Book picks similar to
Like Finding My Twin: How An Eighth-Grade Class Reunited Two Holocaust Refugees by Fern Schumer Chapman
non-fiction
holocaust
wwii
first-reads
Love in a World of Sorrow: A Teenage Girl's Holocaust Memoirs
Fanya Gottesfeld Heller - 1993
From the unrelenting fear of death and gnawing pain of hunger, to the budding relationships of an adolescent girl growing into womanhood during the worst of all times, the author withholds nothing. Fanya Gottesfeld Heller's subtle depiction of her parents knowledge that it was a non-Jew's love for their daughter that had moved him to hide them, and their embarrassment and ultimate acceptance of the situation, lead us to wonder how we would have acted under the same circumstances as father, mother, or daughter. Love in a World of Sorrow features Fanya's gripping tale of survival and an updated foreword and epilogue by the author, reflecting more than a decade of experience bearing witness to the Holocaust before hundreds of audiences around the world. On the reading list at Princeton University, the University of Connecticut, and Ben Gurion Univesity of the Negev, among others. Fanya Gottesfeld Heller's book is an indispensable educational tool for teaching future generations about the human potential for both good and evil.
When the War is Over
Anja May - 2018
The true account of a teenage soldier in World War 2 Germany. Germany, 1945. Ever since Anton Kohler first heard the vibrant sound of the violin, he’s dreamed of mastering the instrument. But when his father dies, the fifteen-year-old must give up his passion to support his seven younger siblings. As the Russian army marches closer to his hometown, Anton and his best friend Gerhard are pulled from their families and forced to help defend their home in a last desperate stand. When Anton witnesses the slaughter of concentration camp prisoners, he vows to escape the war and find a way home to his family and his girl, Luise. In the chaos of impending defeat, Anton is torn between his promise to protect the life of his best friend and his desire to survive the war with his conscience intact. Based on a true account, this coming-of-age story set in the last turbulent months of World War 2, Germany, is a tale of love and friendship, of hope and loss. Read When the War is Over now to experience the poignant journey of a teenage soldier.
Helga: Growing Up in Hitler's Germany
Karen Truesdell Riehl - 2014
Asked about her experience during the war, Helga quietly revealed she had been a "Jugend," a member of Hitler's child army, "trained to revere and obey the Fuhrer." When Riehl asked how children were recruited, she replied, "Clever seduction." Helga's seduction begins with an invitation from Hitler she cannot refuse. The ten-year-old is ordered to attend weekly meetings of the Hitler Youth movement. Lies and tasty treats are employed to entice her allegiance to the Fuhrer. Helga is sent away to Hitler Youth training camps as the war draws nearer her home in Berlin. She is caught between loyalty to her family, suffering under Nazi rule, and loyalty to the Fuhrer, who keeps her safe and well-fed. Helga's gradual disillusionment, followed by her harrowing escape home, is a powerful coming-of-age story of a young girl's survival of Nazi mind control.
Tasa's Song
Linda Kass - 2016
1943. Tasa Rosinski and five relatives, all Jewish, escape their rural village in eastern Poland avoiding certain death and find refuge in a bunker beneath a barn built by their longtime employee. A decade earlier, ten-year-old Tasa dreams of someday playing her violin like Paganini. To continue her schooling, she leaves her family for a nearby town, joining older cousin Danik at a private Catholic academy where her musical talent flourishes despite escalating political tension. But when the war breaks out and the eastern swath of Poland falls under Soviet control, Tasa's relatives become Communist targets, her new tender relationship is imperiled, and the family's secure world unravels. From a peaceful village in eastern Poland to a partitioned post-war Vienna, from a promising childhood to a year living underground, Tasa's Song celebrates the enduring power of the human spirit."
