Although the charges are denounced as preposterous, his accuser is convinced he is right and engages attorney Catherine Lockhart to bring Rosenzweig to justice. Solomon persuades attorney Catherine Lockhart to take his case, revealing that the true Piatek was abandoned as a child and raised by Solomon's own family only to betray them during the Nazi occupation. But has Solomon accused the right man?Once We Were Brothers is Ronald H. Balson's compelling tale of two boys and a family who struggle to survive in war-torn Poland, and a young love that struggles to endure the unspeakable cruelty of the Holocaust. Two lives, two worlds, and sixty years converge in an explosive race to redemption that makes for a moving and powerful tale of love, survival, and ultimately the triumph of the human spirit.

    The Nazis have begun their brutal march through her hometown of Radom, Poland. Dina’s happy world comes tumbling down and her family will never be the same. As the Nazi regime implements the systematic annihilation of every Jewish man, woman, and child throughout Europe, Dina and her family do everything they can to stay together. But can they make it through the war unscathed?As Dina matures from child to teenager, every day brings a daunting new challenge to survive. When she meets Natek Korman, a young man with sky-blue eyes that crinkle when he smiles, Dina experiences the first blush of love and a longing for a normal life. But what could be normal in a world of endless terror and numbing fear?From the harsh day-to-day existence in the Jewish ghetto under Nazi occupation to the grueling toil of the ruthless workcamps to the utter despair of the death camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belson, Dina’s story of survival is a heart-rending testament to the power of the human spirit.The Last Daughter is an extraordinary story of an ordinary girl. Based on the remarkable true story of Dina Frydman, a Jewish girl from Radom, Poland who is thrust into an unforgettable journey from the dawn of World War Two to the darkest days of the Holocaust. You will never forget Dina nor the millions of others like her.

    Soviet and German troops fight from house to house in the shattered, corpse-strewn suburbs of Budapest. Crazed Hungarian fascists join with die-hard Nazis to slaughter Jews day and night, turning the Danube blood-red. In less than six months, thirty-eight-year-old SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann has sent over half a million Hungarians to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Now all that prevents him from liquidating Europe’s last Jewish ghetto is an unarmed Swedish diplomatic envoy named Raoul Wallenberg.The Envoy is the stirring tale of how one man made the greatest difference in the face of untold evil. The legendary Oscar Schindler saved hundreds, but Raoul Wallenberg did what no other individual or nation managed to do: He saved more than 100,000 Jewish men, women, and children from extermination.Written with Alex Kershaw’s customary narrative verve, The Envoy is a fast-paced, nonfiction thriller that brings to life one of the darkest and yet most inspiring chapters of twentieth century history. It is an epic for the ages.

    Life is good, and revolves aroundSabbath meals shared with her happy family.With the outbreak of World War II, their livesare changed. the family are forced to move from their comfortable home into cramped housing, andwhen the Nazis arrive to finally take the family away they don't know what is to become of them.But Rachel's father gives her instructions that save her life. He also tells her not to speak.Rachel remains quiet for the rest of the war, but what happened to her family? Will Rachelregain her voice now that she really needs it?Ages: 9 - 13

    Despite the deepest suffering and the most profound loss, Eva was able to rebuild her life, and with her husband, also a survivor, raise a family in America – in the city, suburbs, and on the farm. Lehrhaus is proud to publish the second edition, which includes Eva’s eventful return to Poland in 2013 with 16 of her closest relatives spanning three generations.

    Enamored with a man named Arno, Zdenka Fantlová, a young Czech-Jewish woman, is separated from her soul-mate due to the German invasion. During a brief reunion, Arno proposes to 19-year-old Zdenka with a ring made from tin. Following Zdenka from Terezin through Auschwitz and Kurzbach to Bergen–Belsen, this heartbreaking account dwells less on the horrors of extermination camps and more on the compassion of the friends and family who shared in her ordeal.

