Edith's Story


Edith Velmans - 1998
    She also happened to be Jewish. In the same month that Anne Frank's family went into hiding, Edith was sent to live with a courageous Protestant family, took a new name, and survived by posing as a gentile. Ultimately one-third of the hidden Dutch Jews were discovered and murdered; most of Edith's family perished. Velmans's memoir is based on her teenage diaries, wartime letters, and reflections as an adult survivor. In recounting wartime events and the details of her feelings as the war runs its course, Edith's Story ultimately affirms life, love, and extraordinary courage. "The most vivid evocation of the experience of Nazi Occupation that I have ever read." - The Independent (London)

The Hidden Children


Howard Greenfeld - 1993
    From ten thousand to 100 thousand Jewish children were hidden with strangers and survived. In this powerful and compelling work, 25 people share their experiences as hidden children. Black-and-white photos.

Thirty-six Years in the White House (1902)


Thomas Franses Pendel - 2016
    Pendel's attention. It is very interesting and throws many sidelights on the life of the White House. Pendel writes: "In 1861, or 1862, the Metropolitan Police was established by Congress at the Capital, and I made application for and received an appointment on the force. I made the first arrest, with the assistance of "Buck" Essex. The case was that of a fellow named Grady, one of the English Hill toughs. A roundsman said to us, "Boys, you take a walk down Seventh Street, and if you see anything going on, take a hand in it." Just as we got opposite the Patent Office, this Grady had assaulted, or rather was assaulting, a young fellow with a whip. I went up and grabbed him and put him under arrest, then took him to Squire Dunn's court and preferred charges against him. The Squire was busy writing for some time. When he got through he handed me the paper he was writing, and I was so green at the business I did not know what it was, so said: "What is this, Squire?" He replied, "Why, that is the paper of commitment for this fellow. Take him to jail." "On November 3, 1864, Sergeant John Cronin, Alfonso Dunn, Andrew Smith, and myself were ordered to report at the First Precinct, in the old City Hall, at one o'clock in the afternoon. We supposed we were to be detailed for detective work in New York City on account of the great riot then on there, especially as we were ordered to report in citizens' clothes, to conceal our revolvers, and to be sure to have them all clean and in good order. We arrived at the City Hall, and then were told where we were to go, which was to the President's Mansion, there to report to Marshal Lanham, at that time United States Marshal of the District of Columbia, and a bosom friend of Abraham Lincoln. "These were days that tried men's hearts, and women's, too. Men were falling at the front by hundreds, both in the Union and in the Confederate armies. There was weeping and mourning all over the land. Our nation was trembling with anxiety; we were all hoping that the great strife was over or soon to be. "Marshal Lanham took us upstairs and into the President's office, where we were introduced to him and to his two secretaries, Mr. Nicolay and Mr. Hay, the latter now being Secretary of State. We were then instructed to keep a sharp lookout in the different parts of the house, more particularly in the East Room and at the door of the President's office. " CONTENTS I — Under President Lincoln II — Under President Johnson III — Under President Grant IV — Under President Hayes V — Under President Garfield VI — Under President Arthur VII — Under President Cleveland VIII — Under President Harrison IX — Cleveland's Second Administration X— Under President McKinley XI — Furniture in Executive Mansion Originally published in 1902; reformatted for the Kindle; may contain an occasional imperfections; original spellings have been kept in place.

Through Apache Eyes: Verbal History of Apache Struggle (Annotated and Illustrated)


Geronimo Chiricahua - 2011
    Yet, the one constant in the history of the Apache People is their constant struggle to survive in a world where they are surrounded by various enemies, including other Indian tribes, the Mexicans and finally their brutal nemesis the United States Army. Attacked, tricked, lied to and double crossed by all of those who surround and outnumber them, the Apache people continued their struggle until they were for all intent and purposes almost totally wiped out. One Apache’s name stands out in their brave yet woeful history and it is Geronimo, who at age 30 witnessed the massacre of his mother, wife and two young children.I’ve taken his recollections or accounts of the struggle of the Apache people and intertwined them with some archeological facts about this extraordinary tribe. In addition, I have searched and included some of the best photos of Apaches from that era, which I collected from Library of Congress Archives. What impressed me most about Geronimo was his brevity of words, yet his ability to take a knife to the heart of anyone who reads his verbal history. Like most Apaches, Geronimo said little, but what he did say was profound and truthful. But most powerful is what Geronimo didn’t say in his recollections. It is between this silence one can feel the pain, sorrow, pride and bravery of the Apache People. Chet DembeckPublisher of One

