forced to leave their home in Vienna, Austria. They trek undercover across dangerous enemy-controlled country to reach what they think will be a safe haven with the family of Esther’s father in Rozwadow, Poland. Unfortunately, before they get settled, the Germans invade Poland, putting Esther’s family back into the middle of war.Esther speaks and understands only German, so she can’t interpret much of what is being said by her Polish relatives. She can only pick up innuendos about what is going on with the war and the family situation. During this time, she draws closer to her newfound grandparents, but she greatly misses her maternal grandmother who they had left behind in Vienna.From labor camps in Siberia, to the wild forests along the Russia/Poland border, to the streets of Tomsk, Esther and her family are forced into situations that try their patience, faith, and love. Along their journey, Esther sees many tortured and suffering people she can’t help. She wonders who is luckier: the ones who survive or the ones who don’t. Living in constant fear, feeling guilt and remorse for being luckier than most, she and her family forge ahead, praying for the best, dreading the worst.Esther’s story, told from a young girl’s perspective, will touch your heart as it brings to life the struggles endured by the unfortunate souls who were caught in the tragic events of World War II.