Ruth Elias, a young Jewish woman from Czechoslovakia, survived three years in the Nazi camps of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. In this haunting testimony, she relives the day-to-day conditions and horrific inhumane treatment of those years. She describes in painful detail how, having given birth in Auschwitz, she and her baby became part of a sadistic experiment personally conducted by the infamous SS physician Dr. Josef Mengele. Triumph of Hope also vividly recounts the aftermath of imprisonment, the difficult adjustment to normal life after the war. Ruth Elias's story is a portrayal of the emotional and psychological state of life in chaotic postwar Europe: from the desperate, futile attempts to track down family and friends; to the unabated hostility of former neighbors; to the chilling indifference of those who knew nothing of the experience of the camps. For Ruth, hope would have to take the difficult path to a new life in a new land: Israel, where new challenges, new obstacles awaited.

    Who was this enigmatic officer Pearl Good had spoken of so often?After five years of research--interviewing survivors, assembling a team that could work to open German files untouched for fifty years, following every lead he could, Good was able to uncover the amazing tale of one man's remarkable courage. And in April 2005 Karl Plagge joined Oskar Schindler and 380 other Germans as a "Righteous among Nations," honored by the State of Israel for protecting and saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust.This expanded edition features new photographs and a new epilogue on the impact of the discovery of Karl Plagge--especially the story of 83-year-old Alfons von Deschwanden, who, after fifty years of silence, came forward as a veteran of Plagge's unit. His testimony is now part of this growing witness to truth.

    

    But with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, she found herself swept up in a flood of startling revelations from her mother's earlier life. As she pored through old photographs and documents, she began to ask questions about secrets and omissions. The answers she found both shocked and inspired her, and would irrevocably transform her view of her mother, herself, and the meaning of family legacy.From Berkeley, California to New York City, to Leipzig, Germany, this compelling memoir takes you across continents and lifetimes."The Woman in the Photograph" will make you wonder about the men and women in your own photographs and how your life has been shaped by events you know little about.

    It is the story of a girl who, at the age of six, witnesses a murder being committed by German Storm Troopers. From that moment, the happy life she has known disintegrates. Her family escapes to Prague, where they create a new life. Six years later, the Germans march into Prague. Now she has to escape to England alone and on foot. She walks across the snow-covered Tatra Mountains. By train, fishing boat, and ship, she finally manages to get to England. She comes of age there during the bombing of London. When the war ends, she immediately returns to the Continent to discover the fate of her family. Farewell to Prague is a gripping true story that will fascinate and inspire readers of all ages.

    He ran away before taking his final vows and joined the army. Soon afterwards, the German tanks rolled into Poland and easily defeated her antiquated forces - the Polish cavalry were armed with sabres. Krupa survived Hitler's invasion, but was arrested in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland and accused of spying. After enduring torture in Moscow's notorious Lubianka prison, he was sentenced to ten years' corrective labour and deported to the Pechora Gulag. Most prisoners there were worked and starved to death within a year. But Krupa managed again to escape, and in the chaos following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union made one of the most extraordinary journeys of the war - from Siberia to safety in Afghanistan. Krupa's Jesuit training had given him an inner strength and resilience which enabled him to survive in the face of appalling brutality and cruelty. Luck and the kindness of strangers helped him complete his epic journey to freedom. The story of the suffering inflicted on millions in Stalin's camps has been told before - but Krupa's story is remarkable and uni

