Book picks similar to
When Hope Prevails: The Personal Triumph of a Holocaust Survivor by Sam Offen
biography
memoir
non-fiction
world-war-2
Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past
Fern Schumer Chapman - 2000
Edith survived, but most of her family perished in the death camps. Unable to cope with the loss of her family and homeland, Edith closed the door on her past, refusing to discuss even the smallest details.Fifty-four years later, when the void of her childhood was consuming both her and her family, she returned to Stockstadt with her grown daughter Fern. For Edith the trip was a chance to reconnect and reconcile with her past; for Fern it was a chance to learn what lay behind her mother's silent grief. Together, they found a town that had dramatically changed on the surface, but which hid guilty secrets and lived in enduring denial.On their journey, Fern and her mother shared many extraordinary encounters with the townspeople and--more importantly--with one another, closing the divide that had long stood between them. Motherland is a story of learning to face the past, of remembering and honoring while looking forward and letting go. It is an account of the Holocaust's lingering grip on its witnesses; it is also a loving story of mothers and daughters, roots, understanding, and, ultimately, healing.
I Came, I Saw: An Autobiography
Norman Lewis - 1985
It is now re-published with 50 new pages increasing in depth the story in the 1960s and 1970s, recording his time spent in the south of Italy.
I Carried Them with Me: A Young Girl's Journey to Survive
Sara Lumer - 2016
When she was 16 years old her parents sent her to Budapest, Hungary, where her two older brothers were already living. They felt she would be safer there. But in March of 1944 Germany invaded Hungary and began to round up all the Jews. Sara was sent to two different labor camps and endured two long death marches. She is a Holocaust Survivor.
My Train to Freedom: A Jewish Boy's Journey from Nazi Europe to a Life of Activism
Ivan A. Backer - 2016
The final train was canceled September 1 when Hitler invaded Poland. The 250 children scheduled for that train were left on the platform and later transported to concentration camps and presumably perished.Detailed in this page-turning true story is Backer’s dangerous escape, his boyhood in England, his perilous 1944 voyage to America, and his mantra today. Now he is an eighty-six-year-old who remains an activist for peace and justice. He has been influenced by his Jewish heritage, his Christian boarding school education in England, and the always present question, “For what purpose was I spared the Holocaust?”My Train to Freedom was thoroughly researched and shaped by Backer’s own memories. It includes interviews he conducted in 1980 in Czech with his mother and her sister, later translated into English; a collection of conversations he had with his older brother and cousin; insights gained from the Czech film, Nicky’s Family, about the Kindertransport; and concludes with never-before-published death march accounts by two family members.
Truman Fires MacArthur: (ebook excerpt of Truman)
David McCullough - 2010
An unpopular war. A military and diplomatic team in disarray. Those are the challenges President Obama has faced as he attempts to make a success of U.S involvement in Afghanistan. They are also the challenges President Truman surmounted in the winter of 1950 as he began managing a war in Korea that risked becoming bigger and more costly. It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War: United States troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur came to the aid of the South Koreans after North Korea invaded. When Communist China entered the conflict on the side of the North Koreans, the crisis seemed on the verge of flaring into a world war. Truman was determined not to let that happen. MacArthur kept urging a widening of the war into China itself and ignoring his Commander in Chief. On April 11, 1951, after MacArthur had “shot his mouth off,” as one diplomat put it, one too many times, Truman fired him. The story of their showdown—one of the most dramatic in U.S. history between a Commander in Chief and his top soldier in the field—is captured in all its detail by David McCullough in his biography Truman, and presented here in a e-book called Truman Fires MacArthur (an excerpt of Truman, McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography), which was the headline carried in many newspapers around the country the next day. Truman Fires MacArthur will continue to ride the headlines. It will go on sale as an ebook just as the Rolling Stone profile that exposed General Stanley McChrystal’s insurrection and forced his resignation hits newsstands, and media coverage of the showdown continues to draw historical analogies between Truman and Obama.
In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer
Irene Gut Opdyke - 1992
One's first steps are always small: I had begun by hiding food under a fence."Through this intimate and compelling memoir, we are witness to the growth of a hero. Irene Gut was just a girl when the war began: seventeen, a Polish patriot, a student nurse, a good Catholic girl. As the war progressed, the soldiers of two countries stripped her of all she loved -- her family, her home, her innocence -- but the degradations only strengthened her will.She began to fight back. Irene was forced to work for the German Army, but her blond hair, her blue eyes, and her youth bought her the relatively safe job of waitress in an officers' dining room. She would use this Aryan mask as both a shield and a sword: She picked up snatches of conversation along with the Nazis' dirty dishes and passed the information to Jews in the ghetto. She raided the German Warenhaus for food and blankets. She smuggled people from the work camp into the forest. And, when she was made the housekeeper of a Nazi major, she successfully hid twelve Jews in the basement of his home until the Germans' defeat.This young woman was determined to deliver her friends from evil. It was as simple and as impossible as that.
Fighting Back: The Rocky Bleier Story
Rocky Bleier - 1975
Book by Rocky Bleier, Terry O'Neil
If This Is a Man • The Truce
Primo Levi - 1987
He was profoundly in touch with the minutest workings of the most endearing human events and with the most contemptible. What has survived in Levi's writing isn't just his memory of the unbearable, but also, in The Periodic Table and The Wrench, his delight in what made the world exquisite to him. He was himself a magically endearing man, the most delicately forceful enchanter I've ever known' - Philip Roth.