The Daddy Diaries
Joshua Braff - 2015
Jay and Jackie uproot their family of four from San Francisco after Jackie loses her job but finds a lucrative new one in St. Petersburg, Florida. Jay, a one-time copywriter and aspiring author, now plays househusband, caring for his troubled thirteen-year-old son and precocious daughter as they adjust to their new life. As his children begin to assert their independence, Jay realizes that the challenges of child rearing are only going to grow more difficult in the teen years. Through a series of misadventures and run-ins with his narcissistic older brother, his lunatic childhood friend, and his increasingly estranged but beloved son, Jay learns that he must tap his own vulnerabilities if he is to be the rock of stability his family so desperately needs. Overflowing with pathos and humor, The Daddy Diaries is a memorable take on contemporary fatherhood and a clear-sighted look at how the upending of traditional marital roles can affect the delicate balance of familial love. In his third and best novel to date, Joshua Braff vividly evokes the unpredictable dance that families do, and captures how they similarly ebb and flow.
My Life in the Red Army
Fred Virski - 2014
The book chronicles Virski's experiences as a soldier in the Ukraine and Central Asia, describing the hardships, his comrades-in-arms, the food, clothing, and interactions with officers and the NKVD (secret police). When war with Germany breaks-out, Virski witnesses scenes of brutality and is caught in fierce fighting, where he is wounded and hospitalized. Following his recovery, he eventually makes his way back to his native Poland. My Life in the Red Army is impressive for its straightforward style yet tinged with a sense of humor towards his situation.
Survivors Club: The True Story of a Very Young Prisoner of Auschwitz
Michael Bornstein - 2017
Survivors Club tells the unforgettable story of how a father’s courageous wit, a mother’s fierce love, and one perfectly timed illness saved Michael’s life, and how others in his family from Zarki, Poland, dodged death at the hands of the Nazis time and again with incredible deftness. Working from his own recollections as well as extensive interviews with relatives and survivors who knew the family, Michael relates his inspirational story with the help of his daughter, Debbie Bornstein Holinstat. Shocking, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting, this narrative nonfiction offers an indelible depiction of what happened to one Polish village in the wake of the German invasion in 1939.
World War II: The Resistance
C. David North - 2015
It was not until 1942 that widely dispersed underground organizations would band together to form a united opposition to the occupying Germans. It was not until then that resistance would become the Resistance - a disciplined multi-national movement that would play a significant part in the outcome of World War II. In each occupied nation, resistance groups would grow, gathering and sending information to London, planning increasingly complex sabotage operations, and assisting thousands of people, particularly Jews, in fleeing Nazi-occupied territories. Their actions would eventually become a focused counteroffensive against the German army in 1944, when Allied troops gathered in Great Britain to prepare for the invasion of France. As their widespread activity weakened German outposts in France and other occupied countries, the Allies would gain the foothold they needed to win the war. This is their story.
A Nazi in the Family: The hidden story of an SS family in wartime Germany
Derek Niemann - 2015
Every day Karl Niemann commutes to work, a business manager in charge of various factories. In the evenings he returns home to life as a normal family man.For many years this was all Derek Niemann had known about his grandfather – until he made the chilling discovery that Karl had actually been an officer in the SS; and that his “business” used thousands of slave labourers in concentration camps. Suddenly, a lifetime of unsettling hints and clues fell into place.With the help of surviving relatives and hundreds of previously unknown photographs, Derek reconstructs the lives of his German forebears and uncovers the true story of what Karl did. A Nazi in the Family is an illuminating portrayal of how ordinary people can fall into the service of a monstrous regime."All families have secrets, but few are as shocking as Derek Niemann's." Culture Trip"Extraordinary." Glasgow Evening Times"Vividly captures the complex life of an ordinary man." Andrew Bomford, BBC Radio 4
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank - 1947
In 1942, with the Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, the Franks and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annexe” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and surprisingly humorous, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.--back cover
The Writing On The Wall
Juliet Rieden - 2019
