I cut off her hair, thick and beautiful, and she grasps my hand and begs me to remember that I too am a Jew. She knows that she is lost. ‘But remember,‘ she says, ‘you see what is being done to us. That‘s why my wish for you is that you will survive and take revenge for our innocent blood, which will never rest.‘ She has not had time to get up when a murderer who is walking between the benches lashes her on the head with his whip. Blood shows on her now shorn head. That evening, the blood of tens of thousands of victims, unable to rest, thrust itself upwards to the surface.—from The Last Jew of TreblinkaWhy do some live while so many others perish? Tiny children, old men, beautiful girls. In the gas chambers of Treblinka, all are equal. The Nazis kept the fires of Treblinka burning night and day, a central cog in the wheel of the Final Solution. There was no pretense of work here like in Auschwitz or Birkenau. Only a train platform and a road covered with sand. A road that led only to death. But not for Chil Rajchman, a young man who survived working as a “barber” and “dentist,” heartsick with witnessing atrocity after atrocity. Yet he managed to survive so that somehow he could tell the world what he had seen. How he found the dress of his little sister abandoned in the woods. How he was forced to extract gold teeth from the corpses. How every night he had to cover the body-pits with sand. How ever morning the blood of thousands still rose to the surface.Many have courageously told their stories, and in the tradition of Elie Wiesel’s Night and Primo Levi’s Survival at Auschwitz and The Drowned and the Saved, Rajchman provides the only survivors’ record of Treblinka. Originally written in Yiddish in 1945 without hope or agenda other than to bear witness, Rajchman’s tale shows that sometimes the bravest and most painful act of all is to remember.

    In this touching memoir, as told to Alison Leslie Gold, Hannah recalls the funny, bright girl who suddenly disappeared from her life -- until they met again at a concentration camp.

    It wasn't long ago that Elli led a normal life; a life rich and full that included family, friends, school, and thoughts about boys. A life in which Elli could lie and daydream for hours that she was a beautiful and elegant celebrated poet.But these adolescent daydreams quickly darken in March 1944, when the Nazis invade Hungary. First Elli can no longer attend school, have possessions, or talk to her neighbors. Then she and her family are forced to leave their house behind to move into a crowded ghetto, where privacy becomes a luxury of the past and food becomes a scarcity. Her strong will and faith allow Elli to manage and adjust somehow, but what Elli doesn't know is that this is only the beginning and the worst is yet to come....A remarkable memoir. I Have Lived a Thousand Years is a story of cruelty and suffering, but at the same time a story of hope, faith, perseverance and love.

    Rees offers us the compelling voices of soldiers and civilians rarely heard from—including a remorseless Lithuanian soldier who shot five hundred people and then went out to lunch, and the anguished older sister of a ten-year-old developmentally disabled boy selected for “immunization injection” (a fatal dose of morphine) at a children’s hospital. These materials cast a harsh new light on the rise and fall of the Third Reich.

    When the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Thomas Toivi Blatt was twelve years old. He and his family lived in the largely Jewish town of Izbica in the Lublin district of Poland—the district that was to become the site of three major Nazi extermination camps: Belzec, Sobibor, and Majdanek. Blatt tells of the chilling events that led to his deportation to Sobibor, and of the six months he spent there before taking part in the now-famous uprising and mass breakout. Blatt's tale of escape, and of the five harrowing years spent eluding both the Nazis and anti-Semitic Polish nationalists, is gripping account of resilience and survival. This edition also includes the author's interview with Karl Frenzel, a former Nazi commandant at Sobibor.

    They had come to Hiroki's father with a desperate request: Could consul Sugihara write visas for them to escape the Nazi threat?The Japanese government denied Sugihara's repeated requests to issue the visas. Unable to ignore the plight of the refugees, he turned to his family. Together they made the crucial decision that saved thousands of lives.Passage to Freedom, based on Hiroki Sugihara's own words, is one of the most important stories to emerge from the ruins of the Holocaust. It is the story of one man's remarkable courage, and the respect between a father and a son who shared the weight of witness and an amazing act of humanity.

