Living Inspired


Akiva Tatz - 1993
    Living Inspired Akiva Tatz Ever wondered why there is no parking on Golders Green Road on Wednesday nights? Because Wednesday night is Coffee Lounge and Deluxe Desserts with..

IBM and the Holocaust


Edwin Black - 1999
    As the 3rd Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest & genocide, IBM & its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification & cataloging programs of the 30s to the selections of the 40s. Only after Jews were identified--a massively complex task Hitler wanted done immediately--could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor & annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation & organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 30s no computer existed. But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed & constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate the persecution of the Jews.Historians were amazed at the speed & accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify & locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany & then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations & ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads & organizing of concentration camp slave labor. IBM & its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, anticipating the Reich's needs. They didn't merely sell the machines & walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees & became the sole source of the billions of punch cards needed. IBM & the Holocaust details the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the 3rd Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters & the Geneva intermediaries--all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution & destruction. Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit. Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews: how Hitler got the names.

Shoah: The Complete Text Of The Acclaimed Holocaust Film


Claude Lanzmann - 1985
    Shunning any re-creation, archival footage, or visual documentation of the events, filmmaker Claude Lanzmann relied on the words of witnesses—Jewish, Polish, and German—to describe in ruthless detail the bureaucratic machinery of the Final Solution, so that the remote experiences of the Holocaust became fresh and immediate. This book presents in an accessible and vivid format the testimony of survivors, participants, witnesses, and scholars. This tenth anniversary edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the camps, is newly revised and corrected in order to more accurately present the actual testimony of those interviewed. Shoah is an unparalleled oral history of the Holocaust, an intensely readable journey through the twentieth century's greatest horror.

Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz


Omer Bartov - 2018
    It was here that Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews all lived side by side in relative harmony. Then came World War II, and three years later the entire Jewish population had been murdered by German and Ukrainian police, while Ukrainian nationalists eradicated Polish residents. In truth, though, this genocide didn’t happen so quickly. In Anatomy of a Genocide Omer Bartov explains that ethnic cleansing doesn’t occur as is so often portrayed in popular history, with the quick ascent of a vitriolic political leader and the unleashing of military might. It begins in seeming peace, slowly and often unnoticed, the culmination of pent-up slights and grudges and indignities. The perpetrators aren’t just sociopathic soldiers. They are neighbors and friends and family. They are human beings, proud and angry and scared. They are also middle-aged men who come from elsewhere, often with their wives and children and parents, and settle into a life of bourgeois comfort peppered with bouts of mass murder: an island of normality floating on an ocean of blood. For more than two decades Bartov, whose mother was raised in Buczacz, traveled extensively throughout the region, scouring archives and amassing thousands of documents rarely seen until now. He has also made use of hundreds of first-person testimonies by victims, perpetrators, collaborators, and rescuers. Anatomy of a Genocide profoundly changes our understanding of the social dynamics of mass killing and the nature of the Holocaust as a whole. Bartov’s book isn’t just an attempt to understand what happened in the past. It’s a warning of how it could happen again, in our own towns and cities—much more easily than we might think.

Promised Land


Martin Fletcher - 2018
    Arie survived the Holocaust in Europe. Peter, one year older, was sent to America before the war began.They find each other again in Israel, learning everyone else in their family has been murdered. Peter becomes a top Mossad agent, deeply involved in many of the key spy adventures of the era. Arie becomes a scheming businessman, among the richest men in Israel: one brother is building the state, the other protecting it. But they have fallen in love with the same woman, a Jewish refugee from Egypt. The brothers jealousies and intrigues are mirrored by the young nation's very own struggles to survive.Praise for Promised Land: "Promised Land is a great sweeping epic...a moving story of triumph and tragedy, new love and historic hate, expertly told by a cast of unforgettable characters. Fletcher's writing is superb and rises to the level of importance that this story demands and deserves." Nelson DeMille, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Cuban Affair"What a story [Fletcher] has chosen to tell, the coming into being of Israel, set against a family saga in the style of the great European novels. Promised Land is a novel that has much to teach your head and even more, your heart." Joseph Telushkin, New York Times bestselling author of Rebbe, Jewish Literacy, and Words that Hurt, Words that Heal[An] epic family saga, set against the rich tapestry of the creation of the State of Israel. Masterful in scope, yet intimate in lens, Promised Land is a rich tribute to the human spirit and a triumphant chronicle of one of the important events in modern history. Pam Jenoff, New York Times Bestselling Auth

Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure


Menachem Kaiser - 2021
    Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as "The Killer."  A surprise discovery — that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex — leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance — material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.

The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men


Eric Lichtblau - 2014
    They had little trouble getting in. With scant scrutiny, many gained entry on their own as self-styled war "refugees," their pasts easily disguised and their war crimes soon forgotten. But some had help and protection from the U.S. government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler's minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories. For the first time, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story not only of the Nazi scientists brought to America, but of the German spies and con men who followed them and lived for decades as ordinary citizens. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. But even then, American intelligence agencies secretly worked to protect a number of their prized spies from exposure. Today, a few Nazis still remain on our soil. Investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau, relying on a trove of newly discovered documents and scores of interviews with participants in this little-known chapter of postwar history, tells the shocking and shameful story of how America became a safe haven for Hitler's men.

