Best of
Holocaust

2014

The Auschwitz Escape


Joel C. Rosenberg - 2014
    The Nazi regime, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, has surged to power and now hold Germany by the throat. All non-Aryans - especially Jews like Jacob and his family - are treated like dogs.When tragedy strikes during one terrible night of violence, Jacob flees and joins rebel forces working to undermine the regime. But after a raid goes horribly wrong, Jacob finds himself in a living nightmare - trapped in a crowded, stinking car on the train to the Auschwitz death camp.As World War II rages and Hitler begins implementing his "final solution" to systematically and ruthlessly exterminate the Jewish people, Jacob must rely on his wits and a God he's not sure he believes in to somehow escape from Auschwitz and alert the world to the Nazi's atrocities before Fascism overtakes all of Europe. The fate of millions hangs in the balance.©2014 Joel C. Rosenberg; (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

A Year In Treblinka


Jankiel Wiernik - 2014
    Despite surviving the horrors of the ghetto at the advanced age of 52, he was sent to a fate worse than death at the notorious death camp at Treblinka, which he immortalized in his memoirs.“On his arrival at Treblinka aboard the Holocaust train from Warsaw, Wiernik was selected to work rather than be immediately killed. Wiernik’s first job with the Sonderkommando required him to drag corpses from the gas chambers to mass graves. Wienik was traumatized by his experiences. He later wrote in his book: “It often happened that an arm or a leg fell off when we tied straps around them in order to drag the bodies away.” He remembered the horrors of the enormous pyres, where “10,000 to 12,000 corpses were cremated at one time.” He wrote: “The bodies of women were used for kindling” while Germans “toasted the scene with brandy and with the choicest liqueurs, ate, caroused and had a great time warming themselves by the fire.” Wiernik described small children awaiting so long in the cold for their turn in the gas chambers that “their feet froze and stuck to the icy ground” and noted one guard who would “frequently snatch a child from the woman’s arms and either tear the child in half or grab it by the legs, smash its head against a wall and throw the body away.” At other times “children were snatched from their mothers’ arms and tossed into the flames alive.” “Wiernik escaped Treblinka during the revolt of the prisoners on “a sizzling hot day” of August 2, 1943. A shot fired into the air signalled that the revolt was on. Wiernik wrote that he “grabbed some guns” and, after spotting an opportunity to make a break for the woods, an axe...”

The Whispering Town


Jennifer Riesmeyer Elvgren - 2014
     It is 1943 in Nazi-occupied Denmark. Anett and her parents are hiding a Jewish woman and her son, Carl, in their cellar until a fishing boat can take them across the sound to neutral Sweden. The soldiers patrolling their street are growing suspicious, so Carl and his mama must make their way to the harbor despite a cloudy sky with no moon to guide them. Worried about their safety, Anett devises a clever and unusual plan for their safe passage to the harbor. Based on a true story.

Touching the Wire


Rebecca Bryn - 2014
    As their relationship blossoms, amid the death and deprivation, they join the camp resistance and, despite the danger of betrayal, he steals damning evidence of war-crimes. Afraid of repercussions, and for the sake of his post-war family he hides the evidence, but hard truths and terrible choices haunt him, as does a promise not kept. Part Two – Though the Heavens should Fall In present-day England, his granddaughter seeks to answer the questions posed by an enigmatic carving. Her own relationship in tatters, she meets a modern historian who, intrigued by the carving, agrees to help her discover its purpose. As her grandfather’s past seeps into the present, she betrays the man she loves and is forced to confront her own guilt in order to be able to forgive the unforgivable and keep her grandfather’s promise.

Gazing at the Stars: Memories of a Child Survivor


Eva Slonim - 2014
    Over the next five years, as the Nazi persecution of Europe’s Jews gathered momentum, Eva’s parents were forced to send their children into hiding, but she and her sister Marta could not avoid capture.In this remarkable memoir, Eva recounts her experiences at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. There, she witnessed countless horrors and was herself subjected to torture, extreme deprivation, and medical experimentation at the hands of the notorious Dr Josef Mengele. When the Soviet army liberated the survivors of Auschwitz early in 1945, Eva and Marta faced a new challenge: crossing war-torn Europe to be reunited with their family.Narrated with the heartbreaking innocence of a young girl and the wisdom of a woman of eighty-three, Gazing at the Stars is a record of survival in the face of unimaginable evil. It is the culmination of Eva Slonim’s lifelong commitment to educating the world about the Holocaust, and to keeping alive the memory of the many who perished.‘Eva’s account of her experiences is remarkable in its detail, particularly when one considers her age. Through her 14-year-old eyes, the daily humiliations, deprivations and tortures of Auschwitz are thrown into sharp relief.’ - the Age‘An extraordinary memoir that is brimming with courage, hope and love in the face of evil. Slonim’s story . . . is a must read for everyone.’ - Books and Publishing OnlineEva Slonim (née Weiss) was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 1931. A survivor of the Holocaust, Eva relocated with her family to Melbourne in 1948. She married Ben Slonim in 1953, and together they had five children, and many grandchildren and great- grandchildren, fulfilling Eva’s wish to rebuild what was lost in Europe. A gifted storyteller, and deeply passionate about the importance of education and community, Eva has for many years given public talks on her experiences during the war.

