Best of
Holocaust

2000

Facing the Lion: Memoirs of a Young Girl in Nazi Europe


Simone Arnold Liebster - 2000
    Then the Nazis march in, demanding complete conformity. Friends become enemies, teachers spout Nazi propaganda, and school officials recruit for the Hitler Youth. Simone's family refuses to hail Hitler as Germany's savior. They are Jehovah's Witnesses, and they reject Nazi racism and violence. The Nazi Lion makes them pay the price.

The Butterfly


Patricia Polacco - 2000
    Until the night Monique encounters "the little ghost" sitting at the end of her bed. When she turns out to be--not a ghost at all--but a young girl named Sevrine, who has been hiding from the Nazis in Monique's own basement, how could Monique not be surprised! Playing upstairs after dark, the two become friends until, in a terrifying moment, they are discovered, sending both of their families into a nighttime flight. In the tradition of Pink and Say, Patricia Polacco once again dips into her own family's history to reveal her Aunt Monique's true story of friendship from the French Resistance.

The Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and Pictures


John K. Roth - 2000
    During World War II, six million Jews—as well as other targeted groups including Poles, the handicapped, and homosexuals—were systematically murdered by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Although the weight and heft of The Holocaust Chronicle cannot capture the immensity of its subject, the book’s 768 pages suggest that the Holocaust is a topic that must be openly confronted. Written and fact-checked by top scholars, the chronicle offers:A 3,000-item timeline pinpointing specific events that contributed to the Holocaust, such as Nazi Germany occupation during World War II, the sealing of urban ghettos in Europe, and the deportation of millions of Jews to death camps.Nearly 2,000 photographs chronicling the Holocaust in starkly visual terms, including images of the massacre of more than 33,000 Ukrainian Jews at Babi Yar and pictures from the liberation of Auschwitz and other concentration camps.Fourteen chapter-opening essays that put the most important years of the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath into perspective, beginning with Hitler’s rise to power and ending with the convictions of such Nazi officials as Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg Trial.More than 250 sidebars detailing the significant places, issues, events, and people of the Holocaust, including Anne Frank and Heinrich Himmler.An extensive prologue and epilogue that discuss the buildup to and aftermath of the Holocaust.* This is an alternate cover of Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and Pictures (ISBN-13: 9781680228328), content is the same. *

The Yellow Star: The Legend of King Christian X of Denmark


Carmen Agra Deedy - 2000
    When the order goes out that all Jews must wear a yellow star on their clothes, the king has an idea that might just work. But it would take the faith and commitment of all Danes.In this retelling of a World War II legend, New York Times best-selling author Carmen Agra Deedy poignantly remind us of the power of a good, wise leader. Paired with Henri S�rensen's arresting full-color portraits, this is a powerful and dignified story of heroic justice.Teacher's Guide available!Bologna Ragazzi Award for Children's Non-FictionChristopher Award (Books for Young People)Jane Addams Peace Prize (Honor Book)ABC Children's Booksellers' Choices (Non-fiction)Notable Books for a Global Society

