Book picks similar to
Joyeux Noel by Christian Carion
european-literature
films
france
germany
The Unloved: From the Diary of Perla S.
Arnošt Lustig - 1985
is a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl who, while interred in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, becomes a prostitute. Capturing Perla's voice through a series of diary entries, Arnost Lustig shows how she maintains her integrity, honesty, and hope amidst lies and horror. This first paperback edition has been extensively revised and expanded by the author.
The Heroes of Sainte-Mère-Église
J.D. Keene - 2019
He waits with the German war machine for the order from Adolf Hitler to start the western Blitzkrieg--the "lightning war."Six hundred kilometers away, WWI veteran René Legrand plows his fields. He is enjoying the life he has made with his wife and two sons in the peaceful village of Sainte-Mère-Église. Since the end of the last war, he has tried to forget the atrocities he'd witnessed. Most of all, he has tried to forget the horrors he inflicted on others as the deadliest assassin the French Army has ever known, unaware he will soon need the skills of war he once used to perfection.His youngest son, Jean-Pierre, lives the life of a typical thirteen-year-old. He attends school, helps his father in the fields, and tries not to be nervous around the mesmerizing Angelique Lapierre. Events will soon force him to become a man, and along with his father, brother, and a small group of citizens, they harass their German occupiers and help the Allies prepare for the D-Day invasion.Guilty of nothing other than being a Jew, Jean-Pierre's best friend, Alfred Shapiro, flees to Spain with his family. They hope to make it through the treacherous Pyrenees Mountains before the Nazis capture them.Working with the French Resistance, Gabrielle Hall uses her beauty and cunning to obtain military intelligence from the Nazi officers who frequent her café.In Fort Benning, Georgia, Captain James Gavin discusses a plan with Major William Lee to begin the U.S. Army's first parachute brigade. Four years later, General "Jumpin' Jim" Gavin will descend through the night sky and into Normandy, France, along with the greatest invasion force the world has ever seen.These and others are the heroes of Sainte-Mère-Église.
The Dressmaker's War
Mary Chamberlain - 2015
For readers of Amy Bloom and Anthony Doerr.In London, 1939, Ada Vaughan is a young woman with an unusual dressmaking skill, and dreams of a better life for herself. That life seems to arrive when Stanislaus, an Austrian aristocrat, sweeps Ada off her feet and brings her to Paris. When war breaks out, Stanislaus vanishes, and Ada is taken prisoner by the Germans, she must do everything she can to survive: by becoming dressmaker to the Nazi wives. Abandoned and alone as war rages, the choices Ada makes will come to back to haunt her years later, as the truth of her experience is twisted and distorted after the war. From glamorous London hotels and Parisian cafes to the desperation of wartime Germany, here is a mesmerizing, richly textured historical novel, a story of heartbreak, survival and ambition, of the nature of truth, and the untold story of what happens to women during war.
The Avenue
R.F. Delderfield - 1964
And all the hopes, dreams and lives of the people on the Avenue are forged to a fighting force to defend all that they hold dear."
A Letter to Jo
Joseph Sieracki - 2020
As Josephine contends with life, family, and work in Cleveland, letters from Leonard sustain her. But official censorship forces him to leave out much of the most significant action he sees.Finally, with the war coming to an end, Leonard is able to tell his full story. In a quietly beautiful letter to Josephine, Leonard writes of the loneliness he felt, the camaraderie he experienced, and the terrible violence he witnessed.Now, Josephine and Leonard's grandson Joseph Sieracki has carefully researched the battles Leonard describes and expanded the letter into a moving tale of a young man's fears and bravery far from home. Brought to heart-wrenching life by the paintbrushes of Kelly Williams (Creepy, Eerie), A Letter to Jo is at once a tender love story and harrowing battlefield memoir.
Lacombe Lucien: The Screenplay
Patrick Modiano - 1974
Lucien encounters the Horns, a Jewish family from Paris hiding in his provincial town. Inevitably, he must choose between the coarse appeal of violence and his emerging feelings of tenderness for the family’s daughter, France. Amid the excesses brought on by the impending collapse of the Nazi occupation, Lucien and France come to live out an improbable idyll. This classic is an essential read for students and film lovers alike.
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr - 2014
When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here
Still a PFC: A Combat Marine in World War II: The Pacific Theater (1942-1945): Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Guam, & Iwo Jima
Eugene H. Peterson - 2020
Tomes have been devoted to this subject. I choose instead to tell of my life as a Private, a grunt if you will, and how this life impacted on me.As a telephone lineman for the United States Marine Corps, I had the greatest opportunity to see more of the combat area than most participants. We traveled to the right flank, left flank, up front and to the rear areas to keep our telephone lines functioning and all our artillery and infantry in constant communications.A Japanese general stated "the American troops' ability to concentrate artillery fire on a given point was a tremendous advantage." As an artilleryman, I am proud we provided this edge. Our front line troops on numerous occasions told me our artillery barrage had "stopped the Japs cold." Our constant goal.I have often been asked, "How did you cope with death as an everyday fact?" I tell of losing eight buddies on one day on Guam. We acknowledged the loss then moved on. "What is past is past." We did not dwell on one or multiple losses. We simply moved on. Yesterday was an age away, this is today, we hope to see tomorrow. Perhaps cruel, but it retained our sanity. Those who stand and wait have not shared this burden.Lest you think I am portraying myself as some kind of hero -- let me remind you, they never asked me if I wanted to go on these combat landings to Bougainville, Guam, and Iwo Jima.I was not a hero, but I walked among heroes.