The Commandant of Lubizec: A Novel of The Holocaust and Operation Reinhard


Patrick Hicks - 2014
    Millions were shoved into ghettos and forced to live under the swastika. Death camps were built and something called "Operation Reinhard" was set into motion. Its goal? To murder all the Jews of Poland.The Commandant of Lubizec is a harrowing account of a death camp that never actually existed but easily could have in the Nazi state. It is a sensitive, accurate retelling of a place that went about the business of genocide. Told as a historical account in a documentary style, it explores the atmosphere of a death camp. It describes what it was like to watch the trains roll in, and it probes into the mind of its commandant, Hans-Peter Guth. How could he murder thousands of people each day and then go home to laugh with his children? This is not only an unflinching portrayal of the machinery of the gas chambers, it is also the story of how prisoners burned the camp to the ground and fled into the woods. It is a story of rebellion and survival. It is a story of life amid death.With a strong eye towards the history of the Holocaust, The Commandant of Lubizec compels us to look at these extermination centers anew. It disquiets us with the knowledge that similar events actually took place in camps like Bełzec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. The history of Lubizec, although a work of fiction, is a chillingly blunt distillation of real life events. It asks that we look again at "Operation Reinhard". It brings voice to the silenced. It demands that we bear witness.

Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust--Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hour


James A. Grymes - 2014
    But during the Holocaust, the violin assumed extraordinary new roles within the Jewish community. For some musicians, the instrument was a liberator; for others, it was a savior that spared their lives. For many, the violin provided comfort in mankind’s darkest hour, and, in at least one case, helped avenge murdered family members. Above all, the violins of the Holocaust represented strength and optimism for the future.In Violins of Hope, music historian James A. Grymes tells the amazing, horrifying, and inspiring story of the violins of the Holocaust, and of Amnon Weinstein, the renowned Israeli violinmaker who has devoted the past twenty years to restoring these instruments in tribute to those who were lost, including 400 members of his own family. Juxtaposing tales of individual violins with one man’s harrowing struggle to reconcile his own family’s history and the history of his people, it is a poignant, affecting, and ultimately uplifting look at the Holocaust and its enduring impact.

Measure of a Man: From Auschwitz Survivor to Presidents' Tailor


Martin Greenfield - 2014
    Taken from his Czechoslovakian home at age fifteen and transported to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz with his family, Greenfield came face to face with "Angel of Death" Dr. Joseph Mengele and was divided forever from his parents, sisters, and baby brother.In haunting, powerful prose, Greenfield remembers his desperation and fear as a teenager alone in the death camp—and how an SS soldier's shirt dramatically altered the course of his life. He learned how to sew; and when he began wearing the shirt under his prisoner uniform, he learned that clothes possess great power and could even help save his life.Measure of a Man is the story of a man who suffered unimaginable horror and emerged with a dream of success. From sweeping floors at a New York clothing factory to founding America’s premier custom suit company, Greenfield built a fashion empire. Now 86 years old and working with his sons, Greenfield has dressed the famous and powerful of D.C. and Hollywood, including Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, celebrities Paul Newman, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jimmy Fallon, and the stars of Martin Scorsese's films.Written with soul-baring honesty and, at times, a wry sense of humor, Measure of a Man is a memoir unlike any other—one that will inspire hope and renew faith in the resilience of man.

The Holocaust: The Human Tragedy


Martin Gilbert - 2014
       Rich with eyewitness accounts, incisive interviews, and first-hand source materials—including documentation from the Eichmann and Nuremberg war crime trials—this sweeping narrative begins with an in-depth historical analysis of the origins of anti-Semitism in Europe, and tracks the systematic brutality of Hitler’s “Final Solution” in unflinching detail. It brings to light new source materials documenting Mengele’s diabolical concentration camp experiments and documents the activities of Himmler, Eichmann, and other Nazi leaders. It also demonstrates comprehensive evidence of Jewish resistance and the heroic efforts of Gentiles to aid and shelter Jews and others targeted for extermination, even at the risk of their own lives.   Combining survivor testimonies, deft historical analysis, and painstaking research, The Holocaust is without doubt a masterwork of World War II history.   “A fascinating work that overwhelms us with its truth . . . This book must be read and reread.” —Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prizing–winning author of Night

Remember Your Name


Erik G. LeMoullec - 2014
    Medallion. While sitting in traffic heading to her great-grandfather's eighty-fourth birthday party, Hayden asks her dad why her great-grandfather speaks the way he does. What follows is a car ride she will never forget as she learns about his difficult childhood. From living in the Lodz ghetto at age ten to surviving the hells of Auschwitz and a death march from Gorlitz concentration camp at fifteen, Teddy Znamirowski faced unfathomable horrors, narrowly escaping death time and time again. Liberated at sixteen, he took on smuggling as a means to survive. It was not until the Bricha approached him and he became a lead operative - smuggling thousands of refugees across country borders - that he was finally able to begin his life again. Teddy's story is one of survival amidst horrific circumstances. The author does not sensationalize the suffering his grandfather and his family endured, but in this work of narrative nonfiction simply recreates this remarkable man's early life during one of the darkest moments of human history.

