Book picks similar to
Henri's War: A Buchenwald Holocaust Story by A Survivor
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The Traitors
David W. Walker - 2010
Collapsing Nazi Germany has developed terrible super weapons: the V1 Flying bomb, the V2 missile, rocket and jet powered aircraft. Now, with the war apparently lost, the maniacal Nazi leadership fashions a final diabolical plan born of the infamous Japanese Unit 731 of biological warfare and the secret “Amerika Bomber” ME 264. It is so evil, so inhuman, that even those ordered to proceed find themselves questioning their loyalty and this mission of mass death. OSS agent Chris Clancy will need all his skill and courage to combat this desperate plot. In a secret mission behind enemy lines, Clancy must locate the hidden base and defeat an enemy on his own ground. Yet, with twist on unseen twist, who are the enemies, and who are the Traitors?
Blitz Kid
Eliza Graham - 2013
Rachel is alone and adrift in a stricken city as the Blitz reaches its most deadly stage and thousands die in nightly air raids. Her father is under arrest as a suspected spy, her mother seriously ill in hospital. Can she survive in the murky blackout alongside London’s criminals and unearth the real traitors? Age 13-plus.
The Miraculous Torpedo Squadron by Jūzõ Mori
Jūzõ Mori - 2015
Never before translated into English, this book gives a vivid depiction of what it was like to fly and fight for the IJN. Contents include the author's youth in pre-war Japan, joining the navy and training to become a pilot, and his combat experiences during the war. Mori flew first in China, then took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Wake Island, the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian operations, the battle of Midway and the battle for Guadalcanal. This is a rare opportunity to view the war through the eyes of one of our opponents in his own words. Filled with hitherto unrevealed details about the most significant battles of the war, this book is a must read for those interested in the history of the Pacific War. Nick Voge spent many years working as a translator in Japan and is also a commercial pilot flying for a small Hawaiian airline. He is thus uniquely qualified to translate this epic story into English.
Hiding in the Open: A Holocaust Memoir
Sabina S. Zimering - 2001
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.
Here My Home Once Stood: A Holocaust Memoir
Moyshe Rekhtman - 2008
But his iron will and quick wit allowed him to survive when all seemed lost. Staging escapes from death camps and avoiding Nazi pursuit through the frozen Ukrainian countryside-all while facing the loss of his family, famine, constant threat of capture, torture, and execution - would be a monumental task for the strongest of men. Despite his mild manners, emaciated body, and poor vision, he evaded the death squads in Nazi-occupied Ukraine for four years. Moyshe's Holocaust memoir is a remarkable example of human fortitude during a time when many welcomed an end to their suffering.
Gerda's Story: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor
Gerda Nothmann Luner - 2019
Told through the eyes of a young girl, the book shares Gerda’s memories of Hitler’s rise to power and passionately describes the cruel toll that history can have on those who experience it. The book is much more than Gerda’s story. Through letters she received from her parents, who made the heartbreaking decision to send their two daughters to live with foster families in the relative safety of Holland, we learn how a mother and father try to raise a child from far away in times of great distress. Letters from them to Gerda’s foster parents, and desperate notes to an American family they hoped would act as sponsors, reveal their growing despair. The story is both deeply personal and universal as people wrestle with terrible choices to save their children and protect their families. These issues remain as relevant today as they were during the Holocaust. In 1939, while trying to arrange an escape from Germany, her parents sent 12-year-old Gerda and her younger sister to live with separate families in Holland, which was still safe for Jews. What was intended as a temporary move became permanent and Gerda never saw her parents again. Ultimately, she was the only member of her immediate family to survive and also had to bear the loss of the foster family she had come to love as her own. Gerda describes in searing detail her experiences in six concentration camps, her protection as a worker for the Philips Corporation, and her arrival in the U.S. in 1948 as an 18-year-old Holocaust survivor literally alone in the world. The memoir is a testament to the loving family Gerda built in America. Her husband added translations of the letters from her parents, grandparents and sister. After her oldest child and first grandchild were born, Gerda added notes to them. This group effort illustrates the special generational pull of trauma endured by Holocaust survivors.
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.