     ****************************** The Crew, based on interviews with Ken Cook, the crew's sole surviving member, recounts the wartime exploits of the members of an Avro Lancaster crew between 1942 and the war's end. Gloucestershire-born bomb aimer Ken Cook, hard-bitten Australian pilot Jim Comans, Navigator Don Bowes, Upper Gunner George Widdis, Tail Gunner 'Jock' Bolland, Flight Engineer Ken Randle and Radio Operator Roy Woollford were seven ordinary young men living in extraordinary times, risking their lives in freedom's cause in the dark skies above Hitler's Reich. From their earliest beginnings – in places as far apart as a Cotswold village and the suburbs of Sydney – through the adventure of training in North America and the dread and danger of the forty-five bombing raids they flew with 97 Squadron, David Price describes the crew's wartime experiences with human sympathy allied to a secure technical understanding of one of the RAF's most iconic aircraft. The drama and anxiety of individual missions – to Kassel, Munich and Augsburg as well as Berlin – is evoked with thrilling immediacy; while the military events and strategic decisions that drove the RAF's area bombing campaign against Nazi Germany are interwoven deftly with the narrative of the crew's operational careers. ****************************** Reviews: 'A sensitive account of the bomber's life ... Price has given the bomber offensive a human face. This book [...] has a heart and soul' The Times. 'A fascinating and fast-paced account of the exploits of an Avro Lancaster bomber crew from 97 Squadron RAF' The Herald. 'A remarkable insight into the bravery, determination and skill of British Bomber Command crews during WWII' Waterstones.

    He devised survival strategies—stamp collecting, watching soccer, and the like—that served as screens to block out the increasingly oppressive world around him. Even before the events of 1938–39, culminating in Kristallnacht, the family was convinced that they must leave the country. Gay describes the bravery and ingenuity of his father in working out this difficult emigration process, the courage of the non-Jewish friends who helped his family during their last bitter months in Germany, and the family’s mounting panic as they witnessed the indifference of other countries to their plight and that of others like themselves. Gay’s account—marked by candor, modesty, and insight—adds an important and curiously neglected perspective to the history of German Jewry.

    Within are some of the most senior officers of the Allied army, guarded by almost two hundred Italian soldiers and a vicious fascist commando who answers directly to "Il Duce" Mussolini himself. Their unbelievable escape, told by Mark Felton in Castle of the Eagles, is a little-known marvel of World War II.By March 1943, the plan is ready: this extraordinary assemblage of middle-aged POWs has crafted civilian clothes, forged identity papers, gathered rations, and even constructed dummies to place in their beds, all in preparation for the moment they step into the tunnel they have been digging for six months.How they got to this point and what happens after is a story that reads like fiction, supported by an eccentric cast of characters, but is nonetheless true to its core.

    One mother’s incredible courage. Based on an astounding true story.It is German-occupied Poland in 1942 and Jewish lives are at risk. Nazi soldiers order young boys to pull down their trousers to see if they are circumcised. Many are summarily shot or sent to the camps. A remarkable mother takes an ingenious step. To avoid suspicion, she trains her teenage son to be a girl: his clothing, voice, hair, manners and more. Together, mother and son face incredible odds as their story sweeps backwards and forwards across occupied Europe.

    Max is a British Territorial soldier and Zia is a Jewess from the south of France. Zia's grandmother is a wealthy socialite who owns a painting that could embarrass the Nazis. Zia is kidnapped by the Gestapo and Max is hospitalised on the same day. He awakes to find no trace of his beloved who he had planned to marry in England. The Red Cross reported that it was almost certain that Zia was trafficked across the border and delivered to Sachsenhausen Labour Camp at Oranienburg, not far from Berlin on the night of May 26th, 1939. A criminal act, regardless of the forthcoming war. The first warring Germans to step over the border onto French soil did not do so until May 13th, 1940. The Gestapo had kidnapped her 343 days before they attacked France.June 6th, 1944 - four years later, Max is one of 150,000 Allied troops headed towards the Normandy beaches. He has two options - find the woman he could never forget or kill the people responsible for her death. From the very beginning, Berlin had ordered SS Hauptsturmführer Dieter Baumann to deal harshly with their VIP captive but never to kill her. Through three concentration camps, ending in Auschwitz, Zia wishes she had been killed many times over. Traumatized, she has no idea that Max and a few unlikely friends are battling their way through Nazi occupied Europe in a crazy attempt to rescue her. Berlin tries one last ploy to get their hands on her grandmother's painting. Zia's life hangs in the balance when Max meets his own personal nemesis in the guise of an undercover Gestapo officer. This novel explores the dark depths that humans can sink to in times of war. It is for adults only and even then; it is not for readers of a sensitive disposition. Whatever you read in this novel of extraordinary graphic Holocaust content, consider this – it was immeasurably worse, a hundred thousand times so.

