Within hours, the Kuwaiti defenses collapse under the onslaught of the Iraqi Army. In response, the US military leads a coalition of thirty-four nations in what becomes Operation Desert Storm—a violent campaign to eject the Iraqis from Kuwait. At the tip of the spear are the men of Ghost Troop in the US Army’s 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment.Commanded by Captain Joseph Sartiano, Ghost Troop was among the lead elements of the US VII Corps’ advance into Iraq. On February 26, 1991, Ghost Troop encountered a brigade-sized element of the Tawakalna Division— the elite frontline forces of Iraq’s Republican Guard. Although significantly outnumbered and outgunned, Ghost Troop won a decisive victory with minimal losses to their own ranks. History would call it the Battle of 73 Easting.Based on hours of interviews and archival research by author Mike Guardia, this minute-by-minute rendition of the battle reveals an intimate, no-holds-barred account of modern warfare…as told by the men who lived it."Days of Fury" is their story.

    Where they are greedy, he is generous. But for all that Saxton believes in honor and love, kindness and courage, other animals deem him no better than the moniker his kind is fated to bear: Lonely Thief.Meanwhile, Dante, a battle-worn wolf missing an eye and an ear, left his pack for reasons he keeps close to his chest. One too many bad memories has left him cynical, and yet he somehow remains faithful to a fault. His lonely life, plagued by misfortune and dishonor, changes forever the day he meets Saxton.Thrown together by fate, this unlikely duo travel across the North American continent, chasing trains, fighting hunger, evading man, and confronting their own inner demons— all while searching for redemption, family, and a place to call home.

    “Thus, in what follows, the story of Karol Wojtyła, St. John Paul II, and the story of Kraków are interwoven in a chronological pilgrimage through the life of a saint that reveals, at the same time, the dramatic history and majestic culture of a city where a boy grew into a man, priest, a bishop—and an apostle to the world.”With stunning photographs by Stephen Weigel and notes on the city’s remarkable fabric by Carrie Gress, City of Saints offers an in-depth look at a man and a city that made an indelible impression on the life and thought of the Catholic Church and the 21st century world.

    you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi régime. We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude ... we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road ... we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged.” – Winston Churchill "My good friends," the mustached, bony man with thick eyebrows and large, strong teeth somewhat reminiscent of those of a horse, shouted to the crowds from the second-floor window of his house at 10 Downing Street, "this is the second time in our history, that there has come back to Downing Street from Germany peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time." (McDonough, 1998, 70). The man addressing the crowd, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, had just returned from the heart of Nazi Germany following negotiations with Adolf Hitler, and the crowd gathered outside the English leader's house on September 30, 1938 greeted these ringing words with grateful cheers. The piece of paper Chamberlain flourished exultantly seemed to offer permanent amity and goodwill between democratic Britain and totalitarian Germany. In it, Britain agreed to allow Hitler's Third Reich to absorb the Sudeten regions of Czechoslovakia without interference from either England or France, and since high percentages of ethnic Germans – often more than 50% locally – inhabited these regions, Hitler's demand for this territory seemed somewhat reasonable to Chamberlain and his supporters. With Germany resurgent and rearmed after the disasters inflicted on it by the Treaty of Versailles following World War I, the pact – known as the Munich Agreement – held out hope of a quick end to German ambitions and the return of stable, normal international relations across Europe. Of course, the Munich agreement is now notorious because its promise proved barren within a very short period of time. Chamberlain's actions either failed to avert or actually hastened the very cataclysm he wished to avoid at all costs. The "Munich Agreement" of 1938 effectively signed away Czechoslovakia's independence to Hitler's hungry new Third Reich, and within two years, most of the world found itself plunged into a conflict which made a charnelhouse of Europe and left somewhere between 60-80 million people dead globally. Of course, as most people now know, the invasion of Poland was merely the preface to the Nazi blitzkrieg of most of Western Europe, which would include Denmark, Belgium, and France by the summer of 1940. The resistance put up by these countries is often portrayed as weak, and the narrative is that the British stood alone in 1940 against the Nazi onslaught, defending the British Isles during the Battle of Britain and preventing a potential German invasion. In particular, the campaign in Poland is remembered as one in which an antiquated Polish army was quickly pummeled by the world’s most modern army. Polish lancers charging in a valiant yet idiotic attack against German tanks is the only image from the 1939 Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland remaining in the popular imagination today. Originating as a piece of Nazi propaganda, paradoxically adopted by the Poles as a patriotic myth, the fictional charge obscures the actual events of September 1939.

    The story of millions of young men and women who gave everything for freedom and in the final victory lost all. In a cruel twist of history the monumental struggles of an entire nation have been forgotten, and even intentionally obscured. This book redresses the balance, giving a comprehensive overview of Poland's participation in World War II. Following their valiant but doomed defense of Poland in 1939, members of the Polish armed forces fought with the Allies wherever and however they could. With previously unpublished first-hand accounts, information never before seen in English, and rare photographs, this title provides a detailed analysis of the devastation the war brought to Poland, and the final betrayal when, having fought for freedom for six long years, Poland was handed to the Soviet Union.