    Adapted from her original autobiography written for adults, this moving memoir—edited and pared back for a younger audience—reveals how Hetty and her siblings survived after they were taken from their parents and encamped at the Children’s House in Belsen, Germany. A remarkable and largely untold account of the Holocaust, this work is an inspirational story of the enduring spirit of children.

    Rich with powerful never-before-published details from the author’s interviews with more than 150 U.S. soldiers who liberated the Nazi death camps, The Liberators is an essential addition to the literature of World War II—and a stirring testament to Allied courage in the face of inconceivable atrocities.Taking us from the beginnings of the liberators’ final march across Germany to V-E Day and beyond, Michael Hirsh allows us to walk in their footsteps, experiencing the journey as they themselves experienced it. But this book is more than just an in-depth account of the liberation. It reveals how profoundly these young men were affected by what they saw—the unbelievable horror and pathos they felt upon seeing “stacks of bodies like cordwood” and “skeletonlike survivors” in camp after camp. That life-altering experience has stayed with them to this very day. It’s been well over half a century since the end of World War II, and they still haven’t forgotten what the camps looked like, how they smelled, what the inmates looked like, and how it made them feel. Many of the liberators suffer from what’s now called post-traumatic stress disorder and still experience Holocaust-related nightmares.  Here we meet the brave souls who—now in their eighties and nineties—have chosen at last to share their stories. Corporal Forrest Robinson saw masses of dead bodies at Nordhausen and was so horrified that he lost his memory for the next two weeks. Melvin Waters, a 4-F volunteer civilian ambulance driver, recalls that a woman at Bergen-Belsen “fought us like a cat because she thought we were taking her to the crematory.” Private Don Timmer used his high school German to interpret for General Dwight Eisenhower during the supreme Allied commander’s visit to Ohrdruf, the first camp liberated by the Americans. And Phyllis Lamont Law, an army nurse at Mauthausen-Gusen, recalls the shock and, ultimately, “the hope” that “you can save a few.” From Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany to Mauthausen in Austria, The Liberators offers readers an intense and unforgettable look at the Nazi death machine through the eyes of the men and women who were our country’s witnesses to the Holocaust. The liberators’ recollections are historically important, vivid, riveting, heartbreaking, and, on rare occasions, joyous and uplifting. This book is their opportunity, perhaps for the last time, to tell the world.

    Hershl Sperling was one of them. He escaped. Why then, 50 years later, did he jump to his death from a bridge in Scotland? The answer lies in a long-forgotten, published account of the Treblinka death camp, written by Hershl Sperling himself in the months after liberation, discovered in his briefcase after his suicide, and reproduced here for the first time. Including previously unpublished photographs, this book traces the life of a man who survived five concentration camps, and details what he had to do to achieve this. Hershl's story, from his childhood in a small Polish town to the bridge in faraway Scotland, is testament to the lasting torment of those very few who survived the Nazis' most efficient and gruesome death factory. The author personally follows in his subject's footsteps from Klobuck, to Treblinka, to Glasgow.

    What Papa Told Me is the story of Murray, a young Jewish boy from Poland whose courage and sheer will to live helped him survive eight different labor and concentration camps in the Holocaust, start a new life in America, and keep a family intact in the aftermath of his wife's suicide - one of the Nazis' last victims.

    The love of family and friends offer no protection against the menace of the Nazi regime that begins to siphon off the worldly and spiritual goods of Radom's Jews. We witness Dina's battle to survive and understand the deadly apocalypse that transforms her from an innocent child to a teenage/adult. When her family is deported and murdered at Treblinka she finds safety at a forced labor facility where she experiences her first taste of love when she at thirteen meets Natek Korman, a passionate sixteen year old who rekindles her will to live. Forced by the Nazis to separate, the young lovers vow to find each other after the war. From work camps to death camps, Dina survives against all odds. The aftermath of six years of death and destruction presents a new obstacle, how to live? With the war over Dina travels from a German castle to a DP facility and finally a school for orphans as she struggles to reclaim her life. In 1945, she is reunited with Natek Korman only to face the most important decision of her life. She chooses to follow her dream. In the Face of Evil is a timeless story of the upheavals of war, the tenacious endurance of love and the resilience of the human spirit. It is an epic journey through the nightmare of the Holocaust-the single most defining moment in modern history, as told through the eyes of a young girl.

