He was twenty-three, from Czechoslovakia; she was twenty, from Romania. Both had lost nearly everything in the war – yet in their chance encounter at sea, they found a new beginning. Three days later, on a train rattling across the Turkish countryside en route to Palestine, with no common language between them, they were married…and spent the rest of their lives together. Isadora had emerged from the brutal, frozen ghettos of Transnistria – known as the ‘Forgotten Cemetery’ of the Holocaust. Joshua had escaped from the Hungarian Army’s slave labor corps as his unit was being marched toward a train to Auschwitz. That either survived is incredible; that, of all possible fates, the war would toss them onto the same deck of the same boat at the same time is simply unbelievable – except that it happened. Here, their grandson, prize-winning author Michael Benanav, traces the improbable twists and turns that pulled Joshua and Isadora through the horrors of the Holocaust. As their families were destroyed and their own lives nearly lost, each element of their experiences – including a photograph of a Hungarian general; a mismatched pair of galoshes; a Romanian Orthodox priest; an SS officer’s wife; and maybe, on one occasion, an angel – proved crucial to getting them out of the war and onto that boat. Benanav vividly recounts the devastating events and astonishing coincidences that brought his grandparents together – while reckoning with the unsettling knowledge that without the Holocaust, his family would not exist. This is an extraordinary true story, rooted in the terrible tragedies and sudden strokes of serendipity that together are The Luck of the Jews. Praise for The Luck of The Jews (First published by Lyons Press as Joshua & Isadora: A True Tale of Loss & Love in the Holocaust): “Movingly written, Michael Benanav’s search for his grandparents’ tragic memories and experiences brings the reader closer to an ineffable truth that must not be forgotten.” – Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Night “A harrowing wartime saga [and] an intriguing record of Holocaust survival written with passion and authority.”–Publishers Weekly “A tale of suffering, romance and redemption in Israel… What stands out about this story is its ability to bring Southeastern Europe and Bessarabia, a southern Yiddish-speaking region in today’s Moldova, into focus. The narrative is highly imagistic, often relying on crisp depictions of Jews moving through the landscape to power a story of loss.” –The Jewish Daily Forward “Important and gripping.” –Hindustan Times About the Author Michael Benanav is a freelance writer and photojournalist whose work appears in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Geographical Magazine, Lonely Planet guidebooks, and other publications. His first book, Men Of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold, was nominated by Barnes & Noble for their Discover Great New Writers award and was named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association

    Now this enigma of a man is unveiled in a monumental biography by a writer who came to know Speer intimately in his final years.Out of hundreds of hours of interviews, Sereny unravels the threads of Speer's personality: the genius that made him indispensable to the German war machine, the conscience that drove him to repent, and the emotional wounds that made him susceptible to Hitler's lethal magnetism. Read as an inside account of the Third Reich, or as a revelatory unsparing yet compassionate study of the human capacity for evil, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth is a triumph."Fascinating...Not only a major addition to our knowledge of The Third Reich, but a stunning attempt to understand the nature of good and evil."--Newsday"More than a biography...It also constitutes a perceptive re-examination of the mysterious appeal of Adolf Hitler."--San Francisco ChronicleB&W photos.IntroductionPrologueAn Infusion of Stable Stock'I Felt He Was a Human Being'Dizzy with ExcitementA Kind of LoveA Shared Devotion'You've All Gone Completely Insane'A Slight DiscomfortUnleashing MurderA Grey Path IndeedA Moral SoreA Fatal AppointmentAn Irresistable ChallengeA Maelstom of IntriguesA Blinkered CommitmentThe Unbearable Truth'It Was Not Yet My Time'The 20th of JulyScorched Earth'I Stand Unconditionally Behind You'He Is the DreamThe One Interesting PersonA Common ResponsibilitySpandau 1Spandau 2A Twilight of KnowingThe Great LiePostscriptReferencesNotesIndex

    Sterling. USS Wahoo (SS-238) was the most successful American submarine in the World War II Pacific Fleet. She was the first to penetrate an enemy harbor and sink a Japanese ship. And was the first to wipe-out an entire convoy single-handedly. In her 11 short months of life, Wahoo managed an incredible 21 kills, totaling over 60,000 tons of ships. Then, just 45 minutes before leaving Midway (island) for what would be her last and fatal patrol, Yeoman Forest Sterling was suddenly transferred to other duty. The result is this book; Wake of the Wahoo, Sterling's fantastic yet completely authentic account of a remarkable crew, captain and the ship they lived and died for. Wahoo's captain the aggressive and brave Lieutenant Commander Dudley 'Mush' Morton was the pride of the submarine fleet. He would earn the Navy Cross at the helm of Wahoo. The sub's executive officer the daring Lieutenant Richard H. 'Dick' O'Kane. O'Kane would later receive the Medal of Honor in command of the submarine USS Tang (SS-306. Forest Sterling tells the story as no one else could Wake of the Wahoo is a true account of American submarine warfare from a man who lived it ... and live to tell about it.