    Loaded onto cattle trucks, they are transported to an unknown destination. Terror and uncertainty become the new normal. Life is a continuous nightmare as she is selected by a Gestapo officer’s wife, destined to become little more than their slave.Separated from everyone she loves Alexa relies on her Christian faith, inner strength and courage, to endure through her long nightmare. Her story takes her on a treacherous journey across war-ravaged Europe in search of her family and the life she once knew. Despite living through unimaginable hardships and life-threatening danger, Alexa feels that someone, or something, seems to be looking out for her. Years later, she finds out that not all was as it seemed, as hidden secrets from this dark period in history are revealed to her.In Alexa’s Shoes is a historical novel that beckons the reader to follow in the footsteps of a real-life individual who walks by faith to triumph over tragedy, one step at a time. It is based on the true story of the author’s grandmother.

    Zywulska born in 1914 as Sonia Landau. During the German occupation of Poland, she was displaced with her Jewish family to the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941. She escaped from the Ghetto and became active in the Polish resistance movement. Under her new name, Zywulska, she was captured by the Nazis in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. There is always the danger that we will forget things that are best not forgotten. Certainly, some things should be permanently recorded so that posterity will remember what we would prefer to erase from our memories. This is the story of a woman who was imprisoned for a number of years in Auschwitz, the notorious death camp. What she saw there makes medieval genocides look like child’s play. This is her memoir, and she shows not only her own courage but also her fellow prisoners’ fierce will to live. Half-starved, suffering from lice, scabies and dysentery and mowed down by typhus and pneumonia, they worked in fields of icy slush and mud and registered new arrivals—hundreds of thousands of women from Holland, Greece, Italy and Hungary, who did not know where they were or why they had been seized. That she survived and finally managed to escape to tell the tale is one of many reasons why this book should be published and widely read. Most of her companions were murdered so that they could not bear witness. Written just after the author’s escape and published in 1946, I Survived Auschwitz was the first ever book to emerge about the camp and therefore occupies an important place in Holocaust literature. In certain parts of this book you will notice changes made by Poland’s communist censors after 1945. Due to these interventions, the book has become an unintentional double witness to the 20th century’s two most dreadful totalitarian regimes. I Survived Auschwitz was published in cooperation with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. With additional footnotes, 26 percent increase in text, and 45 photos taken during war, the new edition is greatly expanded compared to the original 1946 English version. The book was translated from the Polish, Przeżyłam Oświęcim, by Lech Czerski and Sheila Callahan based on an initial translation by Krystyna Cenkalska.

    The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, shares one of the most intimate, harrowing and ultimately triumphant tales of survival to emerge from the Holocaust. The Girl in the Green Sweater is Chiger's harrowing first-person account of the fourteen months she spent with her family in the fetid, underground sewers of Lvov.The Girl in the Green Sweater is also the story of Leopold Socha, the group's unlikely savior. A Polish Catholic and former thief, Socha risked his life to help Chiger's underground family survive, bringing them food, medicine, and supplies. A moving memoir of a desperate escape and life under unimaginable circumstances, The Girl in the Green Sweater is ultimately a tale of intimate survival, friendship, and redemption.

    But instead of a joyful reunion, Erin unearths a dispute that forces her to navigate the increasingly bitter crossroads between memory and truth.To a young newspaper reporter, it was the story of a lifetime: a Jewish infant born in the ghetto, saved from the Nazis by a Polish family, uprooted to Sweden after the war, repeatedly torn away from the people she knew as family -- all to take a transatlantic journey with a father she'd barely known toward a new life in the United States.Who wouldn't want to tell that tale? Growing up in suburban Detroit, Erin Einhorn pestered her mother to share details about the tumultuous, wartime childhood she'd experienced. "I was always loved," was all her mother would say, over and over again. But, for Erin, that answer simply wasn't satisfactory. She boarded a plane to Poland with a singular mission: to uncover the truth of what happened to her mother and reunite the two families who once worked together to save a child. But when Erin finds Wieslaw Skowronski, the elderly son of the woman who sheltered her mother, she discovers that her search will involve much more than just her mother's childhood.Sixty years prior, at the end of World War II, Wieslaw Skowronski claimed that Erin's grandfather had offered the Skowronskis his family home in exchange for hiding his daughter. But for both families, the details were murky. If the promise was real, fulfilling it would be arduous and expensive. To unravel the truth and resolve the decades-old land dispute, Erin must search through centuries of dusty records and maneuver an outdated, convoluted legal system.As she tries to help the Skowronski family, Erin must also confront the heart-wrenching circumstances of her family's tragic past while coping with unexpected events in her own life that will alter her mission completely.Six decades after two families were brought together by history, Erin is forced to separate the facts from the glimmers of fiction handed down in the stories of her ancestors. In this extraordinarily intimate memoir, journalist Erin Einhorn overcomes seemingly insurmountable barriers -- legal, financial, and emotional -- only to question her own motives and wonder how far she should go to right the wrongs of the past.

