Book picks similar to
Born After: Reckoning with the German Past by Angelika Bammer
german
historisches-gedäctnis
history-biography
memoir
The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men
Eric Lichtblau - 2014
They had little trouble getting in. With scant scrutiny, many gained entry on their own as self-styled war "refugees," their pasts easily disguised and their war crimes soon forgotten. But some had help and protection from the U.S. government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler's minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories. For the first time, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story not only of the Nazi scientists brought to America, but of the German spies and con men who followed them and lived for decades as ordinary citizens. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. But even then, American intelligence agencies secretly worked to protect a number of their prized spies from exposure. Today, a few Nazis still remain on our soil. Investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau, relying on a trove of newly discovered documents and scores of interviews with participants in this little-known chapter of postwar history, tells the shocking and shameful story of how America became a safe haven for Hitler's men.
Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year
James M. Lang - 2005
Engaging and accessible, Life on the Tenure Track will delight and enlighten faculty, graduate students, and administrators alike.
Miracle in the Hills
Mary T. Martin Sloop - 1953
The conditions they encountered were shockingly primitive. The people had neither doctors,nor schools and were suspicious of medicine and "larnin'." Electricity and running water were unheard of, roads were rough mountain paths and the diet consisted of "hog meat, greens and grease." The main industry was moon shining.Dr.Sloop declared a personal war on moonshiners, tracking down hidden still with a reluctant sheriff in tow. She fought against child marriages and in a region where girls often married at the age of fourteen. With the help of the mountain people, she reinvigorated the weaving trade, built a church and a modern well equipped hospital. Her spirited support of education resulted in a modern twenty-five-building school.
I Carried Them with Me: A Young Girl's Journey to Survive
Sara Lumer - 2016
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.
Mission at Nuremberg: An American Army Chaplain and the Trial of the Nazis
Tim Townsend - 2014
As two of his three sons faced danger and death on the battlefield, Gerecke tended to the battered bodies and souls of wounded and dying GIs outside London. At the war’s end, when other soldiers were coming home, Gerecke was recruited for the most difficult engagement of his life: ministering to the twenty-one Nazis leaders awaiting trial at Nuremburg.Based on scrupulous research and first-hand accounts, including interviews with still-living participants and featuring sixteen pages of black-and-white photos, Mission at Nuremberg takes us inside the Nuremburg Palace of Justice, into the cells of the accused and the courtroom where they faced their crimes. As the drama leading to the court’s final judgments unfolds, Tim Townsend brings to life the developing relationship between Gerecke and Hermann Georing, Albert Speer, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and other imprisoned Nazis as they awaited trial.Powerful and harrowing, Mission at Nuremberg offers a fresh look at one most horrifying times in human history, probing difficult spiritual and ethical issues that continue to hold meaning, forcing us to confront the ultimate moral question: Are some men so evil they are beyond redemption?
In My Brother's Image: Twin Brothers Separated by Faith after the Holocaust
Eugene L. Pogany - 2000
In eloquent prose, Pogany portrays how the Holocaust destroyed the brothers' close childhood bond: his father, a survivor of a Nazi internment camp, denounced Christianity and returned to the Judaism of his birth, while his uncle, who found shelter in an Italian monastic community during the war, became a Catholic priest. Even after emigrating to America the brothers remained estranged, each believing the other a traitor to their family's faith. This tragic memoir is a rich, moving family portrait as well as an objective historical account of the rupture between Jews and Catholics.
From Ghetto to Death Camp: A Memoir of Privilege and Luck
Timothy Braatz - 2011
Through family connections, a Jewish teenager named Anatol Chari became a ghetto policeman. Because they were sometimes viewed as collaborators, ghetto policemen who survived the war kept their past a secret. In From Ghetto to Death Camp, Chari reveals that hidden story, describing the policemen’s duties—guarding food, rounding up prisoners for transport—and the privileges it brought them. Those privileges ended when the ghetto population was transported to Auschwitz. As a slave laborer, Chari went on to various work camps, endured long marches and an Allied bombing raid, and ended up in the Bergen-Belsen death camp. To survive the camps, he now says, you needed help, smarts, and most of all luck. He depicts a seemingly senseless world where guards could be decent or cruel, where some prisoners were sent to hospitals and others to gas chambers, and where food was everything. Written with remarkable honesty and unexpected wit, this unique memoir is in many ways a reflection on the human condition.