    But this is Nazi Germany in 1933, and things like love don’t count for much any more. Netanel Rosenberg never expected Marie Helder to stand by him. He told her not to, it was too dangerous. She should forget about him. Even when he is the last Jew left in the town, hiding away in secret, still she will not abandon him. Her last words to him, when he is finally discovered: “Whatever happens, don’t give up – live for me.” Through the nightmare of the holocaust, Netanel clings to the promise he made her. But neither he or Marie can imagine what fate has in store for each of them – and what they will have to do to keep their promise to each other.

    He waits with the German war machine for the order from Adolf Hitler to start the western Blitzkrieg--the "lightning war."Six hundred kilometers away, WWI veteran René Legrand plows his fields. He is enjoying the life he has made with his wife and two sons in the peaceful village of Sainte-Mère-Église. Since the end of the last war, he has tried to forget the atrocities he'd witnessed. Most of all, he has tried to forget the horrors he inflicted on others as the deadliest assassin the French Army has ever known, unaware he will soon need the skills of war he once used to perfection.His youngest son, Jean-Pierre, lives the life of a typical thirteen-year-old. He attends school, helps his father in the fields, and tries not to be nervous around the mesmerizing Angelique Lapierre. Events will soon force him to become a man, and along with his father, brother, and a small group of citizens, they harass their German occupiers and help the Allies prepare for the D-Day invasion.Guilty of nothing other than being a Jew, Jean-Pierre's best friend, Alfred Shapiro, flees to Spain with his family. They hope to make it through the treacherous Pyrenees Mountains before the Nazis capture them.Working with the French Resistance, Gabrielle Hall uses her beauty and cunning to obtain military intelligence from the Nazi officers who frequent her café.In Fort Benning, Georgia, Captain James Gavin discusses a plan with Major William Lee to begin the U.S. Army's first parachute brigade. Four years later, General "Jumpin' Jim" Gavin will descend through the night sky and into Normandy, France, along with the greatest invasion force the world has ever seen.These and others are the heroes of Sainte-Mère-Église.

    At first it was made up of small, disorganized groups of men and women working in isolation. But by the time of the liberation of France in 1944 around 400,000 French citizens (nearly 2% of the population) were involved. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) set up by Winston Churchill in 1941 saw its role in France as recruiting and organising guerilla fighters; supplying and training them; and disrupting the invaders by any means, including sabotage, the collection of intelligence and the dissemination of black propaganda designed to demoralise the Germans. The aim of this work was the eventual invasion of Europe by the Allied forces and the liberation of France. As described in Sebastian Faulks’ bestselling book Charlotte Gray, women would play a major role in SOE activities over the coming years of the war, and those in charge of SOE in London believed it necessary and vital to deploy operatives who could speak French and were adept at espionage. The basic SOE unit was a team of three: a leader, a wireless operator and a courier. These teams operated in Resistance circuits and the agents were given random codenames. Now, for the first time, we shed light on what life was really like for these brave women who infiltrated France by moonlight to help bring the downfall of the Nazis. From their selection and training; dropping into Occupied France, their attempts to survive on a day-to-day basis whilst being hunted by the dreaded German Gestapo; to the actions and ultimate achievements of these key women. Some survived by luck through the war, whilst others would be captured, tortured and executed before the Nazis final capitulation. Their stories only coming to light thanks to the dogged detective work of the commanding officer who had sent them on their missions and her determination to find out what happened to her girls.

    Caught there by the outbreak of the Second World War, he was unable to return to his parents for seven years. In due course, he was called to serve in an anti-aircraft battery and in the National Labour Service. Just after his eighteenth birthday, he was sent to the Russian Front with the elite Paratrooper and Tank Division, Hermann Göring. He lived through an amazing series of events, escaping death many times and was one of the few survivors of his division when the war ended. In this narrative of his early life, John Stieber describes how he went from a carefree childhood through increasing hardships, until every day of his life became a challenge for survival.