    All at once the life of her tranquil family became a Hell. Forbidden Strawberries is the riveting auto-biography of Cipora Hurwitz, an innocent young girl caught up in the Maelstrom of the Holocaust.Her eldest brother survived the war by the skin of his teeth by fleeing to the Soviet Union. The second brother was murdered when only sixteen. Her parents, by great efforts, succeeded in hiding their little daughter and thereby save her life. Devastatingly, they themselves were unable to escape the hands of the murderers.Cipora, as yet a young child and an orphan, was miraculously saved after surviving the Budzyn camps and the Majdanek extermination camp. The author relates the story of her life during the Holocaust to a delegation of Hashomer Hatzair youth and Israeli High School students on a mission to the death camps in Poland. In Forbidden Strawberries, Cipora presents her testimony on what transpired to her family and friends who were exterminated, thus paying tribute to their memory.

    Within days, Germany crossed the Polish border and randomly, to assert their intentions, exterminated Jews and Poles. The Siegreich family relocated further into Poland, to Bedzin, hoping the war would pass quickly. It was not to be. Their train enroute to their new home was attacked and they lost many of their belongings and some friends. Within days of setting up in Bedzin, while out shopping for food Sigi was picked up by German soldiers and taken off with other Polish citizens where he was forced to dig a large trench. The German soldiers then shot the Polish men, one by one. In the first miracle of his life, Sigi was saved by a man who grabbed him and threw him into the trench before him. And Sigi's new life of horror, pain, drudgery, miracles, and adventures began.

    In 1972 the Hamburg State Court acquitted Walter Becker, the German chief of police in the Polish city of Starachowice, of war crimes committed against Jews. Thirty years before, Becker had been responsible for liquidating the nearby Jewish ghetto, sending nearly 4,000 Jews to their deaths at Treblinka and 1,600 to slave-labor factories. The shocking acquittal, delivered despite the incriminating eyewitness testimony of survivors, drives this author’s inquiry. Drawing on the rich testimony of survivors of the Starachowice slave-labor camps, Christopher R. Browning examines the experiences and survival strategies of the Jewish prisoners and the policies and personnel of the Nazi guard. From the killings in the market square in 1942 through the succession of brutal camp regimes, there are stories of heroism, of corruption and retribution, of desperate choices forced on husbands and wives, parents and children. In the end, the ties of family and neighbor are the sinews of survival. 10 photos.

    In Stuart Dauermann's review, he says, "This book is the remarkable story of a remarkable woman. It is a story inexplicable apart from the reality of God. I met the author in the 1970s in Israel when she was in her 70s and was profoundly moved by her intelligence, the attentiveness with which she interacted with me, and by the gracefulness of her hands and body movements. A sculptor and dancer in her youth, her body bore everlastingly the characteristics of her craft and giftedness. My meeting lasted perhaps 45 minutes, but I have never forgotten it. Nor have I forgotten Rose's book. Here you too will meet her in all her gracefulness and intelligence. But most importantly, you will meet her faith in Yeshua, Jesus her Messiah, a faith which transformed her life and which shone brightly in the concentration camps where even people who despised her for being a Jew who believed in "that man" were drawn to her again and again to drink from the wellsprings of faith and hope which sustained her, and them. Come, read, and meet Rose Warmer. As for me, so for you, it will be an unforgettable and transforming experience."

