After the Jews in their town are rounded up, Roza and her five-year-old daughter, Shira, spend day and night hidden in a farmer's barn. Forbidden from making a sound, only the yellow bird from her mother's stories can sing the melodies Shira composes in her head.Roza does all she can to take care of Shira and shield her from the horrors of the outside world. They play silent games and invent their own sign language. But then the day comes when their haven is no longer safe, and Roza must face an impossible choice: whether to keep her daughter close by her side, or give her the chance to survive by letting her go . . . The Yellow Bird Sings is a powerfully gripping and deeply moving novel about the unbreakable bond between parent and child and the triumph of humanity and hope in even the darkest circumstances.

    All vegetarian. There’s so much more to Polish food than kielbasa and schnitzel: Poland is home to beautiful fruits, vegetables, and grains—and a rich cooking tradition that makes the most of them. In Fresh from Poland, Saveur award winner Michał Korkosz celebrates recipes from his mother and grandmother—with modern, personal touches and gorgeous photos that capture his passion for cooking. Vegetables are his stars, but Michał doesn’t shy away from butter, flour, and sugar; the ingredients that make food—and life—more rozkoszny (delightful)! The result? Over eighty comforting dishes for every occasion.Indulgent breakfasts: Brown Butter Scrambled Eggs; Apple Fritters; Buckwheat Blini with Sour Cream and Pickled Red OnionHearty vegetarian mains: Barley Risotto with Asparagus, Cider, and Goat Cheese; Potato Fritters with Rosemary and Horseradish Sauce; Stuffed Tomatoes with Millet, Cinnamon, and AlmondsBreathtaking baked goods: Sourdough Rye Bread; Sweet Blueberry Buns with Streusel; Honey Cake with Prunes and Sour CreamPierogi of all kinds: From savory Spinach, Goat Cheese, and Salted Almonds to sweet Plums and Cinnamon-Honey ButterThese satisfying recipes will make you feel right at home—wherever you’re from!

    Victoria's War is a work of historical fiction about 19-year-old Victoria Darski, a Polish Catholic woman sold into slavery during the Nazi occupation of Europe, and Etta Tod, the 20-year-old deaf daughter of a German baker who buys Victoria. Poland, 1939: Eager to study literature at the University of Warsaw, Victoria waits with bags packed. But Hitler invades Poland and classes are canceled. German officers burst into her family's home in Lagody, shoot and kill Victoria's sister when she cries, and take Victoria and her mother to work in a sewing factory commandeered by Nazis. Making military shirts, Victoria sews a straight pin inside the collars in defiance. At a secret resistance meeting, Victoria and her friend Sylvia are captured and then sold as slaves, along with thousands of other women. Germany, 1941: When Victoria is purchased to work in the Tod family bakery, Etta tries to protect Victoria, bringing food and companionship to the attic where Victoria is held. Etta is caught and sent to Hadamar Institute, where she is killed. This spurs Victoria to help rescue a group of mothers and babies from starvation. One of those women is her friend Sylvia from the sewing factory. ------"Victoria's War is a compelling story of a young Polish woman caught in the vise of the German invasion of Poland at the opening salvo of World War II. Written in an engaging literary style that captures the textures of Polish life, Catherine Hamilton's gripping novel is a must read!" -- Dr. Richard C. Lukas, author of Did the Children Cry? and The Forgotten Holocaust"Some stories that need to be told are never told. They languish in a limbo of forgotten stories that should never have been forgotten. Catherine Hamilton's novel Victoria's War resurrects one of these stories. In language intimate and natural and yet touched by the poetry of truth, Hamilton tells the story of a young girl who is the victim of war. Too often, we think only of the men who go to war, do heroic things. We forget the other victims and heroes of war, the women like Victoria in this brilliant novel." -- John Guzlowski, author of the award-winning Echoes of Tattered Tongues"In Victoria's War we follow the life of one Polish woman caught in the machinations of a war that has no pity....Based on the life of a real woman subjected to Hitler's forced labor program, Victoria's War reveals the hatred and fanaticism against Poles in Nazi Germany and the specific vulnerabilities of women that made their lives a living hell. Hamilton's story about a largely ignored aspect of women's history is emotionally evocative and rich in detail." --Sophie Hodorowicz Knab, author of Wearing the Letter "P" Polish Women as Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany, 1939-1945

