Book picks similar to
The Execution of the Hangman of Riga: The Only Execution of a War Criminal by the Mossad by Anton Kunzle
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Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction
Martin Gilbert - 2005
Three days later the diplomat was dead, and Germany was in the grips of skillfully orchestrated anti-Jewish violence.In the early hours of November 10, Nazi storm troopers and Hitler Youth rampaged through Jewish neighborhoods across Germany, leaving behind them a horrifying trail of terror and destruction. More than a thousand synagogues and many thousands of Jewish shops were destroyed, while thirty thousand Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. This was the moment when deliberately inflamed hatreds ignited nationwide destruction.With rare insight and acumen, Martin Gilbert, one of the leading historians of our time, examines Kristallnacht -- the Night of Broken Glass -- and describes how the rest of the world reacted in its wake. His narration of that night and day of terror is chilling, vividly conveying its scale and intensity through more than fifty previously unpublished eyewitness testimonies and graphic newspaper accounts of the events as they unfolded. No other attack on Jews during the course of the Second World War was as widely reported by contemporary observers.Kristallnacht marked the beginning of the systematic eradication of a people who traced their origins in Germany to Roman times and was a sinister fore-warning of the Holocaust. By setting the tone for the terrible war to follow, it shaped the second half of the twentieth century and continues to haunt us, almost seventy years later. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, this is an eye-opening study of one of the darkest chapters in human history.
Don't Tell the Nazis
Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch - 2017
How much will she risk for her friends? A gripping story based on true events.During the Soviet occupation of Ukraine during World War II, some of Krystia’s family are harrassed; others are arrested and killed. When the Nazis liberate the town, they are welcomed with open arms. Krystia’s best friend Dolik isn’t so sure. His family is Jewish and there are rumours that the Nazis might be even more brutal than the Soviets.Shortly after the Nazis arrive, they discover a mass grave of Soviet prisoners and blame the slaughter on the Jews. Soon, the Nazis establish ghettoes and begin public executions of Jews.Krystia can’t bear to see her friends suffering and begins smuggling food into the ghetto. When rumours circulate that the ghetto will be evacuated and the Jews will be exterminated, Krystia must decide if she’s willing to risk her own family’s safety to save her friends.
I Am Forbidden
Anouk Markovits - 2012
Five years later, Josef rescues a young girl, Mila, after her parents are killed while running to meet the Rebbe they hoped would save them. Josef helps Mila reach Zalman Stern, a leader in the Satmar community, in whose home Mila is raised as a sister to Zalman’s daughter, Atara. As the two girls mature, Mila’s faith intensifies, while her beloved sister Atara discovers a world of books and learning that she cannot ignore. With the rise of communism in central Europe, the family moves to Paris, to the Marais, where Zalman tries to raise his children apart from the city in which they live. When the two girls come of age, Mila marries within the faith, while Atara continues to question fundamentalist doctrine. The different choices the two sisters makes force them apart until a dangerous secret threatens to banish them from the only community they’ve ever known. A beautifully crafted, emotionally gripping story of what happens when unwavering love, unyielding law, and centuries of tradition collide, I Am Forbidden announces the arrival of an extraordinarily gifted new voice and opens a startling window on a world long closed to most of us, until now.
The Unanswered Letter: One Holocaust Family's Desperate Plea for Help
Faris Cassell - 2020
He and his wife, Viennese Jews, had found escape routes for their daughters. But now their money, connections, and emotional energy were nearly exhausted. Alfred begged the American recipient of the letter, “You are surely informed about the situation of all Jews in Central Europe.... By pure chance I got your address.... My daughter and her husband will go... to America.... Help us to follow our children.... It is our last and only hope....” After languishing in a California attic for decades, Alfred’s letter ended up in the hands of Faris Cassell, a journalist who couldn’t rest until she discovered the ending of the story. Traveling across the United States as well as to Austria, the Czech Republic, Belarus, and Israel, she uncovered an extraordinary story of heart-wrenching loss and unforgettable love that endures to this day. Did the Bergers’ desperate letter find a response? Did they—and their daughters—survive? Did they leave living descendants? You will find the answers here. A story that will move any reader, The Unanswered Letter is a poignant reminder that love and hope never die.
House on Endless Waters
Emuna Elon - 2016
At the behest of his agent, renowned author Yoel Blum reluctantly agrees to visit his birthplace of Amsterdam to meet with his Dutch publisher, despite promising his late mother that he would never return to that city. While touring the Jewish Museum with his wife, Yoel stumbles upon a looping reel of photos offering a glimpse of pre-war Dutch Jewish life, and is astonished to see the youthful face of his beloved mother staring back at him, posing with her husband, Yoel’s older sister, Nettie…and an infant he doesn’t recognize.This unsettling discovery launches him into a fervent search for the truth, revealing Amsterdam’s dark wartime history and the underground networks which hid Jewish children away from danger—but at a cost. The deeper into the past Yoel digs, the better he understands his mother’s silence, and the more urgent the question that has unconsciously haunted him for a lifetime—Who am I?—becomes. Evocative, insightful, and deeply resonant, House on Endless Waters beautifully illustrates the complex nature of identity and belonging, and the inextricability of past and present.
Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941
William L. Shirer - 1941
Shirer was virtually unknown in 1940 when he decided there might be a book in the diary he had kept in Europe during the 1930s—specifically those sections dealing with the collapse of the European democracies and the rise of Nazi Germany.Berlin Diary first appeared in 1941, and the timing was perfect. The energy, the passion, the electricity in it were palpable. The book was an instant success, and it became the frame of reference against which thoughtful Americans judged the rush of events in Europe. It exactly matched journalist to event: the right reporter at the right place at the right time. It stood, and still stands, as so few books have ever done—a pure act of journalistic witness.