QB VII


Leon Uris - 1970
    In his book The Holocaust—born of the terrible revelation that the Jadwiga Concentration Camp was the site of his family’s extermination—Cady shook the consciousness of the human race. He also named eminent surgeon Sir Adam Kelno as one of Jadwiga’s most sadistic inmate/doctors. Kelno has denied this and brought furious charges. Now unfolds Leon Uris’s riveting courtroom drama—one of the great fictional trials of the century.

Life Is a Soap Bubble: 100 Ways to Look at Life


Osho - 2013
    Life Is a Soap Bubble is among the few written statements available from enlightened masters or mystics. Lao Tzu's statements of the Tao Te Ching came into being only at the end of his life. In the same way, Osho's books are transcriptions of his daily talks. This book is a precious collection of 100 letters written by Osho and mailed to a Yoga Sohan at her meditation camp. Osho promised her that he would send her a letter every day and that she should keep them so they could be published one day. This collection of thoughts provides an essential road map to those who feel that there must be something more to life and are ready to explore other dimensions of being. These short passages are full of diverse, pertinent gems that will touch the heart.

Schlepping Through the Alps: My Search for Austria's Jewish Past with Its Last Wandering Shepherd


Sam Apple - 2005
    He walks the Alps, shepherd’s stick in hand, singing lullabies to his 625 sheep. Sometimes he even gives concerts in historically anti-Semitic towns, showing slides of the flock as he belts out Yiddish ditties. When New York-based writer Sam Apple hears about this one-of-a-kind eccentric, he flies overseas and signs on as a shepherd’s apprentice. For thoroughly urban, slightly neurotic Sam, stumbling along in borrowed boots and burdened with a lot more baggage than his backpack, the task is far from a walk in Central Park. Demonstrating no immediate natural talent for shepherding, he tries to earn the respect of Breuer’s sheep, while keeping a safe distance from the shepherd’s fierce herding dogs.As this strange and hilarious adventure unfolds, the unlikely duo of Sam and Hans meander through a paradise of woods and high meadows toward awkward encounters with Austrians of many stripes. Apple is determined to find out if there are really as many anti-Semites in Austria as he fears and to understand how Hans, who grew up fighting the lingering Nazism in Vienna, became a wandering shepherd. What Apple discovers turns out to be far more fascinating than he had imagined.With this odd and wonderful book, Sam Apple joins the august tradition of Tony Horwitz and Bill Bryson. Schlepping Through the Alps is as funny as it is moving.From the Hardcover edition.

Why?: Explaining the Holocaust


Peter Hayes - 2017
    Numerous theories have sprouted in an attempt to console ourselves and to point the blame in emotionally satisfying directions—yet none of them are fully convincing. As witnesses to the Holocaust near the ends of their lives, it becomes that much more important to unravel what happened and to educate a new generation about the horrors inflicted by the Nazi regime on Jews and non-Jews alike.Why? dispels many misconceptions and answers some of the most basic—yet vexing—questions that remain: why the Jews and not another ethnic group? Why the Germans? Why such a swift and sweeping extermination? Why didn’t more Jews fight back more often? Why didn’t they receive more help? While responding to the questions he has been most frequently asked by students over the decades, world-renowned Holocaust historian and professor Peter Hayes brings a wealth of scholarly research and experience to bear on conventional, popular views of the history, challenging some of the most prominent recent interpretations. He argues that there is no single theory that “explains” the Holocaust; the convergence of multiple forces at a particular moment in time led to catastrophe.In clear prose informed by an encyclopedic knowledge of Holocaust literature in English and German, Hayes weaves together stories and statistics to heart-stopping effect. Why? is an authoritative, groundbreaking exploration of the origins of one of the most tragic events in human history.

Make My Wish Come True


Katie Price - 2014
    But when she lands the job of her dreams, it costs her her best friend.However, apart from her creepy ex-boyfriend, Storm loves the job. Until she’s asked to go undercover to find out if sexy TV chef Nico Alvise is cheating on his girlfriend. Storm knows it’s wrong but agrees because she likes him. A LOT. And she’s determined to protect him.She didn’t bank on them falling in love though. But Nico has secrets to hide, and he hates journalists.So when he finds out what Storm does, the fallout is brutal.Suddenly jobless, friendless and heartbroken, Storm knows that no matter how hard she wishes, Nico will never forgive her…

Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939


Saul Friedländer - 1997
    We hear from the persecutors themselves: the leaders of the Nazi party, the members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies, the university elites, and the heads of the business community. Most telling of all, perhaps, are the testimonies of ordinary German citizens, who in the main acquiesced to increasing waves of dismissals, segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence.

The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945


Lucy S. Dawidowicz - 1975
    Lucid, chilling and comprehensive, Lucy S. Dawidowicz’s classic tells the complete story of the Nazi Holocaust–from the insidious evolution of German Anti-Semitism to the ultimate tragedy of the Final Solution.

The Last of the Just


André Schwarz-Bart - 1959
    As legend has it, God blessed the only survivor of this medieval pogrom, Rabbi Yom Tov Levy, as one of the Lamed-Vov, the thirty-six Just Men of Jewish tradition, a blessing which extended to one Levy of each succeeding generation. This terrifying and remarkable legacy is traced over eight centuries, from the Spanish Inquisition, to expulsions from England, France, Portugal, Germany, and Russia, and to the small Polish village of Zemyock, where the Levys settle for two centuries in relative peace. It is in the twentieth century that Ernie Levy emerges, The Last of the Just, in 1920s Germany, as Hitler’s sinister star is on the rise and the agonies of Auschwitz loom on the horizon. This classic work, long unavailable in a trade edition, is one of those few novels that, once read, is never forgotten.