This story begins when Daniel Baldinger divorces the wife he loves because she cannot bear children. Believing that "a man must have sons to say Kaddish for him when he dies," he marries a much younger woman, and by 1913, Daniel and his second wife Lieba have eleven children, including six sons. In this richly textured portrait, Armstrong follows the Baldinger children's lives over decades, through the terrifying years of the Holocaust, to the present. Based on oral histories and the diaries of more than a dozen men and women, Mosaic is an extraordinary story of a family and one woman's journey to reclaim her heritage.

    Unlike Anne Frank, Flory survived to recount this extraordinary story of persecution and survival. Her book was translated into her native language, Dutch, and was released on May 5, 2000, liberation day in the Netherlands.

    He leaped from trains, outran police, and hid in attics, cellars, anywhere that offered a few more seconds of safety. First he swam the River Sauer at the German-Belgian border. Later he climbed the Alps on feet so battered they froze to his socks--only to be turned back at the Swiss border. He crawled out from under the barbed wire of a French holding camp, and hid in a village in the Pyrenees while gendarmes searched it. And in the dark hours of one November morning, he escaped from a train bound for Auschwitz. Leap into Darkness is the sweeping memoir of one Jewish boy's survival, and of the family and the world he left behind.

    Answering the charge that Jews should have left earlier, Kaplan shows that far from seeming inevitable, the Holocaust was impossible to foresee precisely because Nazi repression occurred in irregular and unpredictable steps until the massive violence of Novemer 1938. Then the flow of emigration turned into a torrent, only to be stopped by the war. By that time Jews had been evicted from their homes, robbed of their possessions and their livelihoods, shunned by their former friends, persecuted by their neighbors, and driven into forced labor. For those trapped in Germany, mere survival became a nightmare of increasingly desperate options. Many took their own lives to retain at least some dignity in death; others went underground and endured the fears of nightly bombings and the even greater terror of being discovered by the Nazis. Most were murdered. All were pressed to the limit of human endurance and human loneliness.Focusing on the fate of families and particularly women's experience, Between Dignity and Despair takes us into the neighborhoods, into the kitchens, shops, and schools, to give us the shape and texture, the very feel of what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.

    As well as a testament to a victimized people, the book is a living history - the author lived in Eishyshok until the age of four when the Nazis murdered all the inhabitants except for herself and a few others who escaped.

    It did not seem possible to proceed otherwise. At a certain point, it became clear that testimony contained at its core an essential lacuna; in other words, the survivors bore witness to something it is impossible to bear witness to. As a consequence, commenting on survivors' testimony necessarily meant interrogating this lacuna or, more precisely, attempting to listen to it. Listening to something absent did not prove fruitless work for this author. Above all, it made it necessary to clear away almost all the doctrines that, since Auschwitz, have been advanced in the name of ethics.---Giorgio Agamben

    She also happened to be Jewish. In the same month that Anne Frank's family went into hiding, Edith was sent to live with a courageous Protestant family, took a new name, and survived by posing as a gentile. Ultimately one-third of the hidden Dutch Jews were discovered and murdered; most of Edith's family perished. Velmans's memoir is based on her teenage diaries, wartime letters, and reflections as an adult survivor. In recounting wartime events and the details of her feelings as the war runs its course, Edith's Story ultimately affirms life, love, and extraordinary courage. "The most vivid evocation of the experience of Nazi Occupation that I have ever read." - The Independent (London)

    Over the next few years, she endured starvation, brutality, and forced labor in three concentration camps. With courage and ingenuity, Susie's mother helped her to survive--by disguising her as an adult to fool the camp guards, finding food to add to their scarce rations, and giving her the will to endure. This harrowing memoir portrays the best and worst of humanity in heartbreaking scenes you will never forget.Winner of the Mildred L. Batchelder AwardAn ALA Notable BookAn NCSS-CBC Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies

    Tova Friedman, Frieda Tenenbaum, and Rachel Hyams all came from the same small town in Poland. After a series of ghettos and forced labor camps, all three girls were transported to Auschwitz with their mothers and for a time were together in the Kinderlager barracks-the children's section. By a twist of fate, when the final Nazi cry of "Alle Juden raus!" echoed through the camp, each of the girls was hidden by her mother instead of joining what was for many a death march. On January 27, 1945, the date of their liberation and, subsequently, the date celebrated by the three women as their "birthday, " Tova was six years old, Frieda was ten, and Rachel was seven. Nieuwsma, a journalist, assembles the sometimes brutal oral histories of these women from childhood through liberation and the aftermath of displaced persons camps, the often futile search for scraps of information about surviving family, and the difficult decision to emigrate. In the story of each woman's adult life, there is a resurgence of hidden memory and post-traumatic stress; Tova speaks of "existential loneliness" during every holiday, Rachel of her never-ending search for "missing pieces, " and Frieda recalls that "if you cried in the war you were dead...But I can do it now, and it's a precious thing." The photographs of these women with their children and grandchildren are a testament to their strength and to the capacity of the human spirit to survive. Their intenselymoving stories are a remarkable gift of insight to the Holocaust years and its implications for all of us.

    

     It brings to life the dramatic experiences of a woman caught between a ruthless government and the will to survive with her children during the last six months of World War 2 in Nazi Germany as she flees the incoming Russian front in the East and right into the carpet bombing in the West. This book brings this war down to a human level in a way that will leave the reader with a stunning new perspective never told in America and represents the missing link in the historical annals of this time. A sequel called WEST WIND is being written at this time and deals with the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of the Third Reich and the survival of Elisabeth, her four children and Helga, the maid. It also describes her husband's experiences in an American prison camp in the south of France. Quote by Elisabeth Wendell, Professor of American Literature, University of Duesseldorf, Germany: “Barbara Martin is a very talented story teller and has captured a dark period of German history during the holocaust with sincere honesty and deep understanding for the people caught up in it. The book makes for great reading enjoyment!”

    But most readers don't know much about Anne's life before she went into hiding. This remarkable biography, written especially for young readers, chronicles Anne's life from her earliest days. The book includes remembrances from Anne's family and friends and features rare photos of Anne from infancy to adolescence. A powerful, moving tribute to an ordinary girl whose life has inspired millions.

    This is the first book of original scholarship devoted to women in the Holocaust. Testimonies of Holocaust survivors and chapters by eminent historians, sociologists, and literary experts shed light on women's lives in the ghettos, the Jewish resistance movement, and the concentration camps. By examining women's unique responses, their incredible resourcefulness, their courage and their suffering, the book enhances our understanding of the experiences of all Jews during the Nazi era. "A pioneering book."-Saul Friedländer, UCLA and Tel Aviv University "The cutting edge of Holocaust Studies."-Wall Street Journal "A major contribution to our understanding."-Times (London) "An excellent book that shows how the study of gender can deepen our understanding of the Holocaust."-Michael Berenbaum, President, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation "The astonishing strengths and resilience of women in these studies seem to rise out."-Forward

    But the birth of her first grandchild, Miriam, reawakened in her the memories that had laid barely beneath the surface. Dora began to realize that unless she told her story, the new generation, born in America, would grow up not knowing anything about their past, their ancestors, the traditions they followed in a small town in Northern Transylvania, the destruction brought by the Holocaust, and the oppressive life in post-war communist Romania. Dora began to write letters to Miriam whenever something in the present evoked images from the past. Each letter is a vignette, a story about people she has known, family members who have disappeared, events she has witnessed and places she has been. What emerged after a few years was the chronicle of a Jewish family against the backdrop of the main historical events of 20th century Europe.

    Tells the true stories of children who escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport, a rescue mission led by concerned British to save Jewish children from the Holocaust.

    The text for the book has been carefully recreated by Olere's son, based on his father's memoirs.