    Her epic life becomes a window into the author’s own past and the key to discovering his Jewish roots. Raised in a devout Roman Catholic family in the Netherlands, Paul Glaser was shocked to learn as an adult of his father's Jewish heritage. Grappling with his newfound identity and stunned by his father’s secrecy, Paul set out to discover what happened to his family during World War II and what had caused the long-standing rift between his father and his estranged aunt, Rosie, who moved to Sweden after the war. Piecing together his aunt’s wartime diaries, photographs, and letters, Paul reconstructed the dramatic story of a woman who was caught up in the tragic sweep of World War II. Rosie Glaser was a magnetic force – hopeful, exuberant, and cunning. An emancipated woman who defied convention, she toured Western Europe teaching ballroom dancing to high acclaim, falling in love hard and often. By the age of twenty-five, she had lost the great love of her life in an aviation accident, married the wrong man, and sought consolation in the arms of yet another. Then the Nazis seized power. For Rosie, a nonpracticing Jew, this marked the beginning of an extremely dangerous ordeal. After operating an illegal dance school in her parents’ attic, Rosie was betrayed by both her ex-husband and her lover, taken prisoner by the SS and sent to a series of concentration camps. But her enemies were unable to destroy her and, remarkably, she survived, in part by giving dance and etiquette lessons to her captors. Rosie was an entertainer at heart, and her vivacious spirit, her effervescent charm, and her incredible resourcefulness kept her alive amid horrendous tragedy. Of the twelve hundred people who arrived with her at Auschwitz, only eight survived. Illustrated with more than ninety photos, Dancing with the Enemy recalls an extraordinary life marked by love, betrayal, and fierce determination. It is being published in ten languages.

    The Holocaust Sites of Europe offers the first comprehensive guide to these sites, including much practical information as well as the historical context. It serves as an indispensable guide for anyone seeking to add another layer to their understanding of the Holocaust by visiting these important sites for themselves.  Including not only the notorious concentration and death camps, such as Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, but also lesser known examples, such as Sered’ in Slovakia, The Holocaust Sites of Europe incorporates detailed descriptions of massacre sites, ghettos, “Euthanasia” centers and Roma and Sinti sites that witnessed similar crimes. Extensive reference to the many museums and memorials that commemorate the Holocaust complete this guide.

    66 pages of summaries and analysis on The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.This study guide includes the following sections: Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion.

    Franklin argues that the memory-obsessedculture of the last few decades has led us to mistakenly focus on testimony as the only valid form of Holocaust writing. As even the most canonical texts have come under scrutiny for their fidelity to the facts, we have lost sight of the essential role that imagination plays in the creation of anyliterary work, including the memoir.Taking a fresh look at memoirs by Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, and examining novels by writers such as Piotr Rawicz, Jerzy Kosinski, W.G. Sebald, and Wolfgang Koeppen, Franklin makes a persuasive case for literature as an equally vital vehicle for understanding the Holocaust (and for memoir as anequally ambiguous form). The result is a study of immense depth and range that offers a lucid view of an often cloudy field.

    In 1938 Berlin, Germany, a cat sees Rosenstrasse change from a peaceful neighborhood of Jews and Gentiles to an unfriendly place where, one November night, men in brown shirts destroy Jewish-owned businesses and arrest or kill Jewish people.

    The discovery of more than 1,500 prized paintings and drawings in a private Munich residence, as well as a recent movie about Allied attempts to recover European works of art, have brought Nazi plundering back into the headlines, but the thievery was far from being limited to works of art. From 1942 onwards, ordinary Parisian Jews—mostly poor families and recent immigrants from Eastern Europe—were robbed, not of sculptures or paintings, but of toys, saucepans, furniture, and sheets. Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews tells how this vast enterprise of plunder was implemented in the streets of Paris by analyzing images from an album of photographs found in the Federal Archives of Koblenz. Brought from Paris in 1945, the photographs were cataloged by the staff of the Munich Central Collecting Point. Beyond bearing witness to the petty acts of larceny, these images provide crucial information on how the Germans saw their work. They enable us to grasp the “Nazi gaze” and to confront the issue of the relation between greed and mass destruction.