Echo (Free Preview Edition)


Pam Muñoz Ryan - 2014
    Decades later, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each, in turn, become interwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives. All the children face daunting challenges: rescuing a father, protecting a brother, holding a family together. And ultimately, pulled by the invisible thread of destiny, their suspenseful solo stories converge in an orchestral crescendo. Richly imagined and masterfully crafted, ECHO pushes the boundaries of genre and form, and shows us what is possible in how we tell stories. The result is an impassioned, uplifting, and virtuosic tour de force that will resound in your heart long after the last note has been struck."

The Iron Furnace: A Holocaust Survivor's Story (New Edition)


George Topas - 2014
    With his direct and deceptively simple style, George Topas convinces us that we’re sharing the heartfelt recollections of an old and dear friend. This story – and this decent, unassuming hero – will leave an incredible impression on all readers” – Michael Medved “The Iron Furnace will greatly contribute to the deepening memory of the Holocaust. It reveals the indomitable spirit of those that lived in the world which was destroyed.” – Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center “A searing tribute to one man’s indomitable spirit to outlive his tormentors” – Canadian Jewish News “This chilling memoir effectively reminds us of the inhumanity with which people treated their fellow humans.''

Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film


Glenn Kurtz - 2014
    The film, shot long ago by his grandfather on a sightseeing trip to Europe, includes shaky footage of Paris and the Swiss Alps, with someone inevitably waving at the camera. Astonishingly, David Kurtz also captured on color 16mm film the only known moving images of the thriving, predominantly Jewish town of Nasielsk, Poland, shortly before the community's destruction. "Blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that lay just ahead," he just happened to visit his birthplace in 1938, a year before the Nazi occupation. Of the town's three thousand Jewish inhabitants, fewer than one hundred would survive.Glenn Kurtz quickly recognizes the brief footage as a crucial link in a lost history. "The longer I spent with my grandfather's film," he writes, "the richer and more fragmentary its images became." Every image, every face, was a mystery that might be solved. Soon he is swept up in a remarkable journey to learn everything he can about these people. After restoring the film, which had shrunk and propelled across the United States; to Canada, England, Poland, and Israel; and into archives, basements, cemeteries, and even an irrigation ditch at an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield as he looks for shards of Nasielsk's Jewish history.One day, Kurtz hears from a young woman who had watched the video on the Holocaust Museum's website. As the camera panned across the faces of children, she recognized her grandfather as a thirteen-year-old boy. Moszek Tuchendler of Nasielsk was now eighty-six-year-old Maurice Chandler of Florida, and when Kurtz meets him, the lost history of Nasielsk comes into view. Chandler's laser-sharp recollections create a bridge between two worlds, and he helps Kurtz eventually locate six more survivors, including a ninety-six-year-old woman who also appears in the film, standing next to the man she would later marry.Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. "I began to catch fleeting glimpses of the living town," Kurtz writes, "a cruelly narrow sample of its relationships, contradictions, scandals." Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz's home movie became the most important record of a vibrant town on the brink of extinction. From this brief film, Glenn Kurtz creates a poignant yet unsentimental exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival--a monument to a lost world.

Unravelled


Anna Scanlon - 2014
    They decided not to, to turn their heads away. It was too much to bear. Too much to know. Too hard to swallow. But now that the world knows, now that the world has heard, it all seems so simple, so easy to defray. I screamed and no one heard. Next time, will you be listening?" Aliz and her twin sister, Hajna, are enjoying their playful, carefree and comfortable life with their parents in Szeged, Hungary just before the Nazis invade. Seemingly overnight, their lives change drastically as they are transported to the ghetto on the outskirts of the city and then to Auschwitz to be used in Mengele's deadly experiments. After several months of brutal torture, Aliz is liberated to find that she is the only survivor in her family. At not even 11 years old, Aliz must make the journey to San Francisco alone, an entire world away from everything she's known, in order to live with her only known relatives whom she has never met-- a depressed aunt and teenage cousin who is more than ready to escape her mother's melancholy. Told through the eyes of both Aliz and her cousin Isabelle, Unravelled tells a story of survival, hope, family and the lives war and genocide haunt long after liberation.Book trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHDnp...

After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring


Joseph Polak - 2014
    It is the tale of how one newly takes on the world, having lived in the midst of corpses strewn about in the scores of thousands, and how one can possibly resume life in the aftermath of such experiences. It is the story of the child who decides, upon growing up, that the only career that makes sense for him in light of these years of horror is to become someone sensitive to the deepest flaws of humanity, a teacher of God’s role in history amidst the traditions that attempt to understand it—and to become a rabbi. Readers will not emerge unscathed from this searing work, written by a distinguished, Boston-based rabbi and academic.

Brisko: a true tale of Holocaust survival


Steven Paul Winkelstein - 2014
    Her only hope comes from a dog named Brisko. Libe and her family are harbored by a farmer named Pavlo, who has nothing to gain from his display of humanity, and everything to lose - including his family. As the ghetto in Tuchin burns and the Nazis hunt them daily, Libe’s family must rely on their cunning, hope, and faith to endure. As their journey swells with danger and despair, their faith begins to wane, and Libe finds that her very survival will depend upon her miraculous hero, Brisko.