The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing up in the Warsaw Ghetto


Mary Berg - 1991
    After 60 years of silence, 'The Diary of Mary Berg' is poised at last to gain the appreciation and widespread attention that it so richly deserves, and is certain to take it’s place alongside 'The Diary of Anne Frank' as one of the most significant memoirs of the twentieth century. From love to tragedy, seamlessly combining the everyday concerns of a growing teenager with a unique commentary on life in one of the darkest contexts of history. This is a work remarkable for its authenticity, detail, and poignancy. But it is not only as a factual report on the life and death of a people that 'The Diary of Mary Berg' ranks with the most noteworthy documents of the Second World War. This is the personal story of a life-loving girl’s encounter with unparalleled human suffering, a uniquely illuminating insight into one of the darkest chapters of history. Mary Berg was imprisoned in the ghetto from 1940 to 1943. Unlike so many others, she survived the war, having been rescued in a prisoner-of-war exchange due to her mother’s dual Polish-American nationality. Berg's diary was published in 1945 when she was still only 19, in an attempt to alert the world to the Nazi atrocities in Poland, when it was described as "one of the most heartbreaking documents yet to come out of the war" by the /New Yorker/. After the war, Berg remained in America in quiet anonymity.

Don't Shoot! I'm the Guitar Man


Buzzy Martin - 2007
    This is the story of lifelong musician Buzzy Martin, music teacher to the hardened criminals inside the walls of San Quentin Prison-and what he learned, note by incredible note.

Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account


Miklós Nyiszli - 1946
    A Jew and a medical doctor, the prisoner Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was spared death for a grimmer fate: to perform "scientific research" on his fellow inmates under the supervision of the man who became known as the infamous "Angel of Death" - Dr. Josef Mengele. Nyiszli was named Mengele's personal research pathologist. In that capactity he also served as physician to the Sonderkommando, the Jewish prisoners who worked exclusively in the crematoriums and were routinely executed after four months. Miraculously, Nyiszli survived to give this horrifying and sobering account.

SARGE!: Cases of a Chicago Police Detective Sergeant in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s


John DiMaggio - 2018
    DiMaggio, one of the most decorated officers on the force during a career that spanned the years 1957 to 1991. Among his awards are two Superintendent’s Awards of Valor, Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Praiseworthy Acknowledgment Plaque for Exceptional Act of Bravery Involving Risk of Life, a Presidential Citation of Appreciation, the Illinois Police Association Award of Valor, and many more.Upon his retirement in 1991, DiMaggio wrote a fascinating account of his work as a cop. The manuscript languished among his personal effects until after his death in 2008, after which his family decided to resurrect it, spruce it up, and submit it for publication. It turns out that he was an excellent word craftsman and storyteller; in fact, he was no stranger to writing—for many years he wrote the “Ask Sarge” column for the Mystery Writers of America Midwest Chapter newsletter.Told in a conversational, “regular guy” voice in episodic fashion, “SARGE!” reveals to the reader what it was really like to be a cop. The manuscript in many ways takes the form of a prose treatment of a weekly television police drama. A large selection of PHOTOS is included.DiMaggio takes the reader back to the decades such as the turbulent 1960s, when the police department was making a painful transition from “old school” to modernization. The author describes firsthand the legendary riots that occurred in Chicago after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. He illustrates the integration of minorities into the department and how that played out. He also goes into famous cases of corruption and the politics of navigating such a large department. One of the “set pieces” of the book is the story of how DiMaggio, as part of the “Three Musketeers”—a trio that included two detectives who were close friends—investigated a series terrifying slasher attacks on women that occurred in the city in the mid-70s. The case became one of the police department’s most memorable. Among the other cases detailed in the book include how DiMaggio found himself entering the home of a crazed young man holding hostages with a shotgun; the investigation of the discovery of a headless corpse; the take-down of the Chicago “Mad Bomber”; how an anonymous audio tape provided clues to the identities of armed robbers; and the manhunt for a cop killer. A portion of all proceeds will be donated to The Chicago Police Memorial Foundation and The Chicago Police Foundation.

