The city of Kiev was bombed in Hitler's blitzkrieg across the Soviet Union, but the constant siege was only the beginning for her citizens. In this sweeping historical saga, Kelli Stuart takes the reader on a captivating journey into the little--known history of Ukraine's tragedies through the eyes of four compelling characters who experience the same story from different perspectives.Maria Ivanovna is only fourteen when the bombing begins and not much older when she is forced into work at a German labor camp. She must fight to survive and to make her way back to her beloved Ukraine.Ivan Kyrilovich is falsely mistaken for a Jew and lined up with 34,000 other men, women, and children who are to be shot at the edge of Babi Yar, the "killing ditch." He survives, but not without devastating consequences.Luda is sixteen when German soldiers rape her. Now pregnant with the child of the enemy, she is abandoned by her father, alone, and in pain. She must learn to trust family and friends again and find her own strength in order to discover the redemption that awaits.Frederick Hermann is sure in his knowledge that the Fuhrer's plans for domination are right and just. He is driven to succeed by a desire to please a demanding father and by his own blind faith in the ideals of Nazism. Based on true stories gathered from fifteen years of research and interviews with Ukrainian World War II survivors, Like a River from Its Course is a story of love, war, heartache, forgiveness, and redemption.

    Never one to miss an opportunity for genealogical research;methodical and meticulous Molly plans a side trip to Ukraine. Intriguingly, her mother, Judith, evokes a favorite Yiddish proverb, 'Man plans and God laughs.' If Judith had her way, her daughter would still be dressing up in fairy wings and princess crowns- collecting wild flowers and connecting with her spiritual energy, but for Molly; making plans and compiling data came as second nature. She and her father had delighted in spending long, cozy, afternoons cuddled in the library studying ancient family history. David Abramovitz began recounting tales of great-grandparents trekking across Mother Russia when his daughter was still quite young. Captivated, Molly learned how her relatives boarded a ship and sailed across the ocean to reach the shores of Argentina. Now, at last, Molly's plans are coming to fruition. Her trek to her ancestral home leads her to an accidental discovery of a mythical tarot card. Will the life lessons revealed on this enchanted journey shake up her staid and uncomplicated life? Only time will tell.

    

    Each book also looks at past and present scientific research and includes a unique storytelling element in the form of an animal tale drawn from mythology or folklore. Progressively complex text draws readers into this interdisciplinary life science series. A look at peacocks, including their habitats, physical characteristics such as the males colorful plumage, behaviors, relationships with humans, and the protected status of Congo and green peacocks in the world today.

    Few people are left indifferent once they understand a little about the biggest technological catastrophe in history. Wladimir Tchertkoff’s book “The Crime of Chernobyl - the Nuclear Gulag” occupies a central place in this library aboutChernobyl. Many journalists, like Wladimir Tchertkoff, a documentary film maker for Swiss television”, were shocked by what they saw in the areas affected by the radioactive emissions following the explosion at Reactor 4 of the Lenin nuclear power plant in Chernobyl (Ukraine). Many witnesses, like Tchertkoff, were revolted by the events that followed in the scientific and political world after the Catastrophe. But very few were able to gather together all the facts to back up these feelings of indignation in a formidable work of documentation. Tchertkoff’s book does not limit itself to remembering the events. It demands of each of us that we grasp the fact that following the Chernobyl catastrophe, the damage to human health and to the natural environment will be felt for hundreds of years over immense areas of the northern hemisphere contaminated by strontium-90 and caesium-137, and for tens of thousands of years by plutonium in a number of areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Tchertkoff’s book is reminiscent of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s famous book “The Gulag Archipelago”, not simply in its title but in the method used to select and reveal the facts: it is a documentary (supplying names, titles and dates), it is encyclopaedic (the destinies and actions of individuals are accompanied by medical, historical, physical, biological, legal and political documentation) and it is passionate (the author is not a foreign observer but an active participant in events). The bringing together of all this information, combined with the author’s obvious talent as a writer, makes the publication of Wladimir Tchertkoff’s book an important event for thousands and thousands of people in different countries. For those living in the contaminated territories, or those who have been exposed in any way to dangerous levels of artificial radionuclides, this book will help them towards a better understanding of how to deal with the dangers posed by radiation to themselves and to those closest to them. For those who are trying, in spite of the reaction to the consequences of Chernobyl from governments and international organisations, which was muted, to say the least, to understand more fully and to reduce to a minimum the uncontrolled effects of “Atoms for Peace” – the chronic exposure to low level ionising radiation, the effects of artificial radiation on health - this book will provide great moral support. This is an important book for the history of contemporary society: it documents the way in which, during the last quarter of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, political statements diverged, sometimes diametrically, from the real action taken. The corporate interests of the nuclear industry and short-term "political expediency" took precedence over safety considerations and over the lives of millions of people. Finally, the book contains many striking descriptions of human behaviour: cowardice and heroism, baseness and self-sacrifice, selflessness and villainy, a sense of duty and irresponsibility. This book is a revised and fuller version of the 2006 French edition. It is based on documents from the hundreds of hours of film footage used in the seven documentary films made about the Chernobyl catastrophe by the inseparable team, Wladimir Tchertkoff - Emanuela Andreoli.

    A Russian journalist is brutally murdered to protect a dark Kremlin secret. His son pursues the investigation only to find himself a target for assassination. A Ukrainian intelligence operative struggles to prevent a massacre. A young woman dedicated to the Kremlin must confront her own demons. All of these threads are woven together in a compelling tale based largely on fact that takes the reader on a roller coaster ride from Moscow to Kiev and ultimately to Washington where Russian intelligence plans a monstrous crime.

    As a result, those Jews and Ukrainians who may care about their respective ancestral heritages usually view each other through distorted stereotypes, misperceptions, and biases. This book sheds new light on highly controversial moments of Ukrainian-Jewish relations and argues that the historical experience in Ukraine not only divided ethnic Ukrainians and Jews but also brought them together.The story of Jews and Ukrainians is presented in an impartial manner through twelve thematic chapters. Among the themes discussed are geography, history, economic life, traditional culture, religion, language and publications, literature and theater, architecture and art, music, the diaspora, and contemporary Ukraine. The book's easy-to-read narrative is enhanced by 335 full-color illustrations, 29 maps, and several text inserts that explain specific phenomena or address controversial issues. Jews and Ukrainians provides a wealth of information for anyone interested in learning more about the fascinating land of Ukraine and two of its most historically significant peoples.

    This society of Carpatho-Ruthenians, Jews, Magyars, and Roma disintegrated under pressure of state building in interwar Czechoslovakia and, during World War II, from the onslaught of the Hungarian occupation. Charges of "foreignness" and disloyalty to the Hungarian state linked antisemitism to xenophobia and national security anxieties. Genocide unfolded as a Hungarian policy, and Hungarian authorities committed mass robbery, deportations, and killings against all non-Magyar groups in their efforts to recast the region as part of an ethnonational "Greater Hungary."In considering the events that preceded the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944, this book reorients our view of the Holocaust not simply as a German drive for continent-wide genocide, but as a truly international campaign of mass murder, related to violence against non-Jews unleashed by projects of state and nation building. Focusing on both state and society, Raz Segal shows how Hungary's genocidal attack on Subcarpathian Rus' obliterated not only tens of thousands of lives but also a diverse society and way of life that today, from the vantage point of our world of nation-states, we find difficult to imagine.