Bread or Death: Memories of My Childhood During and After the Holocaust


Milton Mendel Kleinberg - 2014
    "Alle raise," (everybody out), the German soldiers screamed as they pounded on our door with the butts of their rifles. And thus began a 4,500-mile journey from Poland through Russia and Siberia and eventually to Uzbekistan in Central Asia, as the author's family used bribery and darkness of night to flee as the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. Young Mendel, from age four to fourteen, tells in vivid detail the wretched journey in cramped cattle cars through frigid Russia, the indignities of being forced labor, the shame of begging for bread just to survive, and death of those closest to him. The family s plight includes abandonment, hunger, and separation (and later remarkable twists of fate and reunion) quite unlike other Holocaust stories. This coming-of-age, Holocaust memoir is the author's personal account of how through great sacrifices by his mother he managed to survive the worst atrocities in human history and his uncertain days in a Polish Children's Home, scrabbling for fallen fruit, and surviving kidnapping and murder on the Black Road, and return to German Displaced Persons camps at war's end. But to what fate? Originally written as a memoir just for his grandchildren, Milton Kleinberg gives a moving account of his family s hardships and eventual immigration with a lump-in-the-throat passage to America past the Statue of Liberty and into a land of opportunity tinged with bigotry yet with a promise to future generations. This book for young adults has been reviewed by the Institute for Holocaust Education and includes a glossary, a book club discussion guide, a timeline, and a Teacher's Guide.

Six Million Accusers: Catching Adolf Eichmann


D. Lawrence-Young - 2014
     Having disappeared after WWII, members of an Israeli organization search the world for Eichmann, hoping to one day capture one of the men responsible for brutally massacring millions of Jews, and others. Following any tip possible, eventually they discover a Jewish father and daughter who swear Eichmann quietly lives in their community, under a new name. The search for Eichmann ramps up, and the agents begin to fervently believe they have found their man. As they get closer and closer, a plan must also be created to capture Eichmann, and secretly transport the villain back to Israel. Is it really Eichmann? And if so, what complications may arise that might destroy their plans to have this notorious Nazi held responsible for his crimes? "Six Million Accusers" is based on historic detail, and David Lawrence- Young does an excellent job reliving the hunt for, and capture of Adolf Eichmann. Well written and easy to read, "Six Million Accusers" should be a staple of the educational discussion of WWII and the aftermath. ~~D. Bettenson

Breaking the Spell: The Holocaust, Myth & Reality


Nicholas Kollerstrom - 2014
    This undermined the German war effort - but also threw new light on day-by-day events in the Nazi concentration camp system. Between January 1942 and January 1943, encrypted radio communications between those camps and the Berlin headquarters were intercepted and decrypted. Oddly enough, historians have largely ignored the information furnished in these intercepts relating to "arrivals," "departures," recorded deaths and other events at these camps. The only reasonable explanation for this embarrassing omission is that the intercepted data seriously contradicts, even refutes, the orthodox "Holocaust" narrative. The revealed information does not expose a program of mass murder and racial genocide. Quite the opposite: it reveals that the Germans were determined, desperate even, to reduce the death rate in their work camps, which was caused by catastrophic typhus epidemics.Were the British here hoodwinked by the Nazis, as some historians to this day try to claim-or is the truth both simpler and more shocking?In 1988 and 1991 forensic studies threw light on the question of whether or not the claimed gas chambers at Auschwitz had served as slaughter houses for hundreds of thousands of people. Both studies had concluded that the only facilities where Zyklon B gas had been used were hygienic rather than homicidal, killing bugs rather than Jews. Needless to say that these iconoclastic studies were ignored or in some countries even outlawed, and that their authors were ostracized and even imprisoned.Dr. Kollerstrom, a science historian, has taken these studies, which are in obvious, stark contrast to the widely accepted narrative, as a starting point for his own endeavour into the land of taboo. After he had published a brief paper summarizing what he thought the data forced him to conclude, he was thrown out of his College where he had been a member of staff for eleven years.In his book Breaking the Spell, Dr. Kollerstrom shows that "witness statements" supporting the human gas chamber narrative clearly clash with the available scientific data. He juxtaposes the commonly accepted ideas about a Nazi extermination policy toward the Jews with a wide array of mostly unchallenged, but usually unmentioned evidence pointing in a quite different direction, for instance:Zyklon B is a buzz word for the claimed Nazi mass murder, but all non-anecdotal evidence proves that this chemical was merely used as a pesticide in order to improve the inmates' health and reduce, not increase, camp mortality. Zyklon B applied in delousing chambers formed chemical compounds detectable to this day. No such compounds can be found, but ought to be expected, in the claimed homicidal gas chambers. The UK's intelligence decrypts prove that the German camp authorities were desperately trying to save their inmates' lives. "Six Million Jews threatened or killed" read 167 quotes from newspapers with that "news" spanning from 1900 to 1945, with a peak after World War ONE! Yes, one, not two! Germany has paid compensation to millions of Nazi victims, and Israel has implicitly admitted that many million Jews survived the Holocaust. A British archaeological team looked for traces of the claimed 800,000 victims of the Treblinka camp-and came back empty-handed. Dr. Kollerstrom concludes that the history of the Nazi "Holocaust" has been written by the victors with ulterior motives and that this history is distorted, exaggerated and largely wrong. He asserts that this history is, in truth, a great lie that distorts our common perceived reality and misdirects human history to this very day.With a foreword by Prof. Dr. James H. Fetzer; contains a bibliography and an index.