    Nineteen-year-old Lukas Stein, a Hitler Youth, discovers that he is a Jew just before he’s sent to rid Poland of its ‘sub-humans’. Zofie Altman and her family in the town of Płock are the first he’s expected to exterminate. He and his fellow Nazis burst into their home on the morning of her eighteenth birthday, announcing that people of their race are no longer allowed to exist in this world.Despite being indoctrinated by his years in the movement, Lukas is nevertheless turned inside out that day, struggling with the revelation that his mother was secretly Jewish, something that was hidden from him until now. Conflicted by that and the orders he’s sworn to obey, Lukas refuses to kill Zofie and abandons everything he’s been forced to believe in. This once fervent cadet becomes a deserter, and Wehrmacht deserters aren’t allowed to exist in this world either.Lukas and Zofie spend the next few months fighting for survival in an altered reality that sees them hiding in clammy hollows, running from strangers in frozen forests, and keeping Lukas’s Nazi secret from the partisans who take them in. In time, they learn to trust each other as they are forced to rely on each other to survive. Slowly, they come to like each other, and then – impossibly - they fall in love.Zofie’s talisman, and the one thing she was able to hang onto, was a journal whose cover depicts the constellations –a subject that fascinated her since her grandfather first taught her about the stars. Now a book of remembrance, it is passed from one victim of the Nazis to the next, each one filling its pages with tales of their own tragedies. Zofie had dreamed of becoming an astronomer, mapping the stars, but the only stars she now collects are the ones she plucks from the clothes of the murdered on her ill-starred odyssey, forming her own macabre constellation.After a year of surviving impossible odds, Lukas is captured. At first, he’s honoured as a hero but when his lie is revealed he is sent to Dachau and then Auschwitz as a novelty: half guard, half prisoner, half-Jew, half German. In the camps, he becomes a target for guards and inmates alike - hated for being German, punished for deserting, and brutalised for being a Jew. His kindness eventually endears him to some of the prisoners who remind him of humanity.Zofie eventually finds refuge in the Łódź ghetto where she gives birth to their child, a boy she names Dominik. A few days later her part of the ghetto is liquidated and she is torn from her newborn and deported to Auschwitz.It is there that Lukas is forced to do unspeakable tasks including clearing out the gas chambers. He is only jolted back to reality when he’s ordered to stand on the selection ramp and help decide the fates of the unhappy souls disembarking from crowded cattle wagons. There, at the gates of Hell, he spots a familiar figure - Zofie, who wanted to spend her life unravelling the beauty of the universe but is now sinking into its foulest void.Lukas, desperate to save her, surrenders all. He cannot bring himself to send her to the right, to death. Inspired by her spirit, enthralled by her goodness, he decides to defy his commanders and do all he can to save her, even if it means they may die in each other’s arms….

    She knew that he had fled Poland after World War Two, that he had disappeared overnight when she was just an infant, and that his brief reappearance when she was a young adult had been a harrowing, painful ordeal.   Fifty-five years after he deserted her family, Betty is determined to find out more. What drove him to abandon them, twice? What was his story? Who was Antoni Jagielski?   Her search for truth takes Betty to Poland, where she unexpectedly inherits a family apartment from the half sister she never knew – a time capsule of her father’s life. Sifting through photos and letters she begins to piece together a picture of her father as a Polish resistance fighter, a survivor of Auschwitz and Gusen concentration camps, an exile in post-war England, and a migrant to Australia. But the deeper she searches, the darker the revelations about her father become, as Betty is faced with disturbing truths buried within her family.   Honest, compelling, and meticulously researched, The Other Side of Absence is an elegant debut memoir of resilience and strength, and of a daughter reconciling the damage that families inherit from war.

    Father and son sought refuge with relatives in Warsaw, only to find themselves trapped in unlivable conditions in the bombed-out, walled section of the city, the living hell of ‘The Ghetto’. A place under constant patrol and attack from the Nazis with a mission to eventually exterminate all, predominately Jewish, Ghetto refugees.But how much is too much? How long can fear survive in the face of cruelty and evil? Until all is lost, and there is nothing left to fear losing. Nothing left but anger that knows no limits, and retribution that knows no age. Canev was left lost in such anger, and it meant nothing to the German Nazi war machine - until it did. This is one of a thousand unknowable stories of a Warsaw Ghetto that saw and experienced the unimaginable.

    From growing up in a close-knit Slavic community that gathered daily to celebrate food, Tatyana Nesteruk learned the art of honoring tradition while also making the recipes accessible for the modern home cook. Her simple instructions and treasure chest of time-honored dishes will have you flawlessly re-creating the food you love—or have yet to discover! Capturing the classic tastes of Eastern Europe is easy no matter where you live, thanks to Tatyana’s nifty cooking hacks, such as rinsing cottage cheese to quickly transform it into the beloved Russian tvorog (farmer’s cheese). Dive into timeless recipes like Beef and Cheese Piroshki (hand pies), Smoked Salmon and Caviar Blini and Classic Beef Borscht. Whip up epic main dishes like Shashliki (Shish Kebabs), Plov (Beef and Garlic Rice Pilaf) and Potato Latkes with Chicken, and pair them with delicious sides like Mushroom Buckwheat and Olivier Potato Salad for a truly unbeatable spread. With desserts like Sweet Cherry Pierogi, Russian Tea Cookies and Poppy Seed Roll, you’ll be transported back to the old world by the end of the night. If you grew up eating this incredible cuisine, visited this part of the world and can’t stop dreaming of the food, or are trying these authentic dishes for the first time, the unique, comforting and nostalgic flavors packed into Tatyana’s recipes will send your taste buds on an unforgettable journey.