    She was born into a large family in rural Romania and grew up feisty and willing to fight back physically against anti-Semitism from other schoolchildren. She defied her father's orders to turn down a scholarship that took her to Bucharest, and got herself expelled from that school when she responded to a priest/teacher's vicious diatribe against the Jews by hurling a bottle of ink at him. After a series of incidents that ranged from dramatic escapes to a year in a forced labor detachment, Sara ended up in Ravensbruck, a women's concentration camp, and managed to survive. She tells this story with style and power." --Kirkus Reviews

    The Nazis had overrun a great deal of the continent, bent on the domination of the world and the annihilation of an entire people. The death camps, unknown to most outside Europe, claimed more than six millions Jews during that time. Some endured -- and most have breathtaking stories of survival. Why they survived when so many perished is a matter of coincidence, luck, the will to live and the courage and sacrifice of many others. The full scope of that sacrifice will never be completely chronicled, it is just too vast. "Good-bye for Always, The Triumph of the Innocents" is the story of the youngest members of the Widerman family, who moved to Paris from Poland, only to be caught up in the horror of the Nazi occupation. In 1942, Cecile and Betty Widerman began a journey into the belly of the worst beast mankind has to offer. For two years they were literally one step ahead of death, as Nazi cruelty sought to envelop them as it had millions of others. How they survived, why they survived and who nearly gave their own lives to protect them is a story of inspiration and will that is sure to live forever.

    We hear from the persecutors themselves: the leaders of the Nazi party, the members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies, the university elites, and the heads of the business community. Most telling of all, perhaps, are the testimonies of ordinary German citizens, who in the main acquiesced to increasing waves of dismissals, segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence.

    Here is the first English biography for middle graders on Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan who, at Auschwitz, offered himself in exchange for the life of a man with two children. The biography covers Kolbe's early life, his work as a journalist, and his founding of Niepokalanow, the world's largest friary. Kolbe's act of love and faith teaches young readers important lessons that Christianity means more than just going to church, that the Holocaust actually happened, and that saints can be as real and modern as the person standing next to you in line. For first-hand research, the author traveled to Poland to visit where Kolbe lived and to interview people who actually knew him, including his cousin, his secretary, and one of his students. In addition, the foreword is by Ted Wojtkowski, a fellow camp prisoner and now a well-known Polish American who was standing close to Kolbe when he made his offer of self-sacrifice. Kolbe's story is ideal for children of Polish descent, parochial schools, parish libraries, classes in cultural diversity, and classes on World War II or the Holocaust. And, while written simply enough for children, this book will move all readers showing just how much the human spirit can achieve. +

    This is the story of 732 of those Jews--all under the age of sixteen in 1945. It is the story of what they lost, of what they, as children, suffered, and, most of all, of what they overcame. Robbed of their childhoods, orphaned by violence and bestiality, they ought to have become sociopaths. Instead, they rebuilt their lives and dedicated them to the memory of those who were not as lucky. Told in their voices, The Boys bears witness to the power of the human spirit.

    First settled in the Lake District, they formed a tightly knit group of friends whose terrible shared experience is almost beyond imagining. This is their story, which begins in the lost communities of pre-World War II central Europe, moves through ghetto, concentration camp and death march, to liberation, survival, and finally, fifty years later, a deeply moving reunion. Martin Gilbert has brought together the recollections of this remarkable group of survivors. With magisterial narration, he tells their astonishing stories. The Boys bears witness to the human spirit, enduring the depths, and bearing hopefully the burden and challenge of survival.'Martin Gilbert is to be congratulated on producing a masterly and deeply moving tribute to those who had the courage and luck to survive' Literary Review

    Over 30 years out-of-print, Perfidy is back, with murder, conspiracy and deep betrayal at its disturbing core. Playwright and historian of public conscience, Ben Hecht chronicles one of the most sensational yet least remembered stories in the history of Israel.

    Publisher: Constable. Published: 1997. 1st Edition. Comments: Edited by Elaine Potter with introduction by Martin Gilbert. Blue cloth, slightly marked. Dust jacket in library protective cover, very good with label to spine. Library labels to ffep and stamp to title verso. Pages very good, slightly sunned. Binding sound.