Hitler's War and the Horrific Account of the Holocaust
Scott S. F. Meaker - 2013
Warning: Contains highly disturbing content. This book is recommended for age 18+ The Holocaust remains as a reference to the destruction of about six million Jews. The collection of undesirables began in 1933 with the construction of the first concentration camp. As Hitler’s power grew, he rounded up others that he considered undesirable. Hitler had come into power and the slow destruction of Jews was put into place. In 1942, about a million Jews had already been killed. Execution was just one cause of death. Two and a half million have been gassed and a half million starved to death. Typhus outbreak killed many others. After the Allied victory, Germany was in chaos. This book is an effort to look at the type of situation that would allow a civilized country to let the Holocaust to take place. Scott’s Other Books: World War One: A Concise History - The Great War The Forgotten Heroes: Untold Stories of the Extraordinary World War II - Courage, Survival, Resistance and Rescue... The Forgotten Women Heroes: Second World War Untold Stories - The Women Heroes in the Extraordinary World War... Unforgettable World War II: Aftermath of the Extraordinary Second World War Unforgettable Vietnam War: The American War in Vietnam - War in the Jungle On the Brink of Nuclear War: Cuban Missile Crisis - Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States
Three Sisters: A True Holocaust Story of Love, Luck, and Survival
Celia Clement - 2020
Phantom Warrior: The Heroic True Story of Private John McKinney's One-Man Stand Against the Japanese in World War II
Forrest Bryant Johnson - 2007
On May 11, 1945, McKinney returned fire on the Japanese attacking his unit, using every available weapon-even his fists-standing alone against wave after wave of dedicated Japanese soldiers. At the end, John McKinney was alive-with over forty Japanese bodies before him. This is the story of an extraordinary man whose courage and fortitude in battle saved many American lives, and whose legacy has been sadly forgotten by all but a few. Here, the proud legacy of John McKinney lives on.
The Angel of Auschwitz: [Extended Version]
S.A. Falconi - 2014
I vow to you and to the leaders that you set for me, absolute allegiance until death. So help me God!”The SS Oath of Loyalty – words that became the very death sentence for millions of Jews and Germans alike. Six decades later, we still ask ourselves why and how did it happen? "The Angel of Auschwitz", a tragic epic of historical fiction, explores these inquiries through the eyes of an unlikely antagonist-turned-protagonist – the Nazi soldier."The Angel of Auschwitz" chronicles the life of Wolfgang Bremmer, an adolescent boy from the hills of Hamburg during the Nazi occupation of Germany. As a Hitler Youth, Wolfgang is captivated by the prowess of the Nazis and thrust into the ideologies of Adolf Hitler. With an adoration for the new Fűhrer and the Third Reich, Wolfgang enlists as a young man in the SS-Death’s Head Division, the gatekeepers of the regime’s most lethal concentration camp, Dachau. It is here he is introduced to Theodor Eicke’s “School of Violence” and becomes one of the most ruthless guards the SS has ever seen. After joining Hitler’s Mobile Killing Units, he participates in the invasion of Poland and the evacuation and extermination of its Jewish inhabitants. Wolfgang is the ideal Nazi warrior: vicious, ruthless, and entirely intolerant.But evil erodes even the hardest of hearts and Wolfgang grows weary in the midst of all the death and destruction. His conscience begins to return and with that a gnawing guilt for what he and his fellow Germans have done and are about to do. But with the fear of punishment for treason, Wolfgang is trapped in the cyclone of violence. That is, until he is promoted as a guard at the Reich’s most sophisticated concentration camp, Auschwitz. In the belly of such a beast as Auschwitz, Wolfgang discovers a secret that will not only save his own life and salvation, but the lives of so many prisoners as well.
Unfinished Symphony
Bernard Hellreich Ingram - 2012
This is not a book about survival in a concentration camp. It is a book about "ordinary" people, maybe like you & me, on the peripheries of the Holocaust. It is a book about an ordinary man who is a young Polish Jewish doctor & it tells of the discrimination he faced leading up to WWII. It tells how his comfortable Polish middle class life is shattered first by the 1939 Soviet invasion showing the real face of the Stalinist regime & then by the Nazis in 1941 who are bent on exterminating a people merely because of their religious background. What to do? I ask myself how I would have reacted & I asked my father how he had the courage to choose to walk the line of a Jew hiding as a Christian. How brave was he? "Not brave at all" was his reply, "I just did what I had to do". It is also the story of two brave Christians, the doctor's girlfriend & a friend of hers, & how they chose to risk their lives & those of their families to prevent the unjust murder of another human being whose only crime was his ethnic background. I ask myself could I now do the same if this situation arose. The book is priced as low as possible to encourage people to read about an amazing account of survival through the love & selflessness of others in a very dark time of man's recent history. Two of the central figures of this book, Marian Golebiowski & Irena Szumska-Ingram have been honored by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum with the Righteous Among the Nations award. See the Yom Ha’atzmaut 2010 speech by Dor Shapira of the Israeli Embassy to the Sydney NSWJBD in relation to Irena Sumska's award: http://www.google.com.hk/url?sa=t&... It is a story of love, adventure & human