A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps: My Mother's Memories of Imprisonment, Immigration, and a Life Remade


Barbara Rylko-Bauer - 2014
    Suspected of resistance activities, she was arrested in January 1944. For the next fifteen months, she endured three Nazi concentration camps and a forty-two-day death march, spending part of this time working as a prisoner-doctor to Jewish slave laborers. A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps follows Jadzia from her childhood and medical training, through her wartime experiences, to her struggles to create a new life in the postwar world.Jadzia’s daughter, anthropologist Barbara Rylko-Bauer, constructs an intimate ethnography that weaves a personal family narrative against a twentieth-century historical backdrop. As Rylko-Bauer travels back in time with her mother, we learn of the particular hardships that female concentration camp prisoners faced. The struggle continued after the war as Jadzia attempted to rebuild her life, first as a refugee doctor in Germany and later as an immigrant to the United States. Like many postwar immigrants, Jadzia had high hopes of making new connections and continuing her career. Unable to surmount personal, economic, and social obstacles to medical licensure, however, she had to settle for work as a nurse’s aide.As a contribution to accounts of wartime experiences, Jadzia’s story stands out for its sensitivity to the complexities of the Polish memory of war. Built upon both historical research and conversations between mother and daughter, the story combines Jadzia’s voice and Rylko-Bauer’s own journey of rediscovering her family’s past. The result is a powerful narrative about struggle, survival, displacement, and memory, augmenting our understanding of a horrific period in human history and the struggle of Polish immigrants in its aftermath.

The Luck of The Jews: An Incredible Story of Loss, Love, and Survival in the Holocaust


Michael Benanav - 2014
    He was twenty-three, from Czechoslovakia; she was twenty, from Romania. Both had lost nearly everything in the war – yet in their chance encounter at sea, they found a new beginning. Three days later, on a train rattling across the Turkish countryside en route to Palestine, with no common language between them, they were married…and spent the rest of their lives together. Isadora had emerged from the brutal, frozen ghettos of Transnistria – known as the ‘Forgotten Cemetery’ of the Holocaust. Joshua had escaped from the Hungarian Army’s slave labor corps as his unit was being marched toward a train to Auschwitz. That either survived is incredible; that, of all possible fates, the war would toss them onto the same deck of the same boat at the same time is simply unbelievable – except that it happened. Here, their grandson, prize-winning author Michael Benanav, traces the improbable twists and turns that pulled Joshua and Isadora through the horrors of the Holocaust. As their families were destroyed and their own lives nearly lost, each element of their experiences – including a photograph of a Hungarian general; a mismatched pair of galoshes; a Romanian Orthodox priest; an SS officer’s wife; and maybe, on one occasion, an angel – proved crucial to getting them out of the war and onto that boat. Benanav vividly recounts the devastating events and astonishing coincidences that brought his grandparents together – while reckoning with the unsettling knowledge that without the Holocaust, his family would not exist. This is an extraordinary true story, rooted in the terrible tragedies and sudden strokes of serendipity that together are The Luck of the Jews. Praise for The Luck of The Jews (First published by Lyons Press as Joshua & Isadora: A True Tale of Loss & Love in the Holocaust): “Movingly written, Michael Benanav’s search for his grandparents’ tragic memories and experiences brings the reader closer to an ineffable truth that must not be forgotten.” – Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Night “A harrowing wartime saga [and] an intriguing record of Holocaust survival written with passion and authority.”–Publishers Weekly “A tale of suffering, romance and redemption in Israel… What stands out about this story is its ability to bring Southeastern Europe and Bessarabia, a southern Yiddish-speaking region in today’s Moldova, into focus. The narrative is highly imagistic, often relying on crisp depictions of Jews moving through the landscape to power a story of loss.” –The Jewish Daily Forward “Important and gripping.” –Hindustan Times About the Author Michael Benanav is a freelance writer and photojournalist whose work appears in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Geographical Magazine, Lonely Planet guidebooks, and other publications. His first book, Men Of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold, was nominated by Barnes & Noble for their Discover Great New Writers award and was named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association

Women of Valor: Polish Resisters to the Third Reich


Joanne D. Gilbert - 2014
    In this highly readable and educational collection of true stories, educator, public-speaker and author Joanne D. Gilbert celebrates the heroines of World War II who not only fought the horrors of the Holocaust, but survived well into their 80s and 90s—living lives of commitment to the human spirit and human rights. “ . . . I saw that a Nazi was already chasing me . . . I felt and heard bullets flying by—I just kept on running.” ~18-year-old Partisan Manya Feldman “I also had a grenade with which to blow myself up so if captured, I wouldn’t break under torture.” ~ 19-year-old Partisan Faye Schulman “Face-to-face with Adolf Eichmann . . . instead of being struck by terror, I was struck by how normal he looked.” ~17-year-old Lola Lieber “I was determined to be as strong and productive as a boy. . . . I helped the posted guards . . . I camouflaged trails, and scouted out the surrounding areas for safety.” ~7-year-old Miriam Brysk

The Yellow Star: A Boy's Story of Auschwitz and Buchenwald


S.B. Unsdorfer - 2014
    Clinging fiercely to his faith in God, the nineteen-year-old Unsdorfer faced the unspeakable horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald with courage and moral defiance, a testament to the abiding strength of the Jewish spirit.