    [A] soul-searching trip” (Kirkus Reviews).   In 1996, prominent Holocaust historian Sir Martin Gilbert embarked on a fourteen-day journey into the past with a group of his graduate students from University College, London. Their destination? Places where the terrible events of the Holocaust had left their mark in Europe.   From the railway lines near Auschwitz to the site of Oskar Schindler’s heroic efforts in Krakow, Poland, Holocaust Journey features intimate personal meditations from one of our greatest modern historians, and is supported by wartime documents, letters, and diaries—as well as over fifty photographs and maps by the author—all of which help interweave Gilbert’s trip with his students with the surrounding history of the towns, camps, and other locations visited. The result is a narrative of the Holocaust that ties the past to the present with poignancy and power.   “Gilbert . . . is a dedicated guide to this difficult material. We can be grateful for his thoroughness, courage and guidance.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

    The two-week journey that resulted, with England's leading Holocaust and World War II scholar as its guide, culminated in this powerful travel narrative.

    This unsparing portrait of a childhood in 1939 Hungary--told in the voice of a brave and unforgettable nine-year-old Jewish girl--is the best sort of memoir, revealing not only a compelling story, but also the bruised yet still bold self which bears the weight of its story in memory (The New York Times Book Review).

    Poems relate reminiscences of a child in war-torn Germany, stories of Holocaust survivors, and the revelations of a young woman who learns of her country's atrocities thirteen years after the end of the war.

    This visual and documentary record is introduced by two essays that describe the German assault on Lithuania's Jewry and the Kovno Jews' resilient yet ultimately futile efforts to devise a "normal" world in the ghetto. The book concludes with a Kovno Ghetto survivor's personal reminiscence and a historian's reflection on the experience.

    Portraits of and dramatic testimonials from Holocaust survivors.

    A West German cantor and concentration camp survivor crosses the Berlin Wall to minister to Jews in East Berlin. A prominent Berlin family clings to its Communist ideals even after the end of the Cold War. In Hungary a rabbi turns dissident when Communist-controlled Jewish leaders dismiss him. Young citizens of Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest find renewed faith as they uncover a secret heritage buried in the rubble of war. A Polish Catholic woman, a friend to many Jews, discovers a liberating truth about her heritage. Weaving together these stories of old and young, disenchanted and enthusiastic, this luminous cultural group portrait takes us deep into the still-dark soul of Eastern Europe, where we emerge-profoundly moved, and cautiously optimistic about the religious rebirth that is taking place there. • Author is the recipient of the National Jewish Book Award and the Present Tense/American Jewish Committee Award

    Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and current director of its Research Institute, compiles a fascinating collection of firsthand accounts of the Holocaust.From the first boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany in 1933 to testimony at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, this illustrated volume includes survivor testimonies, letters, government documents, newspaper reports, diary entries and other firsthand materials, as well as Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum's insightful commentary putting the materials into context. The book's chronologically organized documentary approach provides a unique perspective on this much-published subject, and drawing on the most current research in the field of Holocaust studies, offers readers an unforgettable and engrossing history of the Nazis' largely successful effort to eradicate the Jews and other "undesirables" of Europe.

    These diary entries remain a stirring and remarkable testament to the heroism of Warsaw Jewry.

    Written by Ambassador Naphtali Lau-Lavie, journalist and diplomat, who survived the horrors of Nazi concentration camps and later became a leading personality in the government of Israel, this book reflects upon major historic events during the second half of this century as experienced by the author. Lavie reveals epics of modern Jewish history. As an eyewitness to the decision-making process of the leadership in Israel in the years 1970-85, he describes fascinating occurrences in the Israeli struggle for existence and fateful decisions during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, as well as decisive moves at the time of negotiations with Egypt and the United States for peace, an agreement for which was finally signed in March 1979 on the lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C. With his experience as Consul-General of Israel in New York, as emissary of the Jewish State to the largest Jewish diaspora, the author analyzes the ambivalent relationship between the Israelis and the Jewish minorities abroad. Because of his unique experience, he is able to examine the real difference between the two communities and their diverse agendas. In the author's opinion, they are not one community, as some portray themselves, and their respective realities indicate that they never will be.