South From Corregidor
John H. Morrill - 2018
Quail was in the Philippines sweeping mines to provide access for American shipping to South Harbor, Corregidor. Damaged by enemy bombs and guns during the Japanese invasion of the island John Morrill and his fellow men decided to make the decision to scuttle their ship rather than allow it to be captured. This led them to begin one of the most daring escapes of the Second World War. Lieutenant Commander John Morrill and sixteen fellow sailors took a thirty-six-foot diesel boat nearly two thousand miles through Japanese controlled waters. They moved mostly at night, with a homemade sextant, some salvaged charts, with little fresh water and food, but even despite these difficulties they eventually made their way to Darwin, Australia. “nonfiction account of his breathtaking escape in 1942 from the Japanese at Corregidor, the beleaguered U.S. fortress commanding Manila Bay in the Philippines.” The Washington Post “The enthralling story of how a handful of Navy men escaped from falling Corregidor southward to Australia in a leaky 36-foot landing boat.” Foreign Affairs “A matter of fact, modest and inherently dramatic account of an isolated incident in the pacific war” Kirkus Reviews John Morrill was a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy. In June 1939 he became commanding officer of the minesweeper U.S.S. Quail. Pete Martin was a journalist and author. Their book South from Corregidor was first published in 1943. Pete Martin passed away in 1980 and John Morrill passed away in 1997.
A Doctor's War
Aidan MacCarthy - 1979
En route back to Japan in 1944, his ship was torpedoed but he was rescued by a whaling boat and re interned in Japan. His life was literally saved by the dropping of the Nagasaki atom bomb. He was then eyewitness to the horror and devastation it caused. This is an almost incredible account written with humour and dignity. Pete McCarthy This book is an epic. Sir Dennis Spotswood, Marshal of the RAF His description is terrifying but fascinating. Air Marshal Sir William Coles"
The Reluctant Expat: Part One - Surprised by Spain
Alan Laycock - 2018
Alan has no desire to move to Spain, but his sister Cathy and brother-in-law Bernie are going regardless, so he decides to tag along. Despite his initial pessimism, he soon sees that life in their new home has more to offer than he first suspected, and by befriending a pair of local oldies he finds surprising new opportunities opening up to him. A coin dealer by trade and an idler by nature, his new, dynamic attitude surprises Cathy, Bernie and, most of all, himself, as he gets to grips with the language, tries out new activities and embraces the outdoor life. When the bar in the nearby village is reopened by two enterprising ladies, he also begins to realise that bachelorhood may not be his destiny after all. Part Two is now also available.
Life in the French Foreign Legion: How to Join and What to Expect When You Get There
Evan McGorman - 2000
Many of the legends you grew up with no longer apply, so whatever you've heard probably does not reflect the reality of service today. Evan McGorman explains in detail how to apply to get into this elite corps, what to expect if accepted, and how to make the most of the experience.
Always Remember Your Name: A True Story of Family and Survival in Auschwitz
Andra Bucci - 2022
Along with their mother, Mira, their aunt, and cousin Sergio, they were deported to Auschwitz. Over 230,000 children were deported to the camp, where Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, performed deadly experiments on them. Only a few dozen children survived, Tati and Andra among them. Tati, Andra, and Sergio were separated from their mothers upon arrival. But Mira was determined to keep track of her girls. After being tattooed with their inmate numbers, she made them memorize her number and told them to “always remember your name.” In keeping this promise to their mother, the sisters were able to be reunited with their parents when WWII ended. An unforgettable narrative of the power of sisterhood in the most extreme circumstances, and of how a mother’s love can overcome the most impossible odds, the Bucci sisters' memoir is a timely reminder that separating families is an inexcusable evil.
Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall
Spike Milligan - 1971
gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked "This is your enemy". I searched every compartment, but he wasn't on the train . . .'In this, the first of Spike Milligan's uproarious recollections of life in the army, our hero takes us from the outbreak of war in 1939 ('it must have been something we said'), through his attempts to avoid enlistment ('time for my appendicitus, I thought') and his gunner training in Bexhill ('There was one drawback. No ammunition') to the landing at Algiers in 1943 ('I closed my eyes and faced the sun. I fell down a hatchway').Filled with bathos, pathos and gales of ribald laughter, this is a barely sane helping of military goonery and superlative Milliganese.'The most irreverent, hilarious book about the war that I have ever read' Sunday Express'Desperately funny, vivid, vulgar' Sunday Times'Milligan is the Great God to all of us' John Cleese'The Godfather of Alternative Comedy' Eddie Izzard'That absolutely glorious way of looking at things differently. A great man' Stephen FrySpike Milligan was one of the greatest and most influential comedians of the twentieth century. Born in India in 1918, he served in the Royal Artillery during WWII in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war, he forged a career as a jazz musician, sketch-show writer and performer, before joining forces with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe to form the legendary Goon Show. Until his death in 2002, he had success as on stage and screen and as the author of over eighty books of fiction, memoir, poetry, plays, cartoons and children's stories.
An Officer and a Gentlewoman: The Making of a Female British Army Officer
Heloise Goodley - 2012
'An Officer and a Gentlewoman' charts Goodley's absorbing journey as she gives an insight into the array of bizarre military behaviours and customs at this esoteric and hidden institution."