Book picks similar to
French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial by Serge Klarsfeld
holocaust
nonfiction
history
non-fiction
Anne Frank: A Life From Beginning to End
Hourly History - 2018
Anne Frank’s story is definitely a tragic one; every aspect of it is steeped in the tragedy of the Holocaust. But sadness is not the only thing that the account of Anne Frank’s life has to offer—it’s a powerful story about a girl who wasn’t afraid to stand up for what was right. She faced the worst that humanity has to offer and she did not let it corrupt her. Even the evil oppression of Hitler’s Nazi regime could never crush the indomitable spirit of Anne Frank. In this book, you will discover her life; this is her story. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Franks Flee to the Netherlands ✓ The Nazi Invasion ✓ The Secret Annex ✓ Life in Hiding ✓ Betrayed and Arrested ✓ Life and Death at the Concentration Camps And much more!
Behind Nazi Lines: My Father's Heroic Quest to Save 149 World War II POWs
Andrew Gerow Hodges - 2015
The odds of their survival were long. The odds of escaping, even longer. But one-man had the courage to fight the odds . . . An elite British S.A.S. operative on an assassination mission gone wrong. A Jewish New Yorker injured in a Nazi ambush. An eighteen-year-old Gary Cooper lookalike from Mobile, Alabama. These men and hundreds of other soldiers found themselves in the prisoner-of-war camps off the Atlantic coast of occupied France, fighting brutal conditions and unsympathetic captors. But, miraculously, local villagers were able to smuggle out a message from the camp, one that reached the Allies and sparked a remarkable quest by an unlikely—and truly inspiring—hero. Andy Hodges had been excluded from military service due to a lingering shoulder injury from his college-football days. Devastated but determined, Andy refused to sit at home while his fellow Americans risked their lives, so he joined the Red Cross, volunteering for the toughest assignments on the most dangerous battlefields. In the fall of 1944, Andy was tapped for what sounded like a suicide mission: a desperate attempt to aid the Allied POWs in occupied France—alone and unarmed, matching his wits against the Nazi war machine. Despite the likelihood of failure, Andy did far more than deliver much-needed supplies. By the end of the year, he had negotiated the release of an unprecedented 149 prisoners—leaving no one behind. This is the true story of one man’s selflessness, ingenuity, and victory in the face of impossible adversity.
Saved by the Enemy
Craig A. Ledbetter - 2011
With the clouds gathering, they realized they had no means to leave and therefore must ride out the storm. Their hopes faded as stricter restrictions were placed on them and the bullying and hatred of Jews intensified. Suddenly, Kristallnacht erupted and the numbers of killings and deportations surged. The family was repeatedly pushed deeper into the neglected ghettos, and the father was forced into slave labor. The Nazi SS was assigned the task of making Berlin the center of Hitler s growing evil empire Judenfrei (Jewish free). The mother and children had no choice but to flee the terror when it finally arrived at their door; it was already too late for the father. Running into the night, with no other options, the mother made a phone call to a woman who might be either a friend or an enemy. A plan was quickly hatched. "There is no good place to hide; you can only hide amongst your enemy and pray that your secret is not discovered." And what a train ride it was....
