Book picks similar to
Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp by Mark Celinscak
european-history
holocaust
holocaust-memoirs
new-books
D-Day
Peter H. Liddle - 2004
Harrowing and heroic, the events of D-Day were recorded in the personal writings of those who were there. Here, Francis Crosby has compiled a comprehensive collection of previously unpublished letters, diaries, photographs, and reminiscences that tell the story of D-Day as it has never been told before.With the use of new international archives, Crosby has culled vivid and detailed eye-witness accounts from each beach, as well as perspectives from land, sea, and air. This fascinating collection includes entries from American, British, and Canadian troops, the Merchant Navy and the Royal Air Force, and newly available German materials. Also included are contemporary and retrospective reactions of women "in the know" and those whom knew from "unofficial sources" of the immediate imminence of the assault.
Ludwika: A Polish Woman's Struggle To Survive In Nazi Germany
Christoph Fischer - 2015
There, she must walk a tightrope, learning to live as a second-class citizen in a world where one wrong word could spell disaster and every day could be her last. Based on real events, this is a story of hope amid despair, of love amid loss . . . ultimately, it’s one woman’s story of survival.Editorial Review:"This is the best kind of fiction—it’s based on the real life. Ludwika’s story highlights the magnitude of human suffering caused by WWII, transcending multiple generations and many nations.WWII left no one unscarred, and Ludwika's life illustrates this tragic fact. But she also reminds us how bright the human spirit can shine when darkness falls in that unrelenting way it does during wartime.This book was a rollercoaster ride of action and emotion, skilfully told by Mr. Fischer, who brought something fresh and new to a topic about which thousands of stories have already been told."
When I Fall, I Shall Rise: A Holocaust Survivor Memoir
Dan Shtauber - 2019
Risa was shipped together with many other Jews to the Oradea Ghetto and from there to the Plaszow Labor Camp and later to the Ober-Altstadt Labor camp. And even this was not enough… Risa was sent to the Auschwitz Death Camp to be slaughtered! But, she survived!Having survived, she met her husband – Mordechai Tzvi and they created a family which included 4 sons, 22 grandkids and 34 great-grandkids!Had anyone told Risa Shtauber during 1944-1945 that she would celebrate her 90th birthday in Israel surrounded by her sons, grandkids and great-grandkids, she would tell them to stop fantasizing.But in 2016, this came to be!And today, at the age of 94 and living her life in Israel, she still feels victorious when remembering those horrible years!
Europa, Europa
Solomon Perel - 1992
The whole is moving, and strange beyond belief." --The Times (London)International acclaim for Solomon Perel's Europa Europa"The wrenching memoir of a young man who survived the Holocaust by concealing his Jewish identity and finding unexpected refuge as a member of the Hitler Youth."It is a Holocaust memoir that is moving, straightforward, and quite completely bizarre, unsettling in all kinds of assumptions about identity, responsibility, and guilt." --Glasgow Herald"Perel bares his soul to readers in this fascinating, unusual personal narrative of the Holocaust." --Book Report"Many of the experiences of Holocaust survivors are incredible. None is more incredible than the story of a Jewish boy, Solomon Perel, who escaped from Germany to Russia, served with the Wehrmacht in Russia, was adopted by his commanding officer, and transferred to an elite Hitler Youth school." --London Jewish News"A most remarkable story . . . extraordinary." --The Australian"This book will move human hearts." --Berliner Morgenpost
Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story
Ann Kirschner - 2006
But then, few families have a mother and a daughter quite like Sala and Ann Kirschner. For nearly fifty years, Sala kept a secret: She had survived five years as a slave in seven different Nazi work camps. Living in America after the war, she kept from her children any hint of her epic, inhuman odyssey. She held on to more than 350 letters, photographs, and a diary without ever mentioning them. Only in 1991, on the eve of heart surgery, did she suddenly present them to Ann and offer to answer any questions her daughter wished to ask. It was a life-changing moment for her scholar, writer, and entrepreneur daughter. We know surprisingly little about the vast network of Nazi labor camps, where imprisoned Jews built railroads and highways, churned out munitions and materiel, and otherwise supported the limitless needs of the Nazi war machine. This book gives us an insider's account: Conditions were brutal. Death rates were high. As the war dragged on and the Nazis retreated, inmates were force-marched across hundreds of miles, or packed into cattle cars for grim journeys from one camp to another. When Sala first reported to a camp in Geppersdorf, Poland, at the age of sixteen, she thought it would be for six weeks. Five years later, she was still at a labor camp and only she and two of her sisters remained alive of an extended family of fifty. In the first years of the conflict, Sala was aided by her close friend Ala Gertner, who would later lead an uprising at Auschwitz and be executed just weeks before the liberation of that camp. Sala was also helped by other key friends. Yet above all, she survived thanks to the slender threads of support expressed in the letters of her friends and family. She kept them at great personal risk, and it is astonishing that she was able to receive as many as she did. With their heartwrenching expressions of longing, love, and hope, they offer a testament to the human spirit, an indomitable impulse even in the face of monstrosity. Sala's Gift is a rare book, a gift from Ann to her mother, and a great gift from both women to the world.
Roman's Journey
Roman Halter - 2007
'Survivor' is the story of impossible misfortune and improbable good luck - the compelling and uplifting account of the boy who made it out of the ghetto, survived Auschwitz and Stutthof and endured the Dresden bombing, before escaping to England.