values, the fugitive "Jew in a Christian skin", under constant threat of exposure, precariously maintaining his false identity in a tiny rural community. finally we see Hellreich the penniless refugee, still supported by his faithful Irena, rebuilding his shattered career in Australia - a chapter of heartbreaking difficulties & heartwarming satisfaction. "...as gripping and human a story as any told about this tragic period in the history of man's inhumanity to man. I couldn't put it down. That it is told without bitterness and rancour makes it all the more powerful ... simply yet eloquently written." - Barry Cohen (former Australian Minister for the Arts, Heritage and the Environment) "... incredible faith and courage ... one of the most amazing stories to emerge from the wreckage and despair of the Holocaust." - L E Freeman in The Newcastle Herald Publisher's Note: My father, the author, passed from this world of natural causes in 2008 after what he described as a very interesting life. My hope in publishing his story is to document what happened to one man during these dark times & let him tell his story to all of you & not let it die with him. My father did not speak of his war years until I was 8, after many requests. It took him a lot longer to agree to write his story for the public. He was a modest man & did not think his story on the Holocaust's edges would be of interest, as per his Preface. All the Holocaust books I have read are valuable not for their literary merit but for the story they tell of barbarism, heroism, selfless help by others while endangering their own lives, & the wonderful strength & purity of th
The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger - 2020
Only personal bravery and self-sacrifice will tip the scales when the world needs it most.Read about the heroic act of a long-term prisoner, an RAF squadron leader on the run in France, a Filipino family fleeing their home, a small child finding unexpected friends amidst the cruelty of the concentration camps, a shipwrecked woman captured by the enemy, and a young Jewish girl in a desperate plan to escape the Gestapo.2020 marks 75 years since the world celebrated the end of WWII. These ten books will transport you across countries and continents during the final days, revealing the high price of freedom—and why it is still so necessary to “never forget”.Included books are:Stolen Childhood by Marion KummerowThe Aftermath by Ellie MidwoodToo Many Wolves in the Local Woods by Marina OsipovaLiberation Berlin by JJ TonerMagda’s Mark by Chrystyna Lucyk-BergerBuy now and indulge in stories filled with suspense, danger, heartbreak, and redemption.
Hitler in Argentina: The Documented Truth of Hitler's Escape from Berlin
Harry Cooper - 2014
Marshall Zhukov said "We have found no corpse that could be Hitler's." This book not only tells of the escape of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun and others of the Third Reich; it includes photographs, files from the FBI, CIA and OSS that show the US knew they escaped, interviews and much more. You will also read the reason that no government went after Hitler even though they knew where he was. This book will change the history you were taught in 5th grade.
Run Rachel Run: The Thrilling, True Story of a Teen’s Daring Escape and Heroic Survival During the Holocaust
Rachel Blum - 2017
(Not just based on a true story.) Rachel Blum was 12 when the Nazis invaded her town. Over the next three years, she witnessed war, risked her life to smuggle food for her family, escaped liquidation, hid with a kind Polish couple whose son worked for the SS, was questioned if she was a Jew by an SS General and engineered an incredibly dangerous scheme to overturn a moving trainload of 1,000 Nazi soldiers.Hers is not just an incredible, action-packed story, but represents a character arc that young women, as well as young men, as well as adults of all types can draw inspiration from. She did not begin as a selfless, courageous young girl she came to be. Her strength and determination evolved through her experiences.Once you start “Run Rachel Run,” you won’t be able to put it down. Once you finish, you’ll be shivering in awe how invigoratingly heroic the story of Rachel Blum is.
Reviews
“This is incredible!” Jessica Classen
“What a testimony of courage and love” Rick Dearmore
“Wonderful and inspiring and brave person” Helen Schwab
An Excerpt
July, 1944. Ivan Roluk couldn’t believe he was listening to a 15-year-old girl – and putting his life and the life of his family in her hands!But she was right. Driving trains for the Nazis for three years now, he knew exactly who the Germans were. He knew that there were once more than 20,000 Jews in the girl’s home town of Ludmir, and now there was only one. The courageous young girl, Rachel.Rachel -- who had just convinced him to risk his life, as well as the life of his wife and son.There was a risk either way, of course. The war was coming to an end and who knew what the Germans would do to them once they didn’t need his services any longer. It was a risk to do it, but a risk not to do it.He looked behind him. The 20 train cars filled with over 1,000 wounded Nazi soldiers snaked behind his engine-car like a meandering river. In the caboose at the tail of the train was his wife, his son and the little Jewish girl.Suddenly, he heard a slam. What was that? It sounded like the door connecting the engine-car to the first car, which was occupied by high-ranking Nazi officers. Was one of them coming up front?The moment of truth had arrived.He thrust the throttle full ahead….The train jerked forward…. He looked out the window. There, up ahead, was the bend! Had he waited too long?There was no more time to think. There was no more time for fear. It truly was now or never. He leaned out the open side door….