The Avengers: A Jewish War Story


Rich Cohen - 2000
    What happened to these rebels in the ghetto and in the forest, and how, fighting for the State of Israel, they moved beyond the violence of the Holocaust and made new lives.In 1944, a band of Jewish guerrillas emerged from the Baltic forest to join the Russian army in its attack on Vilna, the capital of Lithuania. The band, called the Avengers, was led by Abba Kovner, a charismatic young poet. In the ghetto, Abba had built bombs, sneaking out through the city's sewer tunnels to sabotage German outposts. Abba's chief lieutenants were two teenage girls, Vitka Kempner and Ruzka Korczak. At seventeen, Vitka and Ruzka were perhaps the most daring partisans in the East, the first to blow up a Nazi train in occupied Europe. Each night, the girls shared a bed with Abba, raising gossip in the ghetto. But what they found was more than temporary solace. It was a great love affair. After the liquidation of the ghetto, the Avengers escaped through the city's sewage tunnels to the forest, where they lived for more than a year in a dugout beside a swamp, fighting alongside other partisan groups, and ultimately bombing the city they loved, destroying Vilna's waterworks and its powerplant in order to pave the way for its liberation.Leaving a devastated Poland behind them, they set off for the cities of Europe: Vitka and Abba to the West, where they would be instrumental in orchestrating the massive Jewish exodus to the biblical homeland, and Ruzka to Palestine, where she would be literally the first person to bring a first hand account of the Holocaust to Jewish leaders. It was in these last terrifying days--with travel in Europe still unsafe for Jews and the extent of the Holocaust still not widely known--that the Avengers hatched their plan for revenge. Before it was over, the group would have smuggled enough poison into Nuremberg to kill ten thousand Nazis. The Avengers is the story of what happened to these rebels in the ghetto and in the forest, and how, fighting for the State of Israel, they moved beyond the violence of the Holocaust and made new lives.From Rich Cohen, one of the preeminent journalists of his generation and author of the highly praised Tough Jews, a powerful exploration of vindication and revenge, of dignity and rebellion, painstakingly recreated through his exclusive access to the Avengers themselves. Written with insight, sensitivity, and the moral force of one of the last great struggles of the Second World War, here is an unforgettable story for our time.

The Children's House of Belsen


Hetty E. Verolme - 2000
    As one of the eldest Hetty became the 'Little Mother' helping to care not only for her siblings but the other children as well. In a direct and powerful style, Hetty recalls one of the remarkable largely untold story of the Holocaust—the extraordinary struggle and survival of this group of 40 children through those terrible years.

Witness: Voices from the Holocaust


Joshua M. Greene - 2000
    For the past two decades, the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University has sought to preserve the human side of this inhuman era by videotaping testimonies from those who lived through the Nazi regime, a project that has led to an acclaimed documentary film and this extraordinary book.Fifty-five years after the end of World War II, the Holocaust continues to cast a dark shadow. For the past two decades, the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University has sought to preserve the human side of this inhuman era by videotaping testimonies from those who lived through the Nazi regime, a project that has led to an acclaimed documentary film and this extraordinary book. The Wall Street Journal called the documentary "eloquent and unsparing," and Daily Variety said it was "a staggeringly powerful record." The Washington Times said that Witness "gives new meaning to the term documentary. [It is] as pure a document as I have ever seen on television." In Witness: Voices from the Holocaust, Joshua M. Greene and Shiva Kumar weave a single and compelling narrative from the first-person accounts of twenty-seven witnesses, including camp survivors, American military personnel, a member of the Hitler Youth, a Jesuit priest, and resistance fighters. The vivid and detailed memories of these witnesses testify to the continuing impact of this human catastrophe, and their impassioned words lend immediacy to events that resonate to this day.

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport


Mark Jonathan Harris - 2000
    For nine months before the outbreak of World War II, Britain conducted an extraordinary rescue mission. It opened its doors to over 10,000 endangered children-90 per cent of them Jewish-from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. These children were taken into foster homes and hostels in Britain, expecting eventually to be reunited with their parents. Most of the children never saw their families again.Into the Arms of Strangers recounts the remarkable story of this rescue operation, known as the Kindertransport. It contains stories in their own words from the child survivors, rescuers, parents, and foster parents. The stories are heartbreaking, but they are also inspiring. These are the stories of those who survived with the help of others; they are stories about the strength and resolve of children; and most astonishing, these are stories not yet heard about the Holocaust.

The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany


Martin Goldsmith - 2000
    Later that year, the Jdische Kulturbund, or Jewish Cultural Association, was created to allow Jewish artists to perform for Jewish audiences. Here is the riveting and emotional story of Gunther Goldschmidt and Rosemarie Gumpert, two courageous Jewish musicians who struggled to perform under unimaginable circumstances and found themselves falling in love in a country bent on destroying them.

