Book picks similar to
Somewhere There Is Still a Sun: A Memoir of the Holocaust by Michael Gruenbaum
holocaust
non-fiction
memoir
nonfiction
Once
Morris Gleitzman - 2005
At least Once.Once I escaped from an orphanage to find Mum and Dad.Once I saved a girl called Zelda from a burning house.Once I made a Nazi with a toothache laugh.My name is Felix. This is my story.Once is the first in a series of children's novels about Felix, a Jewish orphan caught in the middle of the Holocaust, from Australian author Morris Gleitzman - author of Bumface and Boy Overboard. The next books in the series Then, Now and After are also available from Puffin.
Summer of My German Soldier
Bette Greene - 1973
But she never could have imagined that her summer would be so memorable. German prisoners of war have arrived to make their new home in the prison camp in Jenkinsville. To the rest of her town, these prisoners are only Nazis. But to Patty, a young Jewish girl with a turbulent home life, one boy in particular becomes an unlikely friend. Anton relates to Patty in ways that her mother and father never can. But when their forbidden relationship is discovered, will Patty risk her family and town for the understanding and love of one boy?
The Nazis Knew My Name
Magda Hellinger - 2021
The SS soon discovered that by putting prisoners in charge of the day-to-day accommodation blocks, they could deflect attention away from themselves. Magda was one such prisoner selected for leadership and put in charge of hundreds of women in the notorious Experimental Block 10. She found herself constantly walking a dangerously fine line: saving lives while avoiding suspicion by the SS and risking execution. Through her inner strength and shrewd survival instincts, she was able to rise above the horror and cruelty of the camps and build pivotal relationships with the women under her watch, and even some of Auschwitz’s most notorious Nazi senior officers. Based on Magda’s personal account and completed by her daughter’s extensive research, this is “an unputdownable account of resilience and the power of compassion” (Booklist) in the face of indescribable evil.
Hiding Edith: A True Story
Kathy Kacer - 2006
Edith's story is remarkable not only for her own bravery, but for the bravery of those that helped her: an entire village, including its mayor and citizenry, heroically conspired to conceal the presence of hundreds of Jewish children who lived in the safe house. The children went to the local school, roamed the streets and ate good food, all withot having to worry about concealing their Jewish identity. And during Nazi raids, the children camped out until the coast was clear. Intensively researched and sensitively written, this book, illustrated with photographs and maps, both comforts and challenges a young reader's spirit, skillfully addressing both the horrors and hope that children experienced during the Holocaust.
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers
Maria Augusta von Trapp - 1949
But much about the real-life woman and her family was left untold.Here, Baroness Maria Augusta Trapp tells in her own beautiful, simple words the extraordinary story of her romance with the baron, their escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, and their life in America.Now with photographs from the original edition.
After Long Silence
Helen Fremont - 1999
It wasn't until she was an adult, practicing law in Boston, that she discovered her parents were Jewish--Holocaust survivors living invented lives. Not even their names were their own. In this powerful memoir, Helen Fremont delves into the secrets that held her family in a bond of silence for more than four decades, recounting with heartbreaking clarity a remarkable tale of survival, as vivid as fiction but with the resonance of truth.Driven to uncover their roots, Fremont and her sister pieced together an astonishing story: of Siberian Gulags and Italian royalty, of concentration camps and buried lives. After Long Silence is about the devastating price of hiding the truth; about families; about the steps we take, foolish or wise, to protect ourselves and our loved ones. No one who reads this book can be unmoved, or fail to understand the seductive, damaging power of secrets.What Fremont and her sister discover is an astonishing story: one of Siberian gulags and Italian royalty, of concentration camps and buried lives. AFTER LONG SILENCE is about the devastating price of hiding the truth; about families; about the steps we take, foolish or wise, to protect ourselves and our loved ones. No one who reads this book can be unmoved, or fail to understand the seductive, damaging power of secrets. -->
Escape from Warsaw
Ian Serraillier - 1956
Now they are alone. With the war raging around them, food and shelter are hard to come by. They live in constant fear.Finally, they get word that their father is alive. He has made it to Switzerland. Edek and Ruth are determined to find him, though they know how dangerous the long trip from Warsaw will be. But they also know that if they don't make it, they may never see their parents again.Their gripping story is taken from actual accounts.