The Nazi Officers Wife: Summary and Analysis of the Nazi Officers Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust


Summary Station - 2014
    Regularly priced at $9.99. Read on your PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device Beer starts her story by remembering a fellow nurse who illegally bought an onion to feed to a dying Russian soldier. Beer explains that she, a nurse's aide, could have caused trouble for her fellow nurse because the Nazi regime frowned upon forming friendships with prisoners, with people who were not Nordic Aryans, and because the onion was a rare commodity by 1943 and it was illegal to buy via a black market. Beer explains that many of the other nurses would have caused trouble for the one with the onion because they bought into the propaganda, truly believing that they were better than the foreign prisoners they served. Instead of bartering for food to give to the injured prisoners, they were more likely to steal food from the prisoners, to bring that food home so the nurses could feed their own hungry families. Most of the prisoners in Brandenburg were not actually injured in war but injured in their servitude; having been conquered, they were forced to work in factories full of industrial accidents. Beer explains that she was transferred from this ward of injured prisoners to work in the maternity ward because someone tattled on her, saying she was too friendly with the foreigners. Informers to the Gestapo were everywhere; the nurse with the onion could have easily been seen by an informant and punished. Before the war, Beer was a law student in Austria, but as the war grew and Germany spread, her name was put on a wanted list. To avoid persecution, she became a "U-boat," a Jewish person living with a secret identity in the heart of Germany. Here Is A Preview Of What You'll Learn When You Download Your Copy Today How World War 2 Changed Daily Life For Millions The Reason Why Hitler Systematically Targeted Certain Groups Of People Learn How One Jewish Woman Outsmarted The Nazi's Download Your Copy Today! The contents of this book are easily worth over $9.99, but for a limited time you can download a summary and analysis of "The Nazi officers Wife" by Edith Hahn beer for a special discounted price of only $2.99"

Sorrow's Gate


Diana Bard - 2014
    Their plans for a quick trip to the doctor disintegrate when the boyfriend is executed for conspiracy. As they try to leave the ghetto, the pregnant girl is mowed down. The other is rescued by the leader of the Jewish resistance, Lendl. Lendl changes the girl’s name to Hannah and initially tries to help her escape. When those plans fail and she is injured, they slowly learn to trust and depend on each other. The horrors of life in the ghetto, which are unbelievable even as she watches with her own eyes, leave their imprint on Hannah’s soul. She must decide whether to try to escape again or stay and help the people and man she has grown to love. She doesn't have much time to decide because the Nazis are coming to burn the ghetto to the ground and the traitors on their own side are sabotaging every effort. Will they survive the most daring escape attempt ever, during the height of the Jewish uprising in the ghetto? Sorrow’s Gate is a touching love story set in one of the darkest chapters of recent human history.

The Six Million: Fact Or Fiction?


Peter Winter - 2014
    

My Will to Live: My Story of Surviving the Holocaust


Eve Gordon - 2014
    His life is rapidly changed. His family is destroyed. An unbelievable story about escape, intrigue, survival and the miraculous ability of one young man to outwit and outlive his gestapo torturers.

The Tailors of Tomaszow: A Memoir of Polish Jews


Rena Margulies Chernoff - 2014
    This unique communal memoir presents a rare view of Eastern European Jewry, before, during, and after World War II. It is both the memoir of a child and of a lost Jewish community, an unvarnished story in which disputes, controversy, and scandal all play a role in capturing the true flavor of life in this time and place.             Nearly 14,000 Jews, one-third of the town’s population, resided in Tomaszow-Mazowiecki before World War II, many making their living as tailors and seamstresses. Only 250 of them survived the Holocaust, in part because of their skill with a needle and thread.             Engaging and highly accessible, The Tailors of Tomaszow is a powerful resource for educators and a compelling read for anyone wishing to gain a deeper, more personal understanding of Eastern European Jewry and the Holocaust.

The Magician of Auschwitz


Kathy Kacer - 2014
    Night after night, his fans applauded and called out for more astonishing feats of magic. "Bravo!" they would shout, as Nivelli bowed low with a great flourish. But that was in a different, happier time, before the Jews of Europe were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. This is the true story of a young boy on the inside of Auschwitz, whose life is changed by the actions of a prisoner who performs magic for the guards and who the boy later learns was the famous Nivelli.