Crucible of Terror
Max Liebster - 2003
After his arrest, followed by four months of solitary confinement in a Nazi prison, Liebster plummets headlong into the nightmare
The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
Anne-Marie O'Connor - 2012
Anne-Marie O'Connor, writer for the Washington Post, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, tells the galvanizing story of the Lady in Gold, Adele Bloch-Bauer, a dazzling Viennese Jewish society figure; daughter of the head of one of the largest banks in the Hapsburg Empire, head of the Oriental Railway, whose Orient Express went from Berlin to Constantinople; wife of Ferdinand Bauer, sugar-beet baron. The Bloch-Bauers were art patrons, and Adele herself was considered a rebel of fin de siècle Vienna (she wanted to be educated, a notion considered "degenerate” in a society that believed women being out in the world went against their feminine "nature"). The author describes how Adele inspired the portrait and how Klimt made more than a hundred sketches of her-simple pencil drawings on thin manila paper. And O'Connor writes of Klimt himself, son of a failed gold engraver, shunned by arts bureaucrats, called an artistic heretic in his time, a genius in ours. She writes of the Nazis confiscating the portrait of Adele from the Bloch-Bauers' grand palais; of the Austrian government putting the painting on display, stripping Adele's Jewish surname from it so that no clues to her identity (nor any hint of her Jewish origins) would be revealed. Nazi officials called the painting, "The Lady in Gold" and proudly exhibited it in Vienna's Baroque Belvedere Palace, consecrated in the 1930s as a Nazi institution. The author writes of the painting, inspired by the Byzantine mosaics Klimt had studied in Italy, with their exotic symbols and swirls, the subject an idol in a golden shrine. We see how, sixty years after it was stolen by the Nazis, the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer became the subject of a decade-long litigation between the Austrian government and the Bloch-Bauer heirs, how and why the U.S. Supreme Court became involved in the case, and how the Court's decision had profound ramifications in the art world. In this book listeners will find riveting social history; an illuminating and haunting look at turn-of-the-century Vienna; a brilliant portrait of the evolution of a painter; a masterfully told tale of suspense. And at the heart of it, The Lady in Gold-the shimmering painting, and its equally irresistible subject, the fate of each forever intertwined.
The Undefeated: The Oklahoma Sooners and the Greatest Winning Streak in College Football
Jim Dent - 1957
This awesome record was the product of a genius and masterful coach named Bud Wilkinson and the spirited young men he led. The Undefeated will detail all the thrilling action on the field during this record winning streak, but it will also reveal all the behind-the-scenes tumult and pressure swirling around it. Dent presents an absorbing character study of the brilliant, complex coach who engineered it all - Bud Wilkinson, the on-field genius whoses starched-shirt public persona hid a man of many secrets and an in-depth look at a state and its people still suffering from a Depression hangover and an identity crisis, who took up the Sooners football banner almost as a religious cause. Through it all, the young men who accomplished this amazing feat shine in vivid life.
Crushed: An Amazing True Story of Determination and Survival
Kathryn Mann - 2013
Crushed and left with broken ribs, a punctured lung, and compression fractures in his chest, spine, and pelvis, Bob pushed his arms forward, dug his fingers into the freezing mud and dragged his mostly paralyzed body forward. Saturated to the skin in freezing rain, far from help, and with the night fast approaching, Bob refused to give up.This includes photographs, documentation, and inspirational verses.This amazing true story was featured on the It's a Miracle series hosted by Richard Thomas. It aired on PAX Television as Chain Reaction in 1999.
Treasures from the Attic: the Extraordinary Story of Anne Frank's Family
Mirjam Pressler - 2009
But in the attic in this particular house, a treasure trove of historic importance is found. Rarely does this become an actuality, but when Helene Elias died, no one could put a price on what she left behind. Helene Elias was born Helene Frank, sister to Otto Frank, and therefore aunt to Anne Frank. Ensconced upstairs in the house she inherited from her mother, and eventually passed on to her son, Buddy Elias, Anne’s cousin and childhood playmate, was the documented legacy of the Frank family: a vast collection of photos, letters, drawings, poems, and postcards preserved throughout decades—a cache of over 6,000 documents in all. Chronicled by Buddy’s wife, Gertrude, and renowned German author Mirjam Pressler, these findings weave an indelible, engaging, and endearing portrait of the family that shaped Anne Frank. They wrote to one another voluminously; recounted summer holidays, and wrote about love and hardships. They reassured one another during the terrible years and waited anxiously for news after the war had ended. Through these letters, they rejoiced in new life, and honored the memories of those they lost. Anne’s family believed themselves to ordinary members of Germany’s bourgeoisie. That they were wrong is part of history, and we celebrate them here with this extraordinary account. Insert Authors’ photo: © Jürgen BauerMirjam Pressler is one of Germany’s most beloved authors. She was the German translator of Anne Frank’s diary.