Good-bye for Always: The Triumph of the Innocents
Cecile Kaufer - 1997
The Nazis had overrun a great deal of the continent, bent on the domination of the world and the annihilation of an entire people. The death camps, unknown to most outside Europe, claimed more than six millions Jews during that time. Some endured -- and most have breathtaking stories of survival. Why they survived when so many perished is a matter of coincidence, luck, the will to live and the courage and sacrifice of many others. The full scope of that sacrifice will never be completely chronicled, it is just too vast. "Good-bye for Always, The Triumph of the Innocents" is the story of the youngest members of the Widerman family, who moved to Paris from Poland, only to be caught up in the horror of the Nazi occupation. In 1942, Cecile and Betty Widerman began a journey into the belly of the worst beast mankind has to offer. For two years they were literally one step ahead of death, as Nazi cruelty sought to envelop them as it had millions of others. How they survived, why they survived and who nearly gave their own lives to protect them is a story of inspiration and will that is sure to live forever.
Eagle's Claw
Morgan Jameson - 2017
But the Gestapo needs a man-hunter to apprehend an Allied agent who has killed three men, and worse, absconded with Top Secret Luftwaffe documents which detail a secret plan that could alter the course of the war. The Reich cannot let the information, and the man who stole it, make it back to Allied territory. The deal? Catch the killer and the Gestapo will free his family from the death camp where they are jailed. Fail...
Neighbors
Jerry D. Young - 2012
YOUNG SOMETIMES NEIGHBORS ARE GREAT. SOMETIMES NOT SO MUCH. Hank Smith was a prepper. But he was a prepper with a problem. He lived on a cul-de-sac road, which was good. The bad part of it was it was on a hill. This would normally be good but in this case it put him in full view of the approach to the cul-de-sac and of most of his neighbors. The result of this was that everyone in the neighborhood saw his large garden, his solar panels, his hand well, and the other items that indicated his ability to get by without much help from anyone else. Even though his neighbors thought Hank was a little nutty, they respected his right to live the way he wanted. However, when a world war breaks out, will they respect his right to his own property? ABOUT AUTHOR JERRY D. YOUNG Author Jerry D. Young has been a fixture in the survival and prepping communities for more than twenty years. The author of more than 100 novels and short stories, Jerry’s writing has been a staple for men and women of all ages and from all walks of life that are interested in prepping, survival, and all-around self-sufficiency. Jerry’s books are written with the goal of educating as well as entertaining and generally enjoyed by all who seek to expand their knowledge of prepping and survival topics while enjoying a good book or short story. As daunting as the end of the world, nuclear fallout, World War III, Civil unrest, economic collapse, solar flares, EMP attacks, and other apocalyptic scenarios may be, society has always been interested in the “What If?” of a Post-Apocalyptic World. Jerry’s stories provide interesting and practical perspectives of heroes and villains navigating Post-Apocalyptic scenarios including everything from Mad Max type of events to more relevant plot lines that seem as if they could have come from the headlines of the modern world. Find more about Jerry D. Young at www.CreativeTexts.com.
Benghazi Breakout
Gordon Landsborough - 1966
Now only fifteen are left to call themselves the Glasshouse Gang Commando Unit, and live on their wits and their desert knowledge and their fighting skills, and evade both the Eighth Army and Rommel’s Afrika Korps. One far-sighted general at Cairo H.Q. had seen a use for John Offer’s misfits and sent them to wreak death and destruction behind Rommel’s lines. And now the Germans hold hostages—two of the Glasshouse Gang, prisoners in the hands of the S.S. in Benghazi. They will not live long unless their comrades can pull off another of their daring exploits... Praise for Gordon Landsborough “An exciting tough, fast and moving novel” – Times Literary Supplement “It has everything…supremely good characterisation, descriptive brilliance, and masterly in its simplicity" - Birmingham Post "A punchy tale coupled with plenty of action - an engaging read!" - Philip McCormac Gordon Landsborough was a publisher, author and bookseller. In the 1950s to 1980s, the publishing industry went through significant changes. Landsborough found himself at the forefront of this and used this opportunity to bring forth his innovative ideas. Other works by Landsborough included, The Violent People (1960), The Dead Commando (1976) and Black Death (1951), among many more.
The Last Visit to Berlin: A Historical Family Saga Based On A True Story
Ruvik Rosenthal - 2020
The fate of an entire family…Berlin, 1933. Erich, a Jew, and Hilde, a Christian, are a young couple, the parents of Yvonne, and owners of a small book publishing firm. With Hitler’s rise to power and the persecution of Jews, their lives are destroyed in an instant.The Nazis burn their books and, fearing for their lives, the family is forced to escape to Holland.The many hardships, however, tear the family apart when Hilde chooses to return to Germany together with Yvonne, leaving Erich, who immigrates to Palestine. Will he ever see his family again?The Last Visit to Berlin is a saga that spreads over one hundred years in the lives of the members of the Freyer family. The novel follows the most difficult moments the family went through. It tells the story of the tragic destiny suffered by generation after generation in Germany and in the Land of Israel, reliving their shattered beliefs and documenting their stubborn insistence on living a good life under the shadow of memories and loss.
Secret Sister: From Nazi-occupied Jersey to wartime London, one woman’s search for the truth
Cherry Durbin - 2015
She had given up until one day, watching the drama unfold on the television programme, Long Lost Family, her daughter suggested that maybe this was the only way she would ever find her sister.What she didn’t expect to uncover was a story of a pregnant mother fleeing Nazi-invaded Jersey, a sister left behind to survive the deprivations of the German-controlled island and a family torn apart in a time when war left so many alone. Cherry’s story, pieced together by a team of researchers, would bring her unimaginable sadness and joy, and answers where she had given up.
Panzers on the Vistula: Retreat and Rout in East Prussia 1945
Hans Schäufler - 2010