Fireflies In The Dark: The Story Of Friedl Dicker Brandeis And The Children Of Terezin


Susan Goldman Rubin - 2000
    What did she fill it with? Art supplies. Brushes, paints, and paper were her luggage when she was forced by Nazi soldiers to move to the Terezin concentration camp. An artist and art instructor, Freidl used her limited supplies to bring a world of beauty and fantasy to children in the camp--most of whom would die tragically at Auschwitz. This story reveals how flashes of kindness can bring joy and relief--like fireflies in the dark.The story is enhanced with photographs and reproductions of the amazing artwork completed by Freidl Dicker-Brandeis, her students, and her colleagues during their time at Terezin.

Never Again: A History of the Holocaust


Martin Gilbert - 2000
    Representing 40 years of research that Gilbert began in Poland in 1959, this comprehensive, illustrated volume traces the history of the Jewish people in Europe before, during, and after the Holocaust. Gilbert brilliantly blends this great swath of history with fresh, detailed accounts of individual drama: the rise of Nazism in Germany, the Jewish children who found refuge in Britain, the rejected refugees of the U.S.S. St Louis, the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, the stories of Anne Frank, Oscar Schindler, and the children of Izieu, as well as the reflections of survivors today. Never Again paints a deeply personal and cultural portrait of the Holocaust. Gilbert's sharp historical knowledge makes this work on the Holocaust enormously informative and tangibly real.

An Unbroken Chain: My Journey Through the Nazi Holocaust


Henry A. Oertelt - 2000
    A Holocaust survivor chronicles the chain of events that kept him alive, providing first-hand accounts of Hitler's rise to power, Kristallnacht, and confinement in various concentration camps.

The German Trauma: Experiences and Reflections 1938-2001


Gitta Sereny - 2000
    This book gathers together the best of her writing on Germany from over sixty years. It amounts to an extraordinary portrait of the country and its people, how they have come to terms with their Nazi past, both collectively and in specific instances - and how the burden of their guilt has altered the national identity. She writes about key individuals - Stangl, Speer - and the questions which their lives raise. The penetration and conviction of her writing throughout is startling and she constantly reminds us why it is important to consider the questions she addresses - war guilt, holocaust denial and the temptations of obedience.

The Holocaust Chronicle


Publications International - 2000
    Recounts the long, complex, anguished story of the most terrible crime of the 20th century. Preface by Michael Berenbaum, Ph.D, former Project Director, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.Nearly 2,000 extraordinary photographs, many never before published.More than 2,000 captions and sidebars on the most significant Holocaust-related topics.The most thorough, detailed time-line about the Holocaust ever published.In-depth essays covering each year of the Holocaust, 1933 through 1946. An extensive prologue (1500 BCE to 1932) and epilogue (1947 to today) that discuss the buildup to and aftermath of the Holocaust.

A Special Fate: Chiune Sugihara: Hero of the Holocaust


Alison Leslie Gold - 2000
    This book recounts one of the largest rescues of Jews during the Holocaust.

Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened & Why Do They Say It?


Michael Shermer - 2000
    While many dismiss Holocaust deniers as antisemitic neo-Nazis not deserving response, historians Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman have immersed themselves in their minds & culture. They've interviewed deniers, read their literature, monitored their Web sites, attended their conferences, debated them, even traveled thru Europe to conduct research at the extermination camps. Uncovering a complex social movement, the authors go deeper than ever before in not only trying to understand deniers' motives, but also refuting their points. In the process, they show how one can be certain the Holocaust happened &, for that matter, how one confirms any historical event.List of IllustrationsForewordA Note on TerminologyAcknowledgmentsIntroductionFree Speech & HistoryInside the Denial MovementArguments & RefutationsTruth & HistoryEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndex

Fate and Destiny: From the Holocaust to the State of Israel


Joseph B. Soloveitchik - 2000
    In it Rabbi Soloveitchik presents an extended theological meditation on the Holocaust and the rise of the State of Israel, the Jewish covenant of faith, and the covenant of fate and destiny which links all Jews, religious, irreligious, and nonreligious. Rabbi Dr. Walter S. Wurzberger, a prominent discipline of the Rav, has provided an introduction.