    Written and presented by Neil MacGregor, it is produced by BBC Radio 4, in partnership with the British Museum.Whilst Germany s past is too often seen through the prism of the two World Wars, this series investigates a wider six hundred-year-old history of the nation through its objects. It examines the key moments that have defined Germany s past its great, world-changing achievements and its devastating tragedies and it explores the profound influence that Germany s history, culture, and inventiveness have had across Europe.The objects featured in the radio series range from large sculptures to small individual artifacts and items that are prosaic, iconic, and symbolic. Each has a story to tell and a memory to invoke."

    When she was 16 years old her parents sent her to Budapest, Hungary, where her two older brothers were already living. They felt she would be safer there. But in March of 1944 Germany invaded Hungary and began to round up all the Jews. Sara was sent to two different labor camps and endured two long death marches. She is a Holocaust Survivor.

    The Somme. The Italian Campaign. The Russian Front. And inside Hitler's bunker during The Battle of Berlin . . . World War II through the eyes of a solider of the Reich.Siegfried Knappe fought, was wounded, and survived battles in nearly every major Wehrmacht campaign. His astonishing career begins with Hitler's rise to power--and ends with a five-year term in a Russian prison camp, after the Allies rolled victoriously into the smoking rubble of Berlin. The enormous range of Knappe's fighting experiences provides an unrivaled combat history of World War II, and a great deal more besides.Based on Knappe's wartime diaries, filled with 16 pages of photos he smuggled into the West at war's end, Soldat delivers a rare opportunity for the reader to understand how a ruthless psychopath motivated an entire generation of ordinary Germans to carry out his monstrous schemes . . . and offers stunning insight into the life of a soldier in Hitler's army."Remarkable! World War II from inside the Wehrmacht."--Kirkus Reviews

    

    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.

    By chance he heard a then little-known Adolf Hitler speaking in a Munich beer hall and, mesmerized by his extraordinary oratorical power, was convinced the man would some day come to power. As Hitler’s fanatical theories and ideas hardened, however, he surrounded himself with rabid extremists such as Goering, Hess, and Goebbels, and Hanfstaengl became estranged from him. But with the Nazi’s major unexpected political triumph in 1930, Hitler became a national figure, and he invited Hanfstaengl to be his foreign press secretary. It is from this unique insider’s position that the author provides a vivid, intimate view of Hitler—with his neuroses, repressions, and growing megalomania—over the next several years. In 1937, four years after Hitler came to power, relations between Hanfstaengl and the Nazis had deteriorated to such a degree that he was forced to flee for his life, escaping to Switzerland. Here is a portrait of Hitler as you’ve rarely seen him.

    Wounded at Voroshilovsk, he experimented with a Russian sniper-rifle while convalescing and so impressed his superiors with his proficiency that he was returned to the front on his regiment’s only sniper specialist.In this sometimes harrowing memoir, Allerberger provides an excellent introduction to the commitment in fieldcraft, discipline and routine required of the sniper, a man apart. There was no place for chivalry on the Russian Front. Away from the film cameras, no prisoner survived long after surrendering. Russian snipers had used the illegal explosive bullet since 1941, and Hitler eventually authorised its issue in 1944. The result was a battlefield of horror.Allerberger was a cold-blooded killer, but few will find a place in their hearts for the soldiers of the Red Army against whom he fought.

    They missed the liquidation of their ghetto by mere hours, hiding in a shed all night listening to the screams of their fellow Jews. Then went into Germany and took up work in a hotel housing Gestapo officers. Many close escapes and daring moments make this book chilling.