Unshed Tears


Edith Hofmann - 2012
    It has only very recently been published. Although it has been written as a novel, it details events, which were all too tragically true.Edith Hofmann is a survivor of the Holocaust, born in Prague in 1927 as Edith Birkin. In 1941, along with her parents, she was deported to the Lodz Ghetto, where within a year both her parents had died. At 15 she was left to fend forherself.The Lodz Ghetto was the second-largest ghetto to Warsaw, and was established for Jews and Gypsies in German-occupied Poland. Situated in the town of Lodz in Poland and originally intended as a temporary gathering point for Jews, the ghetto was transformed into a major industrial centre, providing much needed supplies for Nazi Germany and especially for the German Army.Because of its remarkable productivity, the ghetto managed to survive until August 1944, when the remaining population, including Edith, was transported to Auschwitz and Chelmno extermination camp in cattle trucks. It was the last ghetto in Poland to be liquidated due to the advancing Russian army. Edith was only 17, and one of the lucky ones.For the majority, it was their final journey. A small group of them were selected for work. With her hair shaved off and deprived of all her possessions, she travelled to Kristianstadt, a labour camp in Silesia, to work in an underground munitions factory.

Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land


Sara Nomberg-Przytyk - 1985
    I disconnected my heart and intellect in an act of self-defense, despair, and hopelessness." With these words Sara Nomberg-Przytyk begins this painful and compelling account of her experiences while imprisoned for two years in the infamous death camp. Writing twenty years after her liberation, she recreates the events of a dark past which, in her own words, would have driven her mad had she tried to relive it sooner. But while she records unimaginable atrocities, she also richly describes the human compassion that stubbornly survived despite the backdrop of camp depersonalization and imminent extermination.Commemorative in spirit and artistic in form, Auschwitz convincingly portrays the paradoxes of human nature in extreme circumstances. With consummate understatement Nomberg-Przytyk describes the behavior of concentration camp inmates as she relentlessly and pitilessly examines her own motives and feelings. In this world unmitigated cruelty coexisted with nobility, rapacity with self-sacrifice, indifference with selfless compassion. This book offers a chilling view of the human drama that existed in Auschwitz.From her portraits of camp personalities, an extraordinary and horrifying profile emerges of Dr. Josef Mengele, whose medical experiments resulted in the slaughter of nearly half a million Jews. Nomberg-Przytyk's job as an attendant in Mengle's hospital allowed her to observe this Angel of Death firsthand and to provide us with the most complete description to date of his monstrous activities.The original Polish manuscript was discovered by Eli Pfefferkorn in 1980 in the Yad Vashem Archive in Jerusalem. Not knowing the fate of the journal's author, Pfefferkorn spent two years searching and finally located Nomberg-Przytyk in Canada. Subsequent interviews revealed the history of the manuscript, the author's background, and brought the journal into perspective.

In the Hell of Auschwitz: The Wartime Memoirs of Judith Sternberg Newman


Judith Sternberg Newman - 1963
     She was the only one to leave alive again. At five o’clock on February 23, 1942, Nazi police, armed with rifles surrounded the hospital where Sternberg worked. Time had run out for the Jewish inhabitants of Breslau. There had been ten thousand Jewish inhabitants in the city prior to the rise of Nazis. By the end of the war only thirty-eight had escaped the gas chambers of the Nazi concentration camps. Sternberg’s book relates episode after episode of events where she should have been killed, but for whatever reason, she was spared. Much has been written of the horrific events that occurred in Nazi Germany, yet it is rare that you are able to hear of these stories written by survivors themselves. Sternberg’s book is therefore an invaluable source that uncovers the dark days that she spent in hell. In the Hell of Auschwitz is a fascinating book that provides insights into the worst horrors of the Second World War. Although at points it is a difficult read, it should be read by everyone so that such horrors will never be allowed to occur again. After the war Judith Sternberg Newman married Senek Newman, a fellow concentration camp survivor, and emigrated to the United States 1947. She began writing her account immediately after arriving in the United States. She worked as a nurse in Providence, Rhode Island, until her retirement. In the Hell of Auschwitz was first published in 1963. Newman passed away in 2008.