She longed to have relatives and knew precious little about her Czech father's childhood as a refugee.On the night before Juliet's father died, in 2006, Juliet's father suddenly looked up and said: 'The plane is in the hangar.' In the years after his death, Juliet comes to truly understand the significance of these words.On a trip to Prague she is shocked to see the Rieden name written many times over on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue memorial. These names become the catalyst for a life-changing journey that uncovers a personal Holocaust tragedy of epic proportions.Juliet traces the grim fate of her father's cousins, aunts and uncles on visits to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt concentration camps and learns about the extremes of cruelty, courage and kindness.Then in a locked box in Britain's National Archives, she discovers a stash of documents including letters from her father that reveal intimate details of his struggle.Meticulously researched and beautifully told, this is the moving story of a woman's quest to piece together the hidden parts of her father's life and the unimaginable losses he was determined to protect his children from.PRAISE FOR THE WRITING ON THE WALL'Rieden sets out to chart her story with a journalist's rigour: facts, timelines, archival material. She does it brilliantly. But it is the small, powerful resonant moments within a harrowing arc that bring her story alive.' The Australian
Voices From The Forest: The True Story of Abram and Julia Bobrow
Stephen Paper - 2019
Abram and Julia Bobrow escaped from the Nazi death squads and fled to the vast forests of Byelorussia where they learned to survive with little food, shelter or warm clothing. Finally adapting to the severe conditions, they began to do little things like cutting telephone wires or tearing up railroad tracks. Still, they were never more than one step ahead of the SS and their auxiliaries—units bent on destroying the partisan movement and ridding Europe of its Jewish population. Most partisan groups were made up of Soviet soldiers and they wouldn't accept anyone who didn't have their own weapons. Julia was lucky and was accepted to a Russian group as a nurse; Abram’s group consisted of himself, his brother Label and his father. They had a sawed-off rifle and one pistol with six bullets. Abram and Label used their first two bullets to kill two peasants that had turned in their aunt and her children for blood money. The story is told in Abram's own words.
Good for the Money: My Fight to Pay Back America
Robert Benmosche - 2016
It was the peg upon which the nation hung its ire and resentment during the financial crisis: the pinnacle of Wall Street arrogance and greed. When Bob Benmosche climbed aboard as CEO, it was widely assumed that he would go down with his ship. In mere months, he turned things around, pulling AIG from the brink of financial collapse and restoring its profitability. Before three years were up, AIG had fully repaid its staggering debt to the U.S. government - with interest.Good for the Money is an unyielding leader's memoir of a career spent fixing companies through thoughtful, unconventional strategy. With his brash, no-holds-barred approach to the job, Benmosche restored AIG's employee morale and good name. His is a story of perseverance, told with refreshing irreverence in unpretentious terms.Called "an American hero" by Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of Too Big to Fail, Benmosche was a self-made man who never forgot what life is like for the nation's 99-percent; again and again, he pushed back against obstinate colleagues to salvage American jobs and industry. Good for the Money affords you a front-row seat for Benmosche's heated battles with major players from Geithner to Obama to Cuomo, and offers incomparable lessons in leadership from the legendary CEO who changed the way Wall Street does business.
The Hidden Girl: A True Story of the Holocaust
Lola Rein Kaufman - 2008
At first, Lola secretly lives in the home of a Ukrainian woman. But when someone threatens to expose her to the Nazis, Lola must flee again, this time hiding with another family in a dirt hole beneath a barn. Struggling against cold and hunger, the hidden family lives under the constant threat of discovery. Lola has lost everything - her home and her family. All she has left is one article of clothing, a dress lovingly embroidered by her mother. Will Lola ever find safety - or freedom?
Two Who Survived: Keeping Hope Alive While Surviving the Holocaust
Rose Schindler - 2019
When the persecution of Jews begins, both are plucked from their reality and thrust into concentration camps. They are stripped of everything they know and forced to navigate a truly incomprehensible, volatile, dangerous and unpredictable world. Even when separated from support systems and family members, their drive to survive helps them cope. Despite their exposure to the horrors of the Holocaust, they endure and carry on with a determination that shapes their character forever. Follow the lives of Rose and Max as they learn to adapt to a reality beyond belief and emerge stronger than ever. When they are finally liberated from their concentration camps, they navigate a new world individually before eventually coming together to form what each so tragically lost: A FAMILY