Stella's Secret: A True Story of Holocaust Survival
Jerry L. Jennings - 2005
But it is Stella’s voice, the amazing way that she tells her story, that makes this Holocaust story so unique, powerful and endearing. The reader listens to Stella’s stunning simplicity of expression, her use of Polish and Yiddish phrases, her humor, her all-so-frequent grammatical errors – and is charmed. It is a story that only Stella Yollin can tell, and it can only be told in Stella’s sweet and incomparable way.
What Now, Lieutenant?
Robert Babcock - 2011
Such is this work by Bob Babcock. What makes this work unique is that it is based upon his wartime writing as it occurred, without the softening of time and the refining of modern memory applied to past experience. In it you will find the thinking of a young officer as he struggles to take in all that he is responsible for while experiencing everything himself for the first time. It is an honest, unvarnished look at Soldiering in 1966-1967 and is as fine an example of the early American experience in Vietnam that one is likely to come across...” The personal account of Bob Babcock’s experiences as a platoon leader and executive officer with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1966 and 1967.
Invisible Child
Mary Hayward - 2010
This compelling story is a tribute to all those brave women who believe in “yes we can”. Mary’s life was always a miracle of survival. It is a tale of courage and responsibility, as she battles to keep herself and baby sister from starvation and TB, sometimes with fun and laughter, and at other times so desperate that we are drawn to tears. But when her best friend steals a rifle, we listen to her heartbreaking plea to the Samaritans as her life is crushed. It is a story of heartbreak and passion, a blinding love so certain that it comes but once in a lifetime. She finds her freedom to study at university, and doing what she does best, saving damaged children like herself.
The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos
Judy Batalion - 2021
With courage, guile, and nerves of steel, these “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey, and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick and taught children.Yet the exploits of these courageous resistance fighters have remained virtually unknown.As propulsive and thrilling as Hidden Figures, In the Garden of Beasts, Band of Brothers, and A Train in Winter, The Light of Days at last tells the true story of these incredible women whose courageous yet little-known feats have been eclipsed by time. Judy Batalion—the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors—takes us back to 1939 and introduces us to Renia Kukielka, a weapons smuggler and messenger who risked death traveling across occupied Poland on foot and by train. Joining Renia are other women who served as couriers, armed fighters, intelligence agents, and saboteurs, all who put their lives in mortal danger to carry out their missions. Batalion follows these women through the savage destruction of the ghettos, arrest and internment in Gestapo prisons and concentration camps, and for a lucky few—like Renia, who orchestrated her own audacious escape from a brutal Nazi jail—into the late 20th century and beyond.Powerful and inspiring, featuring twenty black-and-white photographs, The Light of Days is an unforgettable true tale of war, the fight for freedom, exceptional bravery, female friendship, and survival in the face of staggering odds.
Stories from a Theme Park Insider
Robert Niles - 2011
What time is the 3:00 parade? Why does a child need to be 40 inches tall to ride a roller coaster? What happens when the president of France gets lost inside Pirates of the Caribbean? A former employee, or "cast member", at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom answers these and other questions while sharing humorous stories about working inside the world's most popular theme park."Stories from a Theme Park Insider" takes you inside the park's famous tunnels and backstage for a look at how theme parks really work, and the funny moments and embarrassments that can happen when your work is someone else's vacation.
Postcards From Across the Pond
Michael Harling - 2010
Dispatches from an accidental expat--a humorous commentary on British life by an bewildered American who, through no fault of his own, found himself living in England.
William & Rosalie: A Holocaust Testimony
William Schiff - 2007
In 1941, newlyweds William and Rosalie Schiff are forcibly separated and sent on their individual odysseys through a surreal maze of hate. Terror in the Krakow ghetto, sadistic SS death games, an experimental rabbit job, eyewitness accounts of cannibalism, and the menace of rape in occupied Poland make William & Rosalie an unusually candid view of the chaos that World War II unleashed on the Jewish people. the Germans occupy western Poland. A year later they marry in the ghetto; by 1942 deportations have wasted both families. After Rosalie is saved by Oskar Schindler, the husband and wife end up at the Plaszow work camp under Amon Goeth, the bestial commandant played by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List. ...
The Darkest Canyon: Book Two in A Holocaust Story Series
Roberta Kagan - 2019
Gretchen Schmidt has a secret life. She is in love with a married Jewish man. She is hiding him while his wife is posing as an Aryan woman. Her best friend Hilde, who unbeknownst to Gretchen is a sociopath, is working as a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp. If Hilde discovers Gretchen’s secret will their friendship be strong enough to keep Gretchen safe? Or will Hilde fall under the spell of the Nazi’s and turn her in her best friend to the Gestapo? The Darkest Canyon is terrifying ride along the edge of a canyon in the dark of night.