Geographies of the Holocaust


Anne Kelly Knowles - 2014
    Built on six innovative case studies, it brings together historians, geographers, and geographic information scientists to interrogate the places and spaces of the genocide. The cases encompass the landscapes of particular places (the killing zones in the East, deportations from sites in Italy, the camps of Auschwitz, the ghettos of Budapest) and the intimate spaces of bodies on evacuation marches. Geographies of the Holocaust puts forward models and a research agenda for different ways of visualizing and thinking about the Holocaust by examining the spaces and places where it was enacted and experienced.

The Voyage


Roberta Kagan - 2014
    Louis, a German ship leaving Hamburg on its way to Cuba. Four of the five were Jewish.  There was much joy and excitement on the dock because the passengers who boarded that ship believed that they were the lucky ones. Hitler himself had promised them  safety in Cuba far away from Nazi Germany and the murderous Third Reich. But, unbeknownst to the poor souls who began their journey to Cuba that day, they were about to embark upon a voyage of danger. The path of the MS St. Louis would take them on a dark and terrifying roller coaster ride. They would discover that all of their dreams had been built on Nazi treachery, secrets, and lies. As their lives hung in the balance each one of those five strangers would be put to the test. However, the voyage that began on that bright spring afternoon was only the beginning of the story .As the ship navigated her way through the ocean  events would occur, secrets would be withheld, and friendships  would be forged that would bind these five people together for rest of their lives.

A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide


Alon Confino - 2014
    In this gripping new analysis, Alon Confino draws on an array of archives across three continents to propose a penetrating new assessment of one of the central moral problems of the twentieth century. To a surprising extent, Confino demonstrates, the mass murder of Jews during the war years was powerfully anticipated in the culture of the prewar years.   The author shifts his focus away from the debates over what the Germans did or did not know about the Holocaust and explores instead how Germans came to conceive of the idea of a Germany without Jews. He traces the stories the Nazis told themselves—where they came from and where they were heading—and how those stories led to the conclusion that Jews must be eradicated in order for the new Nazi civilization to arise. The creation of this new empire required that Jews and Judaism be erased from Christian history, and this was the inspiration—and justification—for Kristallnacht. As Germans imagined a future world without Jews, persecution and extermination became imaginable, and even justifiable.

Beyond Trochenbrod: The Betty Gold Story


Betty Gold - 2014
    Of the 33 who escaped death, only one person remains to describe these events--Betty Gold. Twelve-year-old Betty and her family hid inside a secret wall built by her father and, when it seemed safe, crept toward the forest, which became their home.In part one of Beyond Trochenbrod, Gold provides a brief history of Trochenbrod, the only all-Jewish town to exist outside of biblical Israel, and describes a series of cherished childhood experiences before the arrival of Soviet and, later, Nazi occupiers. Part two centers on the family's struggles against hunger, pain, despair, and the constant fear of being discovered while living in the forest. How the family survived against these and other threats is nothing short of miraculous. Their unlikely rescue, stay at a displaced persons camp, and journey to America are the subjects of part three. In the fourth and final part of her memoir, Gold recounts her difficult adjustment to her new home in Cleveland and discusses how her Trochenbrod experiences have transformed her life and the lives of others.Man's inhumanity is undeniable in Beyond Trochenbrod, but so is humanity's capacity to prevail in spite of unimaginable odds.

Heinrich Himmler: A Photo History of the Reichsfuhrer-SS


Max Williams - 2014
    The answer most commonly quoted by SS men accused of atrocious crimes after Germany had surrendered in 1945. But who gave those orders? Who was the mastermind behind the sophisticated machinery which allowed men from normal family backgrounds to kill on such a scale? The right man at the right time, fate steered Heinrich Himmler to take control of an organization destined to carry out Hitler s racial policies. This study not only sets out in detail how Heinrich Himmler s daily routine allowed him to implement Nazi strategy, but it also provides illustrations of the man behind much of it, both at work and at home. Of all the personalities of history demonized by postwar writers, Heinrich Himmler ranks among the most reviled. His legacy is one of hatred, violence and cold blooded murder on a vast scale. A Jekyll and Hyde character, variously described by his generation and those who followed as charming, loyal, polite, a pedant, an eccentric, an organizational genius, a fool, a desk killer and a loving father. The camera allows us into his world, albeit temporarily, and we can equate his busy, but mostly mundane schedule with contemporary images frozen in time.REVIEWS "text as engaging as the illustrations, and highly recommend this marvelous book to all who think they've seen everything about Heinrich Himmler.Military Advisor"

Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross


Maia-Mari Sutnik - 2014
    Covertly, he captured on film scores of both quotidian and intimate moments of Jewish life. In 1944, he buried thousands of negatives in an attempt to save this secret record. After the war, Ross returned to Poland to retrieve them. Although some were destroyed by nature and time, many negatives survived.  Memory Unearthed presents a selection of the nearly 3,000 surviving images—along with original prints and other archival material including curfew notices and newspapers—from the permanent collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Ross’s images offer a startling and moving new representation of one of humanity’s greatest tragedies. Striking for both their historical content and artistic quality, his photographs have a raw intimacy and emotional power that remain undiminished.