    

    An attractive 29-year-old Polish woman suddenly appears before a New York Jewish family in 1967, claiming to be a long-lost child who was hidden in Poland during World War II."Told without artifice or irony, Mekler's story of inter generational immigration is a cooly composed novel. By the time ending veers... Mekler has already transcended plot in favor of uncompromising examination." -The New York Times Book Review "Stunning... well crafted... adding depth and resonance to a gripping read. Not to be missed by anyone who loves a tale well told."-Library Journal"Vividly drawn character,both major and minor... The tale itself is compelling, combining romance and mystery and reminding us of the difficulty of unearthing personal truths when one of history's great cataclysms has buried them."-The Wall Street Journal"Takes a less-traveled road [from other Holocaust literature] and explores the loss of identity... Strongly evoked... the understated and moving story of a woman whose memories open so many old wounds."-Philadelphia Inquirer

    This was Oskar Schindler, the controversial man who saved eleven hundred Jews during the Holocaust but struggled afterwards to rebuild his life and gain international recognition for his wartime deeds. David Crowe examines every phase of Schindler's life in this landmark biography, presenting a savior of mythic proportions who was also an opportunist and spy who helped Nazi Germany conquer Poland. Schindler is best known for saving over a thousand Jews by putting them on the famed "Schindler's List" and then transferring them to his factory in today's Czech Republic. In reality, Schindler played only a minor role in the creation of the list through no fault of his own. Plagued by local efforts to stop the movement of Jewish workers from his factory in Krakow to his new one in Brunnlitz, and his arrest by the SS who were investigating corruption charges against the infamous Amon Goth, Schindler had little say or control over his famous "List." The tale of how the "List" was really prepared is one of the most intriguing parts of the Schindler story that Crowe tells here for the first time. Forced into exile after the war, success continually eluded Schindler and he died in very poor health in 1974. He remained a controversial figure, even in death, particularly after Emilie Schindler, his wife of forty-six years, began to criticize her husband after the appearance of Steven Spielberg's film in 1993. In Oskar Schindler, Crowe steps beyondthe mythology that has grown up around the story of Oskar Schindler and looks at the life and work of this man whom one prominent Schindler Jew described as "an extraordinary man in extraordinary times."

    It has suffered the dubious distinction of being wiped off the political map in 1795, to be resurrected after the First World War, to suffer seeming annihilation during the Second World War, reduction to satellite status of the Soviet Union after 1945, only to emerge during the 1980s. It is presently a contender for membership in the European Union. The only general introduction to the politics of Polish history in English, The Concise History of Poland covers medieval times to the present. The authors describe how Polish society developed under foreign rule in the 19th century and how it was altered by and responded to 45 years of communism, and developments since its collapse. Primarily a political outline of Poland's turbulent and complex past, it traces the process of its rise and fall from the middle ages, from a dynastic realm to a remarkable constitutional experiment in multinational, consensual politics, embracing much of Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus. Jerzy Lukowski is Senior Lecturer in Modern History, School of Historical Studies, at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is also the author of, The Partitions of Poland (Addison Wesley, 1998), and Liberty's Folly (Routledge, 1991), and many journal articles. Herbert Zawadzki is Teacher of History at Abingodn School, in Abingdon, UK. He spent the first ten years of his life in various Polish resettlement camps across the length and breadth of Britain, eventually settling near Stratford-on-Avon. He has since traveled extensively in Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania. He has written for several journals and contributed to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the former Soviet Union (1994).

    Through the narrator we are told of what happens among those standing in line outside this store, what happens as the narrator's mind thinks and rants about the current state of Poland, and what happens as he imagines the failed Polish rebellion of 1863. The novel's form allows Konwicki (both character and author) to roam around and through Poland's past and present, and to range freely through whatever comes to his attention. By turns comic, lyrical, despairing, and liberating, The Polish Complex stands as one of the most important novels to have come out of Poland since World War II.

    The crew, however, isn’t content to sit out the war. With help from unexpected sources—a naval attaché with the British Embassy and a courageous American reporter and her photographer sidekick—they overcome their captors, regain control of the "Eagle," and escape. The German’s are convinced the "Eagle's" crew has no stomach for a fight and will seek refuge in Sweden. But the Poles have something else in mind—join up with the British Fleet and continue fighting against their homeland's Nazi conquerors. They face stiff odds. The "Eagle" has little food and water, few torpedoes, and no sea charts. And before she can rendezvous with the British somewhere in the North Sea, she must traverse the Baltic, which has become little more than a Nazi-controlled lake. This story is inspired by the exploits of the Polish submarine, "Orzel," during the early weeks of World War II. Winston Churchill called her escape from the Nazis “an epic.”