NR Narayana Murthy: A Biography
Ritu Singh - 2013
He is the founder of Infosys, a global software consulting company which he started with six other professionals and a seed capital of Rs. 10,000 in 1981. Not only did NRNM lead it to become a top ranking Information Technology company in the world, he also showed that it is possible to do business ethically and achieve success without bending any laws or making compromises.This book takes you through the fascinating journey of a seventeen year old who had to sacrifice his entry into the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology because his father did not have money to pay his fees, and who ultimately came up in life to head a global Information Technology company. NRN Murthy had no money, no family backing, but just a quiet gritty determination, and faith in what he believed was the future of business. The one constant factor throughout his life journey has been the adherence to the values he imbibed from his family, which he has personally and professionally lived by-hard work, fairness, decency, honesty, transparency, striving for excellence and belief in meritocracy. It is on the bedrock of these values that Infosys continues to stand firm and prosper despite the fact that NRN stepped down as CEO in 2002.Iconic leader, living legend, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time-NRN is all this and more. A man who set new standards of business growth and corporate governance. Written by Ritu Singh, the author of President Pratibha Patil, this book will surely inspire all the readers.
The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45
Władysław Szpilman - 1946
It was the same piece and the same pianist, when broadcasting was resumed six years later. The Pianist is Szpilman's account of the years inbetween, of the death and cruelty inflicted on the Jews of Warsaw and on Warsaw itself, related with a dispassionate restraint borne of shock. Szpilman, now 88, has not looked at his description since he wrote it in 1946 (the same time as Primo Levi's If This Is A Man?; it is too personally painful. The rest of us have no such excuse. Szpilman's family were deported to Treblinka, where they were exterminated; he survived only because a music-loving policeman recognised him. This was only the first in a series of fatefully lucky escapes that littered his life as he hid among the rubble and corpses of the Warsaw Ghetto, growing thinner and hungrier, yet condemned to live. Ironically it was a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who saved Szpilman's life by bringing food and an eiderdown to the derelict ruin where he discovered him. Hosenfeld died seven years later in a Stalingrad labour camp, but portions of his diary, reprinted here, tell of his outraged incomprehension of the madness and evil he witnessed, thereby establishing an effective counterpoint to ground the nightmarish vision of the pianist in a desperate reality. Szpilman originally published his account in Poland in 1946, but it was almost immediately withdrawn by Stalin's Polish minions as it unashamedly described collaborations by Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and Jews with the Nazis. In 1997 it was published in Germany after Szpilman's son found it on his father's bookcase. This admirably robust translation by Anthea Bell is the first in the English language. There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland before the Nazi occupation; after it there were 240,000. Wladyslaw Szpilman's extraordinary account of his own miraculous survival offers a voice across the years for the faceless millions who lost their lives. --David Vincent
Rywka's Diary: The Writings of a Jewish Girl from the Lodz Ghetto
Rywka LipszycEsther Burstein - 2014
Rywka’s Diary is at once an astonishing historical document and a moving tribute to the many ordinary people whose lives were forever altered by the Holocaust. At its heart, it is the diary of a girl named Rywka Lipszyc who detailed the brutal conditions that Jews in the Lodz ghetto, the second largest in Poland, endured under the Nazis: poverty, hunger and malnutrition, religious oppression, and, in Rywka’s case, the death of her parents and siblings. Handwritten in a school notebook between October 1943 and April 1944, the diary ends literally in mid-sentence. What became of Rywka is a mystery. A Red Army doctor found her notebook in Auschwitz after its liberation in 1945 and took it back with her to the Soviet Union.Rywka’s Diary is also a moving coming-of-age story, in which a young woman expresses her curiosity about the world and her place in it and reflects on her relationship with God—a remarkable affirmation of her commitment to Judaism and her faith in humanity. Interwoven into this carefully translated diary are photographs, news clippings, maps, and commentary from Holocaust scholars and the girl’s surviving relatives, which provide an in-depth picture of both the conditions of Rywka's life and the mysterious end to her diary.Moving and illuminating, told by a brave young girl whose strong and charismatic voice speaks for millions, Rywka’s Diary is an extraordinary addition to the history of the Holocaust and World War II