Family Secrets: The scandalous history of an extraordinary family


Derek Malcolm - 2017
    The secret, though, that surrounded my parents’ unhappy life together, was divulged to me by accident . . .’ Hidden under some papers in his father’s bureau, the sixteen-year-old Derek Malcolm finds a book by the famous criminologist Edgar Lustgarten called The Judges and the Damned. Browsing through the Contents pages Derek reads, ‘Mr Justice McCardie tries Lieutenant Malcolm – page 33.’ But there is no page 33. The whole chapter has been ripped out of the book. Slowly but surely, the shocking truth emerges: that Derek’s father, shot his wife’s lover and was acquitted at a famous trial at the Old Bailey. The trial was unique in British legal history as the first case of a crime passionel, where a guilty man is set free, on the grounds of self-defence. Husband and wife lived together unhappily ever after, raising Derek in their wake. Then, in a dramatic twist, following his father’s death, Derek receives an open postcard from his Aunt Phyllis, informing him that his real father is the Italian Ambassador to London . . . By turns laconic and affectionate, Derek Malcolm has written a richly evocative memoir of a family sinking into hopeless disrepair. Derek Malcolm was chief film critic of the Guardian for thirty years and still writes for the paper. Educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, he became first a steeplechase rider and then an actor after leaving university. He worked as a journalist in the sixties, first in Cheltenham and then with the Guardian where he was a features sub-editor and writer, racing correspondent and finally film critic. He directed the London Film Festival for a spell in the 80s and is now President of both the International Film Critics Association and the British Federation of Film Societies. He lives with his wife Sarah Gristwood in London and Kent and has published two books – one on Robert Mitchum and another on his favourite 100 films. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television and a veteran of film festival juries all over the world.

Determined


A. Avraham Perlmutter - 2014
    Desperate to help their son survive, his parents send him to the Netherlands. But the invading German army soon follows. During the ensuing war-torn years, young Avraham braves harrowing captures, daring escapes, torturous hiding, and heartbreaking losses. Yet he also experiences the goodness of humanity through the strangers who help him.Surviving the Holocaust takes ingenuity, guts, and sheer determination—all of which he calls on again, when he fights to establish the State of Israel during its War of Independence.And when mere existence isn’t enough, Avraham moves to the United States to continue his education and pursue his dreams.Determined takes the reader on an unforgettable journey filled with suspense and danger. But it is more than just a remarkable story of survival—it is a testament to human kindness, even in the darkest of hours, and to the achievements made possible through relentless perseverance.This unique autobiography will inspire readers of all ages—spanning fans of historical memoirs to readers seeking an uplifting perspective on a life fulfilled.

Call Me Sister: District Nursing Tales from the Swinging Sixties


Jane Yeadon - 2013
    Staff nursing in a ward where she's challenged by an inventory driven ward sister, she reckons it's time to swap such trivialities for life as a district nurse.Independent thinking is one thing, but Jane's about to find that the drama on district can demand instant reaction; and without hospital back up, she's usually the one having to provide it. She meets a rich cast of patients all determined to follow their own individual star, and goes to Edinburgh where Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute's nurse training is considered the cr me de la cr me of the district nursing world.Call Me Sister recalls Jane's challenging and often hilarious route to realizing her own particular dream.

Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor


Jafa Wallach - 2006
    Jafa Wallet's "Bitter Freedom," which I first read as an untitled manuscript in the late 1970's, is one of the most compelling first-person accounts by a Holocaust survivor that I have ever encountered. She evokes scenes which have resonated inside my head for nearly thirty years, and its publication is an important event not only for those interested in the Holocaust, but for everyone seeking illumination into the complexities and mysteries of what it means to be human. "Nelson E Breen, Emmy Award-winning writer and director "