The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War's Aftermath


Gerda Weissmann Klein - 2000
    Over fifty years ago, Gerda Weissmann was barely alive at the end of a 350-mile death march that took her from a slave labor camp in Germany to the Czech border. On May 7, 1945, the American military stormed the area, and the first soldier to approach Gerda was Kurt Klein. She guided him to her fellow prisoners who lay sick and dying on the ground, and quoted Goethe: "Noble be man, merciful and good." Perhaps it was her irony, her composure, her evident compassion in the face of tragedy, that struck Kurt Klein. A great love had begun. Forced to separate just weeks after liberation and hours after their engagement, Gerda and Kurt began a correspondence that lasted until their reunion and wedding in Paris a year later. Their poignant letters reflect upon the horrors of war and genocide, but above all, upon the rapture and salvation of true love.

A Survivors' Haggadah


Yosef Dov Sheinson - 2000
    For five decades this unique book was all but forgotten. Now JPS is proud to issue a facsimile edition, previously translated into English and published by the American Jewish Historical Society only as a limited edition. This is a haggadah written for and truly dedicated to the She'erith Hapletah, the Saved Remnant, “the few who escaped.” Interwoven with the traditional Passover liturgy are two stories: that of the deliverance from Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Holocaust story of those Jews who survived Hitler. Bold illustrations vividly associate the biblical Exodus with the liberation from Nazi horror.

Hide: A Child's View of the Holocaust


Naomi Samson - 2000
    For nearly two years they were forced to take refuge in a crawl space beneath a barn. In this tense and moving memoir, the author tells of her terror and confusion as a child literally buried alive. Her family owed their survival to the reluctant and constantly wavering support of the barn owners, gentiles torn between compassion for Naomi’s family and fear of a Nazi death sentence if the family was discovered.

Saving the Jews: Amazing Stories of Men and Women Who Defied the "Final Solution"


Mordecai Paldiel - 2000
    This is their story.

A Holocaust Reader: Responses to the Nazi Extermination


Michael L. Morgan - 2000
    It surveys the major themes raised by the Holocaust and examines the most provocative and influential responses to these topics and to the Holocaust itself. Organized in a roughly chronological pattern, the volume opens with early responses from the postwar period. Subsequent sections cover the emergence of central theological statements in the late 1960s and 1970s, the development of post-Holocaust thinking in the 1970s and 1980s, and burgeoning reflections on the significance of the death camps. Connections between the Holocaust and important events and episodes in Western culture in the 1980s and 1990s are also discussed. A Holocaust Reader: Responses to the Nazi Extermination offers selections from Theodor W. Adorno, Jean Am�ry, Hannah Arendt, Omer Bartov, Eliezer Berkovits, Michael Andr� Bernstein, Martin Buber, Arthur A. Cohen, A. Roy Eckardt, Emil L. Fackenheim, Saul Friedlander, Amos Funkenstein, Irving Greenberg, Andreas Huyssen, Hans Jonas, Berel Lang, Primo Levi, Johann Baptist Metz, Richard Rubenstein, Kenneth Seeskin, Franklin Sherman, David Tracy, Elie Wiesel, Robert E. Willis, and Michael Wyschogrod. Ideal for courses in the Holocaust, Jewish studies, and the philosophy of religion, this extensive collection will also be of interest to general readers and scholars.

Hearts of Fire


Ellen Brazer - 2000
    Raised in Berlin, Germany, Otto and Ilya are classic products of poverty and abuse. Brilliant, handsome and despotic, Otto maneuvers his way into the twisted bowels of the Nazi inner circle. Simultaneously, we follow the live of Morgan Rabinowiszch. Born into a pious Jewish family in Vilna, Poland, she is a gifted and exceptionally beautiful girl. Determined to become an actress, she makes the momentous decision to break with the traditions of her faith. From pre-war Paris to post-war Russia, from the malaria- infested swamps of Israel to the greed-filled corridors of modern Washington, this historical saga is a story of duplicity and outrace, courage, determination, love and triumph.

Torn Thread


Anne Isaacs - 2000
    There they must spin thread on treacherous machinery to make clothing and blankets for the German Army. As Eva struggles amid ever worsening dangers to save her life and that of her sick sister, readers witness how two teenagers strive to create home and family amidst inhumanity and chaos. Written in exquisite prose, this story of heartbreak and hope that is rich in detail and symbolism will deeply move readers of all ages.