BUNKER 1945 - The Last Ten Days of ADOLF HITLER
Christian Shakespeare - 2019
Twenty-two years later, he did. April 1945 – Berlin. The world had been at war for more than five-and-a-half years – approximately seventy million people were dead across the globe. The epicentre of the twelve-year-old Third Reich was now surrounded, enveloped by bitter Soviet forces hardened by Nazi barbarity in the east over the last four years. As the buildings were blasted into rubble, pounded by Russian guns and bombs, before their troops and tanks, Hitler was hunkered down in his last headquarters – the dark and damp bunker under the Reich Chancellery. As the Third Reich began to crumble as fast as the city’s buildings, what was the state of mind of the tyrant? Only his closest and fanatical allies saw the collapse, none more so than Hitler’s servants, Otto Gunsche and Heinz Linge – two individuals which witnessed the final act of their regime. An act tinged over the last ten days in late April with selfish betrayal, increasingly forlorn hope, pleas, desperation and eventually suicide. As the Soviets closed in with impending vigour, in the concrete tomb below ground and under the thunderous booms of the petrifying battle for Berlin, the mind of the dictator disintegrated into drugs, delusion and a determination to die. Not by the enemy bullet but one of his own. This is the story of the people who held a unique place in world history – the ones who were there when the nightmare of Nazism and the horrors which accompanied it was finally banished as a dark chapter in the story of the human race.
Witness: Voices from the Holocaust
Joshua M. Greene - 2000
For the past two decades, the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University has sought to preserve the human side of this inhuman era by videotaping testimonies from those who lived through the Nazi regime, a project that has led to an acclaimed documentary film and this extraordinary book.Fifty-five years after the end of World War II, the Holocaust continues to cast a dark shadow. For the past two decades, the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University has sought to preserve the human side of this inhuman era by videotaping testimonies from those who lived through the Nazi regime, a project that has led to an acclaimed documentary film and this extraordinary book. The Wall Street Journal called the documentary "eloquent and unsparing," and Daily Variety said it was "a staggeringly powerful record." The Washington Times said that Witness "gives new meaning to the term documentary. [It is] as pure a document as I have ever seen on television." In Witness: Voices from the Holocaust, Joshua M. Greene and Shiva Kumar weave a single and compelling narrative from the first-person accounts of twenty-seven witnesses, including camp survivors, American military personnel, a member of the Hitler Youth, a Jesuit priest, and resistance fighters. The vivid and detailed memories of these witnesses testify to the continuing impact of this human catastrophe, and their impassioned words lend immediacy to events that resonate to this day.
Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior
Mark Rathbun - 2013
This autobiographical history of Scientology is told by one of L. Ron Hubbard’s staunchest defenders.
The Last Days of Hitler
Hugh R. Trevor-Roper - 1947
He had simply disappeared, missing for four months. The author, a British counter-intelligence officer, was given the task of solving this mystery. His brilliant piece of detective work not only proved that Hitler had killed himself in Berlin, but also produced one of the most fascinating history books ever written. His book tells the extraordinary story of those last days in the Berlin Bunker. The New Statesman has called this book "incomparable
by far the best written on any aspect of the second German war-a book sound in scholarship, brilliant in its presentation." Chapters include: Hitler & his court. Hitler in defeat. The court in defeat. Crisis & decision. Siege of the Bunker. Et Tu Brute. Death of Hitler. Epilogue. Notes on sources. Index.