    This pioneering two-volume encyclopedia gathers data from historical studies, testimonies, and documents dealing with more than 1,100 ghettos throughout Eastern Europe.This encyclopedia offers detailed entries on the various ghettos into which the Jews of Eastern Europe were confined during the Holocaust. Entries on each ghetto are written by scholars and specialists on their topic and include location, wartime name, and geographical coordinates, and, for the larger ghettos, information on life before World War II and during the Soviet occupation era, German (Nazi) occupation, ghetto structure, institutional life and leadership, terror and killing operations, underground resistance, and the number of survivors at liberation. They also describe the differences between each ghetto and examine the difficulties of daily life in the ghetto, coping strategies, and different forms of resistance.The first reference book of its kind, The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos during the Holocaust is a valuable resource for diverse disciplines and is supplemented by a special DVD of wartime footage of ghettos filmed in real time during the Holocaust.

    The setting is the summer of 1944 in Budapest during the time of the German occupation, when the Jews were confined to ghetto houses but not transported to Auschwitz in boxcars, as was the rest of the Hungarian Jewry living in the countryside. Provided with food and support by their former nanny, Erzsi, Ozsváth’s family stays in a ghetto house where a group of children play theater, tell stories to one another, invent games to pass time, and wait for liberation.In the fall of that year, however, things take a turn for the worse. Rounded up under horrific circumstances, forced to go on death marches, and shot on the banks of the Danube by the thousands, the Jews of Budapest are threatened with immediate destruction. Ozsváth and her family survive because of Erzsi’s courage and humanity. Cheating the watching eyes of the murderers, she brings them food and runs with them from house to house under heavy bombardment in the streets.As a scholar, critic, and translator, Ozsváth has written extensively about Holocaust literature and the Holocaust in Hungary. Now, she records her own history in this clear-eyed, moving account. When the Danube Ran Red combines an exceptional grounding in Hungarian history with the pathos of a survivor and the eloquence of a poet to present a truly singular work.

    When a Ukrainian farmer agreed to hide the small family in his hayloft, no one dreamed that they would be there for almost two years. When the Russians liberated the area, the family was forced to leave their hiding place and join the advancing army. After the tragic death of Erna's mother, the girls and their father struggled for survival and to get home to France. Erna never spoke of her experiences to anyone for almost forty years until she heard a stranger's words of hate on the television. Faced with long-repressed memories, Erna had to learn how to cope with her past.

    The novella was composed in Terezín as a surprise birthday present for his wife, Irena, and was produced with the conspiratorial artistic assistance of his young daughter Helga. Before his deportation to Auschwitz in October 1944, Otto Weiss gave the novella to a relative remaining in the ghetto, who hid it in the Magdeburg barracks. And God Saw That It Was Bad relates the experiences of God, who comes down to Terezín incognito, in human form, as Aaaron Gottesmann, in order to examine the situation personally. God finds his encounter with the reality of this ghetto most disturbing, and through him the author exposes the truth of life in Terezín. The result is a rare, unique literary document from the Holocaust. Weiss was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in October 1944. His wife and daughter survived and retrieved the book. Foreword and original illustrations are by the author’s daughter, artist, Helga Weissova-Hoškova; Afterword and explanatory notes by historian Ruth Bondy.

    One hundred thirteen of those taken into custody, several of them priests and nuns, perished at Auschwitz and other concentration camps. They were murdered in retaliation for the anti-Nazi pastoral letter written by the Dutch Catholic bishops.While Saint Teresa Benedicta is the most famous member of this group, having been canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1998, all of them deserve the title of martyr, for they were killed not only because they were Jews but also because of the faith of the Church, which had compelled the Dutch bishops to protest the Nazi regime. Through extensive research in both original and secondary sources, P.W.F.M. Hamans has compiled these martyrs’ biographies, several of them detailed and accompanied by photographs. Included in this volume are some remarkable conversion stories, including that of Edith Stein, the German philosopher who had entered the Church in 1922 and later became a Carmelite nun, taking the name Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.Several of the witnesses chronicled here had already suffered for their faith in Christ before falling victim to Hitler’s “Final Solution”, enduring both rejection by their own people, including family members, and persecution by the so-called Christian society in which they lived. Among these were those who, also like Sister Teresa Benedicta, perceived the cross they were being asked to bear and accepted it willingly for the salvation of the world. Illustrated