At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture


James Edward Young - 2000
    Young was invited to join a German commission appointed to find an appropriate design for a national memorial in Berlin to the European Jews killed in World War II. As the only foreigner and only Jew on the panel, Young gained a unique perspective on Germany’s fraught efforts to memorialize the Holocaust. In this book, he tells for the first time the inside story of Germany’s national Holocaust memorial and his own role in it.In exploring Germany’s memorial crisis, Young also asks the more general question of how a generation of contemporary artists can remember an event like the Holocaust, which it never knew directly. Young examines the works of a number of vanguard artists in America and Europe—including Art Spiegelman, Shimon Attie, David Levinthal, and Rachel Whiteread—all born after the Holocaust but indelibly shaped by its memory as passed down through memoirs, film, photographs, and museums. In the context of the moral and aesthetic questions raised by these avant-garde projects, Young offers fascinating insights into the controversy surrounding Berlin’s newly opened Jewish museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind, as well as Germany’s soon-to-be-built national Holocaust memorial, designed by Peter Eisenman.Illustrated with striking images in color and black-and-white, At Memory’s Edge is the first book in any language to chronicle these projects and to show how we remember the Holocaust in the after-images of its history.

Dissecting the Holocaust: The Growing Critique of 'truth' and 'memory'


Germar Rudolf - 2000
    There is plenty of "evidence" in this book for them.

Dangerous Diplomacy: The Story of Carl Lutz, Rescuer of 62,000 Hungarian Jews


Theo Tschuy - 2000
    Finally now available in English, this carefully researched biography tells how Lutz, as Swiss Consul in Budapest from 1942 to 1945, defied diplomatic rules and conventions by issuing protective papers for tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews destined for the death camps. Dangerous Diplomacy recounts Lutz's selfless odyssey with compelling writing complemented by a 16-page photo section.

Paper Gauze Ballerina: Memoir of a Holocaust Survivor


Sophie Miklos - 2000
    This book is one person's plight to rise above the ashes of the Holocaust and become a whole and functioning human being again. It will make you aware of how a genocide and the aftermath of a genocide extends through a lifetime, and sometimes for generations to come. With the help of this book, the author ceased to remain a victim, and most of all, got rid of all her feelings of revenge, anger, and hate, bottled up from the injustices done to her during incarceration. She believes that those feelings are the major precursors to another genocide. Paper Gauze Ballerina is a must for educators to read. It is a unique book which transforms a negative experience to a positive outlook.

Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945


Paul Weindling - 2000
    Paul Weindling examines how German bacteriology became increasingly racialized, and how it sought to eradicate the disease by the eradication of the perceived carriers. Delousing became a key feature of Nazi preventive medicine during the Holocaust, and gassing a favored means of eliminating typhus.

False Papers: Deception and Survival in the Holocaust


Robert Melson - 2000
    Armed with false papers identifying them as aristocratic Gentiles, this Jewish family took shelter in the very shadow of the Nazi machine.

The Murder of the Jews in Latvia 1941-1945


Bernhard Press - 2000
    This book is an account of life and death during the subsequent Nazi reign of terror. Press describes his escape from the Riga ghetto, his three years in hiding, and the trials that awaited the surviving Jews of Riga after it was "liberated" by the Red Army. Recounting his own harrowing experience and detailing the plight of Eastern European Jews faced with the anti-Semitism of their homelands, the Germans, and the Soviets, Press recovers a lost chapter in the history of the Holocaust.

Emmanuel Ringelblum: Historian of the Warsaw Ghetto


Mark Beyer - 2000
    Emmanuel Ringelblum was a resident who found a unique way of fighting injustice. His tireless efforts to record the life experience of the ghetto residents resulted in the Oneg Shabbat archives.

The Holocaust (Turning Points in World History)


Mitchell G. Bard - 2000
    This unprecedented mass extermination was responsible for nearly 6 million deaths.