    Dora was a cavernous underground factory cut out of solid rock, where life was like a nightmarish scene from Dante: thousands of prisoners beaten, starved, killed, and living underground for weeks at a time. The purpose of all this brutality was to build the world's first operational rockets: the V-1 and V-2 missiles, Hitler's vengeance weapons.Some of Germany's most brilliant engineers were involved with production at Dora, including Werner von Braun, who after the war went on to become the father of the American space program. It was his Saturn V rocket, designed with the help of his wartime comrades, that put the first man on the moon; while the Saturn V project was headed by the same man who had been the director of slave labor in Dora. In fact, some of the very rockets built in Dora were packed up after the war and shipped to New Mexico to serve as the seeds of the U.S. space program. In a very real sense, the greatest technological achievement of the twentieth century had its origins in the enslavement and murder of thousands of innocent people, the down payment of a Faustian bargain that still tarnishes the foundation of our reach for the stars.

    This account tells the story of Lithuanian Jews caught in the sweeping history of the first half of the century in Europe.

    A major Holocaust novel, hailed internationally as 'vast and magnificent' and named Book of the Year by the Financial Times.

    A collection of poems written in Jewish ghettos, way stations, death camps and forests under the nightmarish circumstances of the Holocaust.

    After the death of her mother, Frances, in 1989, Helen Epstein set out to research and reconstruct the life of her mother and that of her grandmother and great-grandmother. Like so many children of Holocaust survivors and other people displaced by the catastrophes of the 20th century, she had few family documents, only stories. She traveled to Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Israel, searching out people who had known her family and locating material in libraries and archives on three continents. Using three decades of journalistic training, and working like an archaeologist with shards of data, she pieced together an account of the lives of the women in her family and the social history of Central European Jews.

    The Polish government's response to mounting ethnic tensions in the pre-war era and its conduct of the war effort are also examined.

    Belgians, Danes, and Bulgarians did a lot to save their Jews. At the heart of At the Mercy of Strangers is the account of how Suzanne Bamberger, her mother, and her sister managed to be among those lucky enough to survive the long Nazi occupation of Brussels.At the Mercy of Strangers has two voices. Both are Suzanne’s. We hear her as the harassed, frightened, gutsy, and bored adolescent whose diary was her only true confidant. And we hear her as the mature woman, recalling the war years from the safety of post-war America.This coming-of-age book provides us with unusua1 glimpses of the cataclysm that engulfed Nazi-dominated Europe from 1939 to 1945. We watch the storm clouds gathering over Germany. We witness the invasion of Belgium, the futile attempt of a quarter of the population to escape the Germans, and the increasing stranglehold of the German occupation. We gasp at the pace at which incidents escalate from the merely insulting and hurtfu1 to the terrifying and incomprehensible.We are relieved that the Bambergers opt to go into hiding rather than be “resettled” by the Germans. There is poignancy in the juxtaposition of the tedium and frustration of Suzanne’s daily life with the ever-present danger of discovery. There is the fear of being deported to an unknowable fate, and the grief for friends who have vanished.Suzanne’s diary records her blossoming, secret love for Emile, a member of the Belgian Resistance, and of her constant need to be careful and “good.” We share her fantasies as she lies alone and hungry in an attic adjoining a storeroom for onions. We hope with her that she will be able to join the Resistance and work for justice alongside her beloved Emile.Cataclysms like the Nazis’ war against the Jews, the African slave trade, or the slaughter of Native Americans by Europeans forever haunt our consciences. Our collective guilt subsides, however, before the realization that invariably a few “ordinary” people respond to such crises with courage, compassion, and disregard for their own safety .At the Mercy of Strangers is uplifting, even though it never minimizes the horrors of the Holocaust, or of World War II. Suzanne’s mature self summarizes her feelings:“I never regretted having grown up on the edge of the Holocaust. The experience not only left me as a stronger, more compassionate human being, but, strange as it may sound, it provided me with a deep faith in humanity. Though I have much evidence to the contrary, I believe that often, when you have your back against the wall, somebody out there comes to the rescue.”

    In these penetrating portraits, words of Holocaust survivors are imprinted directly on the images, like numbers tattooed on forearms and pain etched forever in the memory. Faded snapshots of the survivors from decades ago reinforce the idea of remembrance and the power that photographs carry. The women and men pictured here have reached back into a dark place in order to bring an overwhelming and horrific piece of history down to human scale. These images, as well as the stories written on them, are intimate, disturbing, and profoundly moving.