    In entries that preserve each voice, personality, and style, survivors describe their efforts to evade Nazi laws and subsequent dehumanization, protect their children and siblings, and maintain their Jewish identity.   Throughout each narrative, from Brandla Small’s description of having her child dragged from her arms at Auschwitz, to Eva Schonbrun’s remembrances of her sister who refused to leave her siblings and save herself, to Emilie Schindler’s account of rescuing Jews left abandoned on a cattle car, we become intimately involved with each woman's struggle and eventual survival. We also gain a new appreciation and understanding of the Holocaust experiences unique to women.

    When the Nazis came, Lala—who had blond hair and blue eyes—survived by convincing them she was a Christian. This book tells her remarkable story. Fiercely determined and greatly aided by her Aryan looks, she managed to convince everyone—German soldiers, interrogators, fellow Poles—that she was a Polish gentile. Within a year after the Germans captured Lvov, many of Lala's family members were missing and presumed dead.Lala's Story follows her as she moves from town to town, driven by her fear of being discovered. More than a story of survival, this is the story of a young girl's resolute struggle to defy, resist, and ultimately defeat the evil forces pursuing her.

    From the real-life story of the miracle couple in Schindler's List, this is a unique memoir of the Holocaust and much more: it is a message of affirmation for all of us -- now available in paperback.

    Cecelia's diary is a lasting reminder of why the struggle must continue to insure that the dark days of Nazi-like oppression will never happen again.

    Ten-year-old Hanna Davidson’s father, Simon, and older brother, Kazik, had been drafted to defend Warsaw. Hanna and her mother, Sofia, found themselves subjected to Hitler’s efforts to dehumanize Poland’s Jewish population. There seemed no choice but to submit to a ruthless tyranny.Learning that Simon and Kazik were alive in the Soviet-occupied zone of Poland, Hanna and her mother decided to risk a harrowing escape from Nazi Poland into safer Soviet territory. With only the clothes on their backs, they fled their apartment to face a daunting crossing and the threat of persecution under Stalin's regime.As recounted by Hanna, the Davidsons’ journey into the Soviet interior makes for an extraordinary story. More than a memoir of survival, their story is clearly one of a family whose spirit could not be destroyed by persecution, war, famine, or political oppression.

    Oma's bunkmate then, Raizel, muses that she could make a menorah out of spoons, but "in the camp, spoons were valued like gold." In the cold, harsh setting of the camp, the procurement of nine spoons is fraught with drama. A kitchen worker steals two rusty spoons from the garbage-despite the threat of punishment if she were to be caught; another woman bargains away her extra scraps of food. The night before Chanukah, the ninth spoon is found, and by twisting them together Raizel fashions a strangely beautiful menorah, and "the children had a Chanukah to remember." As Oma tells the family story, her grandchildren chime in with the parts they know, promising always to remember. Softly colored illustrations depict the joyful contemporary Chanukah celebration, while muted browns and grays dominate the camp scenes of thin-faced prisoners in ragged clothes. An author's note tells that the story is based on an actual incident and that the prisoners would have appeared even more emaciated in reality, but "the book was designed with sensitivity to our very young audience." The respectful and dramatic narrative conveys the bonds of faith and community that rose from despair to forge a sign of hope.

    Their extraordinary life stories are interwoven with the childhood and later memories of the narrator, Anna, daughter and niece of the two sisters, Hela and Janka. Through the recollections and dreams of these three voices we learn of worlds and people forever lost, of shattered hopes, of the fragility of survival, and of the power of the human spirit.

    The result of the 1994 conference at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the fiftieth anniversary of the deportation of Hungarian Jewry, this anthology examines the effects on Hungary as the last country to be invaded by the Germans. The Nazis' Last Victims questions what Hungarians knew of their impending fate and examines the heightened sense of tension and haunting drama in Hungary, where the largest single killing process of the Holocaust period occurred in the shortest amount of time. Through the combination of two vital components of history writing-the analytical and the recollective-The Nazis' Last Victims probes the destruction of the last remnant of European Jewry in the Holocaust.