Who Started World War II: Truth for a War-Torn World


Udo Walendy - 2014
    The roles are invariably allocated: Hitler and his Nazi henchmen as the absolute evil, and the Allies as the liberators, the saviours of mankind. Never mind that Stalin fought the war together with the West, even though in 1939, when the war broke out, Stalin had already killed millions, whereas Hitler's victims counted "only" a few hundreds at most. During the past decades, Hitler's spectre has been raised repeatedly by politicians trying to demonise some country or some political leader in order to mobilize the masses for war, be it against Slobodan Milosevic Hitler, Saddam Hussein Hitler, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Hitler. In Palestine, Hitler and his "Holocaust" has served in one way or another as a justification for every aggression perpetrated by the State of Israel. And so the world stumbles from one war to another, and Hitler still gets the blame. It is about time to end this perpetual war propaganda for the perpetual instigation of more wars. And that is exactly what Walendy does in the present book: proving that the clich�s about the Mother of All Wars are profoundly wrong; that the Second World War was not a Good War at all; that simple Black and White, Good and Evil patterns do not fit here. For seven decades, mainstream historians have insisted that Germany was the main, if not the sole culprit for unleashing World War II in Europe. In the present book this myth is refuted. There is available to the public today a great number of documents on the foreign policies of the Great Powers before September 1939 as well as a wealth of literature in the form of memoirs of the persons directly involved in the decisions that led to the outbreak of World War II. Together, they made possible Walendy's present mosaic-like reconstruction of the events before the outbreak of the war in 1939. This book has been published only after an intensive study of sources, taking the greatest care to minimize speculation and inference. Shortly after its 1964 initial publication, the German authorities put this work on their index of banned books, claiming that it was too dangerous because historians could only contradict it, but not refute it. After a legal battle lasting decades, the book was released in 1995 by the German Supreme Court. Future historical research will amplify the facts compiled in this book, but the defenders of "petrified propaganda" can no longer claim they are non-existent or irrelevant.

Roses And Chocolates: A True Love Story in World War II


Maria Johnsen - 2014
    Roses and Chocolates follows Hans, a 22 year-old secret service officer in Berlin who meets a beautiful blond 20 year-old woman named Veronika who works at a restaurant as a waitress. It doesn't take long for Veronikas's humor and beauty to win Hans over and make them fall in love. Soon, Hans is forced to leave Veronika for Poland to fulfill his Nazi SS Officer duty. >>> Things grow even more complicated! While he is away, Veronika is discovered helping the Jews. Forced to flee, Veronika and her unborn child go into hiding leaving the love of her life behind. Many years will pass before their lives come in contact again when the son they had crosses paths with the father they were forced to leave behind. Most Helpful Reader Reviews "A really unique story that takes the reader back in the chaotic days of 1940s and the struggle to keep love alive. Highly recommended" - Jessie W. "This truly emotional story captures the romance of two lovers blossoming whilst in the turmoil of war. Johnsen has written a masterpiece in this incredible coming of age story. I would highly recommend this book!!" - Rebecca M. About the Author Maria Johnsen has a Master of Science degree in Human, Computer Interaction/Computer Sciences from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her professional background and education is diverse and includes skills in areas such as multilingual digital marketing and content writing, software design and development. In addition, she possesses the experience and education in the management of complex Information Systems. Also, she is fully fluent in seven human languages and possess experience in language instruction, tutoring, and translation. She has developed a unique teaching method for fast learning. This method is applied in China and Norway. Maria writes fiction and nonfiction books in her spare time. Scroll up and grab a copy TODAY. Read "Roses And Chocolates: A True Love Story in World War II " on your PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device. Tags: Roses And Chocolates

The Patchwork Torah


Allison Ofanansky - 2014
    Fragments of damaged and rescued Torahs from several periods of history are woven together in this touching tale of four generations of a Torah scribe and his family.

Belsen and Its Liberation


Ian Baxter - 2014
    The imagery shows the SS s murderous activities inside Belsen, and also reveal another disturbing side to them relaxing in their barracks or visiting their families and loved ones.The book is an absorbing insight into how the SS played a key part in murdering, torturing and starving to death tens of thousands of inmates. During the latter part of the war as many as 500 a day were perishing from the long-term effects of starvation as well as the resultant diseases. There is a wealth of information on how the camp was run and all aspects of life inside the camp for the inmates are covered. The final episode of Belsen is witnessed by British soldiers of the Second Army, who were completely unprepared for what they encountered when they arrived at the gates of the camp. Inside the camp they found some 10,000 unburied dead in addition to the mass graves already containing 40,000 more corpses.This latest Images of War book captures the shocking story of those that ran Belsen, those that perished, and the troops that liberated the living from their hell."

Elie Wiesel: Speaking Out Against Genocide


Sarah Machajewski - 2014
    A tireless advocate for human rights, he has worked to raise awareness of all acts of genocide. Whether he is recounting his experiences as a Holocaust survivor or speaking out about contemporary humanitarian crises, Wiesel has become a hero and a voice for innocent people around the globe. This biography provides a strong introduction to Wiesels life and work. His personal story and fights against indifference and injustice will inspire readers and help them absorb the Holocausts cautionary lessons.