The Liberator: One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau
Alex Kershaw - 2012
Army officer and his infantry unit as they fought from the invasion of Italy to the liberation of Dachau at war's end.From July 10, 1943, the date of the Allied landing in Sicily, to May 8, 1945, when victory in Europe was declared-roughly 500 days-no regiment saw more action, and no single platoon, company, or battalion endured worse, than the one commanded by Felix Sparks, a greenhorn second lieutenant when The Liberator begins. Historian Alex Kershaw vividly portrays the immense courage and stamina of Sparks and his men as they fought terrifying engagements against Hitler's finest troops in Sicily and Salerno and as they endured attack after attack on the beaches of Anzio (with Sparks miraculously emerging as his 200-man company's sole survivor). In the bloody battle for southern France, Sparks led his reconstituted unit into action against superbly equipped and trained die-hard SS troops and demonstrated how the difference between defeat and victory would be a matter of character, not tactics or hardware. Finally, he and his men were ordered to liberate Dachau, the Nazis' first concentration camp. It would be their greatest challenge, a soul-searing test of their humanity.
Back Home
Michelle Magorian - 1984
When she returns in 1945, she finds a country and a family she neither understands nor likes, and vice versa.
Journey to America
Sonia Levitin - 1970
Suddenly, there were more and more restrictions for the Jews: yellow stars they had to wear, schools they could not attend, things they were forbidden to do. The Nazis were in power. And Lisa Platt was scared.Her father knew they had to escape, and he left for America in the middle of the night. He promised to send for Lisa, her mother, and her two sisters when there was enough money. Until then, they were to live in Switzerland. And so they did, waiting, in hardship none of them could ever have imagined.
Under a War-Torn Sky
L.M. Elliott - 2001
In constant danger of discovery by German soldiers, Henry begins a remarkable journey to freedom. Relying on the kindness of strangers, Henry moves from town to town--traveling by moonlight, never asking questions, or even the names of the people who help him along the way. Through his journey, Henry gains an understanding of the French and their struggle; and of his own place in a war that will change the face of Europe forever.
Hitler's Forgotten Children: My Life Inside The Lebensborn
Ingrid von Oelhafen - 2015
I was stolen as a baby to be part of one of the most terrible of all Nazi experiments: Lebensborn.’ Watch the 2016 interview with the author. In 1942 Erika, a baby girl from Rogaška Slatina, the Slovenian town that was renamed Sauerbrunn (another town with the same name exists in Austria, which made it harder for the author to find her roots after the war) by Nazi occupiers of the northern part of Slovenia, the only present-day European nation that was trisected and completely annexed into both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during WWII, was one of many children that were stolen from their parents by the Nazi occupiers, declared an ‘Aryan’, her true identity erased, and sent to German couples who could not have their own children under the pretense that children were saved from dysfunctional families, struck by prostitution and whatnot, so she was renamed Ingrid, and given new surname "von Oelhafen".After the war, Erika/Ingrid began to uncover her true identity, the full scale of the Lebensborn scheme and the Nazi obsession with bloodlines became clear -- including the kidnapping of up to half a million babies like her and the deliberate murder of children born into the program who were deemed ‘substandard.’The Lebensborn program was the brainchild of Himmler: an extraordinary plan to create an Aryan master race, leaving behind thousands of displaced victims in the wake of the Nazi regime.Written with insight and compassion, this is a powerful meditation on the personal legacy of Hitler’s vision, of Germany’s brutal past and of a divided Europe that for many years struggled to come to terms with its own history.
The Enemy Above: A Novel of World War II
Michael P. Spradlin - 2016
And twelve-year-old Anton knows his family can't outrun them. A web of underground caves seems like the perfect place to hide. But danger lurks above the surface. Ruthless Major Karl Von Duesen of the Gestapo has made it his mission to round up every Jew in the Ukrainian countryside. Anton knows if his community is discovered, they will be sent off to work camps...or worse.When a surprise invasion catches them off guard, Anton makes a radical decision. He won't run any longer. And he won't hide. He will stop being the hunted...and start doing some hunting of his own. Michael P. Spradlin's newest thriller is the ultimate game of cat and mouse set during one of the darkest moments in history.
The Spy Wore Red
Aline, Countess of Romanones - 1987
Under the code name ''Tiger,'' this remarkable woman probed the depths of the Nazi underground, risking her life -- and her love -- in a glittering world of high intrigue far more exciting than any fictionalized thriller. The Spy Wore Red is a harrowing first-hand account of the dangers and adventures she experienced as an undercover agent.
The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History: The Story of the Monuments Men
Robert M. Edsel - 2019
The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History recounts the astonishing true story of 11 men and one woman who risked their lives amidst the bloodshed of World War II to preserve churches, libraries, monuments, and works of art that for centuries defined the heritage of Western civilization. As the war raged, these American and British volunteers -- museum curators, art scholars and educators, architects, archivists, and artists, known as the Monuments Men -- found themselves in a desperate race against time to locate and save the many priceless treasures and works of art stolen by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.