The Hammer Of Israel (A Jacob Mitzak Novella)
Jordan Vezina - 2018
Years later in nineteen-fifties New York City Jacob will become the only man standing in the way of the rise of a Fourth Reich on American soil. The Hammer of Israel is about to hit the Big Apple. Get to know Jacob Mitzak and then follow him through the Will Hessler series as Will's future Mossad training officer! This book is a novella at 25k words. Please note that this is light alternative history. While a great deal of research was put into the relevant details, some creative license has been taken with certain historical events.
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.
Love and Hate: In Nazi Germany
Ryan Armstrong - 2018
I hate Nazis.I am a Nazi.I hate myself.This book is about the Holocaust. It's violent and graphic. To talk about what happened differently would not be fair to Lilo.World War II: A young Nazi guard stationed in a ghetto in Regensburg, Germany finds himself in a time and place that he hates. He has never directly participated in the bloodletting but has done nothing to stop it. He wonders if his soul can be saved. He saves a Jewish girl's life when ordered to murder her. He refuses despite the consequences. Perhaps the girl he saved can save him? Maybe she can be the key to his redemption and a light for his soul, to guide the way home.
I Will Not Weep in this Place
Angela Berquist - 2010
Their main goal is survival, but will they survive? It is a question that, in the end, a reader must ask themselves.
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.
You Put A Move On My Heart
Diamond D. Johnson - 2016
Jarvis Banks was sentenced to five years in prison, leaving behind his girl, Shonte Howard. What Shonte and Jarvis shared was that real, ghetto love, and everybody hoped for a relationship that the two of them shared. But everything that glitters isn’t gold. While from the outside looking in, the two may have had the best relationship, but boy if Jarvis wasn’t taking advantage of Shonte’s heart.So, what happens when Jarvis Banks is finally released from prison and comes home to see that the love of his life is now engaged? Jarvis is a man who is used to getting what he wants, so he will stop at nothing to get his girl back. While he’s fighting to get her, Shonte is holding back a secret from Jarvis that could be detrimental to both of them.Come take a ride with this Miami couple and find out if Mr. Banks is able to put that move on Shonte’s heart.
Saved By A Kingpin
Chase Sidora - 2016
Not only that, she is strikingly gorgeous, witty, and smart. But she is also damaged. No matter how many great qualities she possesses; Riley has ended up scorned by love time and time again. This time though, when love leaves her with absolutely nothing and she is ready to call it quits once and for all, she finds refuge in an unlikely place. Mason Moore is handsome, wealthy, and noble. But for every positive attribute there is an even stronger, much more ruthless quality hidden underneath the surface. Growing up the son of a street legend in Passaic, New Jersey’s Aspen Place Projects, Mase has been groomed for the street life ever since he could remember. So when Mase inherited his title of Kingpin along with all the burdens that came along with it when his father was murdered in cold blood he was up for the challenge. Along with his childhood friend Steele, Mase has prided himself on his ability to continue to build and grow the organization that was handed to him with ease… that is until money turns up missing and a new flame threatens to knock him off of his square. Riley and Mase hit it off instantly and seem to be made for each other but can they really trust the fairytale their connection appears to be? Is it real or is their love circumstantial? Are they entertaining the idea of something that isn’t meant to last? With both their pasts hell bent on being a part of their futures, falling in love with each other could cost Mase and Riley not only their relationship but also their lives.
Syn: Sex Is Syn, Love Is Pain
J. Peach - 2016
With a junky for a mother who would sell her just for a quick fix and an absentee father, life was unbearable. At a young age, Angel learned to fend for herself to survive this cold, cruel world. With her less than perfect childhood, it's no surprise that her attempts at love failed; making her come to the realization men DON'T love, they only care about the pleasurable favors one could offer them. To endure heartbreak and the life that was forced upon her, she created an alter ego... SYN. Syn, unlike Angel, was built to deal with any situation. The only thing that mattered to her was sex and money. Growing up in an abusive home, Parker James became void of all feelings, which caused him to live reckless and not care whether he lived or died. Until one day he walked into a strip joint and his eyes landed on her. The pain and loneliness in her eyes pulled at the strings in Parker’s heart, giving it an unrecognizable double beat. She caused something to stir in him, and he knew he had to have her, and he was willing to do whatever it took to get her.
All The Things Money Can't Buy
Krystal Armstead - 2015
She runs and owns a tattoo shop with her cousin, Kourtney. Kourtney is tired of seeing her cousin down and out. She convinces her cousin to get back into the dating scene again, forcing Nina to confront her hurtful past.Nina grew up on a naval base in San Diego, California. When Nina was fourteen, she met and fell for an older musician by the name of Ricque Cole. What started off as tutoring to get him caught up on his schoolwork turned into a beautiful relationship, but more than that, the two became best friends. They confided in one another and depended on each other to get through the tough times. Nina struggled with the feelings of neglect that her mother placed upon her; Ricque struggled with the life that his parents left him to deal with.Circumstances pull the young couple from one another, forcing Nina to keep a secret that should have never been kept. Heartbreaking decisions were made, and Nina’s conscience begins to weigh down on her. After a tragic event, Nina’s aunt invites her to come live with her in Goldsboro, North Carolina.After almost sixteen years of living with guilt and anguish, Nina meets a handsome club owner by the name of Santiago Dominguez. Feelings start to flourish, and Nina can’t seem to shake the fact that the new man in her life has similarities to the old one. Just when Nina decides that it’s time to move on, her past confronts her with open arms.