    The book goes beyond previous studies, and challenges claims that Jewish women were not sexually violated during the Holocaust. This anthology by an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars addresses topics such as rape, forced prostitution, assaults on childbearing, artistic representations of sexual violence, and psychological insights into survivor trauma. These subjects have been relegated to the edges or completely left out of Holocaust history, and this book aims to shift perceptions and promote new discourse.

    Nath’s biggest success is the sustained atmospheric tension that he creates somewhat effortlessly."- Little Interpretations"A haunting and bittersweet novel that stays with you long after the final chapter – always the sign of a really well-written and praiseworthy story. It would also make an excellent screenplay."- Historical Novels Review - Editor's ChoiceNazi-occupied Aquitaine, 1943: A beautiful young woman is found murdered in the shadow of the Bergerac Prefecture. Auguste Ran, Assistant Chief of Police, suspects Brunner, a German Security Police Major, of the crime. The more Auguste investigates, the more obsessed he becomes with bringing down the seemingly untouchable Brunner. Auguste begins to realise he has been conveniently ignoring the Nazi atrocities going on around him, and understands too late the human cost of his own participation in the internment of the local Jewish population.Driven by conscience and struggling with his Catholic religious beliefs, his actions start to put his own family at risk. Harbouring the daughter of his lifelong Jewish friend Pierre, they are forced into a desperate trek towards neighbouring Switzerland, pursued all the way by the German Sicherheitspolizei.

    What enabled millions of Germans to perpetrate or condone the murder of the Jews? In this illuminating book, Thomas Kühne offers a provocative answer. In addition to the hatred of Jews or coercion that created a genocidal society, he contends, the desire for a united “people’s community” made Germans conform and join together in mass crime.Exploring private letters, diaries, memoirs, secret reports, trial records, and other documents, the author shows how the Nazis used such common human needs as community, belonging, and solidarity to forge a nation conducting the worst crime in history.

    At the 71st Academy Awards, Benigni won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the film won both the Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

    The first book on the subject in English, it details the danger and complexity behind Zegota rescue attempts, clarifying the relationship of the Germans, who had total control; the Poles, who were relegated to sub-human status and treated as slave labor; and the Jews, designated nonhuman and collectively condemned to death.Illuminating the moral dilemmas that arose as one life was pitted against another under the lawless apartheid conditions created by the Nazis, Code Name: Zegota explores the critical situation in occupied Poland and the personalities that responded to desperate conditions with a mix of courage and creativity. It profiles the key players and the network behind them and describes the sophisticated organization and its mode of operation. The cast of characters ranges from members of prewar Poland's cultural and political elite to Girl Guides and Boy Scouts, who worked as couriers. As this inspiring book shows, all of these brave souls risked torture, concentration camps, and death--and many paid the price.

    Fleeing by foot and train, deep into Ukraine and beyond, the teens spend a brutal winter in a town near Stalingrad, where they nearly perish from hunger and cold. In July of 1942, they escape again ahead of the Germans' onslaught. The siblings' saga of loss, courage, and endurance is interlaced with accounts of critical events of the war and of the annihilation of the Jews in Ukraine, offering an important historical narrative of the challenges wartime refugees faced in the Soviet Union."It's very well-written and tells an extraordinary story with much passion, empathy and skill." - Omer Bartov, professor of history, Brown University"Michael portrays in shattering detail the improbable survival of most Polish Jews who eluded the Holocaust by fleeing to the Soviet Union. The memoir offers a novel, absolutely essential perspective on the catastrophic events of World War II." - Atina Grossmann, professor of history, Cooper Union, New York"This unbelievable, yet true, unique story will help teachers meet the NJ mandate that all students must learn about bias, prejudice and bigotry through the teaching of the Holocaust and genocide." - Dr. Paul B. Winkler, Executive Director, NJ Commission on Holocaust EducationMichael Kesler, a Ph.D. chemical engineer and a graduate of MIT and NYU, has, since retirement, edited and published his late wife's book, Grit, by Regina Kesler, M.D. He is completing a novel, Hurdles, that looks at the lives of family members whose mother and wife falls ill and succumbs to cancer.Publisher's Website: http: //www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/titl...