    These grand houses were rigged with the latest and most advanced listening equipment. Bugging devices were hidden in the prisoners ‘cells, the light fittings, the fireplaces, behind mirrors, in plants and even in trees in the grounds, and wired back to the ‘M’ Room. At the heart of this clandestine unit were German-Jewish émigrés who had fled Nazi persecution and were serving in the British army. In an ironic turn of events they became British Intelligence’s most valuable asset. They were the ‘secret listeners’ and spent up to twelve hours a day eavesdropping on the conversations of German PoWs. This included not only the conversations of U-boat commanders, U-boat crew, infantry soldiers or Luftwaffe pilots but significantly 59 of Hitler’s Generals. The results were to prove astounding and beyond anything Churchill could have imagined when he authorised unlimited funds in its set-up. It gave British Intelligence unprecedented access to secrets that were not obtained by any other means. Providing a detailed, oft humorous, insight into life of the Generals in captivity, the book shows the farcical ‘stage-set’ in which they found themselves. But against this backdrop, the secret listeners eavesdropped on admission of war crimes and terrible atrocities against Russians, Poles and Jews; as well as details of an SS mutiny in a concentration camp in 1936, and Hitler’s human ‘stud farms’. This story places firmly on record just how much British Intelligence knew about the Holocaust. Why, at the end of the war, were these files not released for the war crimes trials? These and other transcripts of some of the most important German military secrets of the war remained classified until 1999.During their clandestine work the secret listeners did not set eyes on a single German PoW, yet their classified work and the intelligence they gained was as significant for winning the war as Bletchley Park and cracking the Enigma Code. For over sixty years the listeners never spoke about their work, not even to their families. Many went to their grave bearing the secrets of the nation which had saved them from certain death in the Holocaust.

    From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops—including the man who was to become her husband—in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey. Gerda's serene and idyllic childhood is shattered when Nazis march into Poland on September 3, 1939. Although the Weissmanns were permitted to live for a while in the basement of their home, they were eventually separated and sent to German labor camps. Over the next few years Gerda experienced the slow, inexorable stripping away of "all but her life." By the end of the war she had lost her parents, brother, home, possessions, and community; even the dear friends she made in the labor camps, with whom she had shared so many hardships, were dead. Despite her horrifying experiences, Klein conveys great strength of spirit and faith in humanity. In the darkness of the camps, Gerda and her young friends manage to create a community of friendship and love. Although stripped of the essence of life, they were able to survive the barbarity of their captors. Gerda's beautifully written story gives an invaluable message to everyone. It introduces them to last century's terrible history of devastation and prejudice, yet offers them hope that the effects of hatred can be overcome.

    Someone was trying to kill her, "to put a bullet in my head," Sonia told anyone who would listen. Polish and Jewish, Sonia Reich had survived the Holocaust by staying always on the run. She and Howard's father, Robert, also a Holocaust survivor, had fled to America, moved to Chicago, and raised their young son to tell no one that they were Jewish. It was only after moving to Skokie, a town filled with Holocaust survivors, that his family would live as Jews. Still, his parents told Howard almost nothing about their past. The First and Final Nightmare… is Reich's moving and bittersweet memoir of growing up in Skokie, discovering an odd and personal American freedom in jazz, and his riveting, revealing investigation into his family's past and the nature of his mother's illness, called late-onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is a poignant story of a mother and a son, a haunted past, and the irony of what may happen when that often repeated admonition to "never forget" becomes a curse.

    Now they tell their stories in a book that is the living legacy of what Schindler did and what the human spirit can endure and overcome.Through their own words and more than 100 personal photographs, we learn the truth of their experiences with Schindler, their incredible stories of day-to-day survival, and their ultimate triumph of rebuilding lives, reclaiming family, and recording their memories for future generations. They range in age from late fifties to nearly ninety. Some emerged from the Holocaust as the lone remnants of their families; others, miraculously, survived with parents, siblings, and children. Their current lifestyles are equally varied: a multi-millionaire New Jersey developer; a Cleveland tailor who works out of his basement; a retired New York cafe violinist; a Baltimore fabric-store owner; a Pittsburgh cantor; a Los Angeles high school shop teacher; a world-famous Manhattan commercial photographer. Some remain committed, observant Jews; others have drifted far from religious ritual and belief. Some cling to the past; others have spent a lifetime trying to forget. Some seem to take pleasure in every breath; others seem forever burdened by sorrow.What they have in common is this: Oskar Schindler gave each a second chance at life. Now we learn what they did with that precious gift.