    The rules have changed. There are no rules. Nazi Germany, 1945. Hitler Youth on suicide missions...old men hanged for desertion ...marauding slave laborers...homeless Germans clogging roads...and looted art hidden all over. As Hitler's Germany thrashes in its death throes, Lt. Gina Cortazzo follows close behind the American front to rescue art stolen by the Nazis. Her success awaits the capture of Alt Aussee, the salt mine where the thousands of stolen masterpieces in Hitler's private collection are hidden. But SS Brigadefuhrer Reinhard Hofmann is also heading there with his crack forces, on his way to establish a final fortress where Nazism can hold out. And he is ready to carry out the Fuhrer's final order: destroy the entire collection, should it be in danger of falling into enemy hands. Look Long into the Abyss paints a chilling and vivid picture of the last days of World War II. The cast of characters includes Sgt. Bill Terrill, who saves Gina's life as they cross paths with suicidal Hitlerjugend; Frieda, the mother of a Hitler Youth fighting with Hofmann; Stanislaus, the Polish slave laborer with whom Frieda and her daughter form an unlikely alliance; and Father Hieronymus, the abbot whose monastery harbors more than one dangerous secret. Throughout the chaos, Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man weaves a spell. Thieved from thieves, lost then found, the priceless work alters the lives of Frieda, Stanislaus, and Gina...and others caught in the maelstrom. "Impossible to put down...offers something for everyone...an irresistible read!" -Kelynn Alder, award-winning artist and author "A masterpiece of historical fiction...a suspenseful drama of epic proportions." -Nancy Wilkens, author of When Apples Fall A.R. Homer received the Distinguished Honor Award from The Military Writers Society of America for The Sobs of Autumn's Violins. Visit the author at www.ARHomer.com."

    There is a light in the heart of darkness." - The Hamsa. Bronislaw Czech is a dashing Polish highlander born in 1908. His father teaches young Bronek the secrets of the Tatra Mountains while his father's friend, 'The Captain' teaches the boy to ski. He learns well and represents Poland in three Winter Olympic Games, which teach him as much about life as about the sport he loves. He is honored to lead his team and carry the Polish flag into the stadium at Germany's 1936 games in Bavaria. With him always is the hamsa, a good luck charm he receives as a boy in 1923 from a young Jewish girl. When Germany invades Poland in 1939, Czech's mountain skills make him a valuable asset to the Polish resistance and a target for Hitler's SS. From the majesty of Europe's greatest mountains to the shores of America and back, from the height of Olympic glory to the depths of human cruelty and suffering, The Hamsa spans four decades of one man's struggle to preserve his dignity in the face of 'the final solution.'

    Beginning with an account of Rachel's life as a precocious, privileged girl in pre-war Vilna, it goes on to detail life in the Vilna Ghetto, including the development and struggles of the FPO against the Nazis. Finally, the book chronicles the escape of a group of FPO members into the forest of Belorussia, where Rachel became a partisan fighter. Rachel Margolis received a Ph.D. in biology in and taught until the late 1980's. She then co-founded Lithuania's only real Holocaust museum, the Green House in Vilnius. She is also responsible for the discovery and transcription of the Kazimierz Sakowicz diary, published here in the US under the title, "Ponary Diary: A Bystander's Account of Mass Murder" (Yale University Press, 2004). The book opens with an introductory essay by renowned Polish historian, Antony Polonsky.