Anna, a traumatised Jewish refugee, meets Sam, a British army officer in wartime Palestine.The novel spans 100 years of Anna's life; born in 1914 in a comfortable secular family in Vienna, her childhood is secure and protected until increasing anti-Semitism changes everything. A naive early affair causes a crisis. Anna escapes to Palestine carrying a secret buried deep within herself - one she cannot acknowledge for many years.When Anna and Sam meet, both are overwhelmed by unexpected love, but can they survive the challenges thrown up by their complex life together? Sam is posted to post-war Berlin and Anna must adjust to living in the land of the enemy. Her struggle results in psychological trauma, affecting her relationships with all those she loves. Will she succeed in overcoming the ghosts and secrets of her past and find some resolution?

    When Hitler came to power in 1933, one Jewish family refused to be destroyed and defied the Nazis only to come up against another struggle-confronting apartheid in South...

    This is without a doubt one of the most fascinating testimonies of that dark period, thanks to the author's ability not only to recount what he endured, but also to reflect on his feelings back then, in the camps. Existential difficulties preceded the deportation of Hungarian Jewry, yet nothing could have been worse than the extermination camps.Moshe was 15 years old when he arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, yet he passed the selection and survived. The Nazis sent the occupants of his barrack to their death, while he managed to slip out of their hands, and survived. He was sent to Buchenwald, worked in hard labor in the quarry, and survived. By joining a new work group, on the spur of the moment, he arrived at a labor camp in Magdeburg Germany, where he also managed to survive. There were 2,800 prisoners with him at Magdeburg, 400 remained when the Nazis dismantled the camp and returned its inhabitants to Buchenwald. Only 200 completed the journey, and when liberation day came only 40 survived, including the 17-year-old author.

    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.

    Initially, Paul lives with his mother–a secular, assimilated schoolteacher, who he adores until she “betrays” him by marrying the gentile André. He is then sent to live with his father–once an admired avant-garde artist, but now reviled by the critics as a “decadent Jew,” who drowns his anger, pain, and humiliation in drink. Paul searches in vain for stability and meaning in a world that is collapsing around him, but his love for the earthy peasant girl who briefly takes care of him, the strange pull he feels towards the Jews praying in the synagogue near his home, and the fascination with which he observes Eastern Orthodox church rituals merely give him tantalizing glimpses into worlds of which he can never be a part.The fates that Paul’s parents will meet with Paul as terrified witness–his mother, deserted by her new husband and dying of typhus; his father, gunned down while trying to stop the robbery of a Jewish-owned shop–and his own fate as an orphaned Jewish child alone in Europe in 1938 are rendered with extraordinary subtlety and power, as they foreshadow, in the heart-wrenching story of three individuals, the cataclysm that is about to engulf all of European Jewry.

    Holocaust biography

     A story of combat and captivity – of courage, deception, and survival – FOR ALL IT WAS WORTH provides piercing insights into the indoctrination of the German people into Nazi ideology, and addresses the issues facing German World War II veterans. The author was born in Dresden in 1924 - the year Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was published. Growing up during the pre-War Nazi years, he joined the Hitler Jugend. Following harsh basic training, he was sent to the Eastern Front where he saw combat near Kursk. Captured by the Russians, he escaped and was transferred to the Italian Campaign. With his acquired knowledge of Italian and local conditions, he volunteered for the special forces Division Brandenburg, where he was trained in sabotage and intelligence gathering, operating behind enemy lines and wreaking havoc with the enemy's command, communication and logistical structures. Arriving on leave in Dresden during the February 1945 firebombing, he recounts the terrible aftermath (including the extrication and burial of his father from the ruins of Dresdner Bank) of one of the most devastating and controversial attacks of the Second World War. Following his return to Italy, and the subsequent capitulation of German forces, he was detained as a PoW in Northern Italy for almost two years. Battle-hardened and disillusioned, he used all his clandestine and organisational skills to initiate successful Black Market operations, while working as an interpreter for the British Army. Imprisoned in Austria as an escapee, he finally returned to a shattered Germany in 1947, where he elected to remain illegally in the US zone of Occupation. What follows is a gripping story of survival, and an insight into the hardships and privations facing the German people, leading to the Wiederaufbau. Much more than a military narrative, the author presents a candid view into the mind and soul of the German people. FOR ALL IT WAS WORTH is an account of Hitler’s Germany and its consequences – and is a remarkable document of value to post-War generations, as well as historians and students of World War II.

    is a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl who, while interred in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, becomes a prostitute. Capturing Perla's voice through a series of diary entries, Arnost Lustig shows how she maintains her integrity, honesty, and hope amidst lies and horror. This first paperback edition has been extensively revised and expanded by the author.

    Living on the edge of survival in the cellar of an abandoned hospital, Otto and his ragtag gang of kids have banded together in the desperate, bombed-out city. The war may be over, but danger lurks in the shadows of the wreckage as Otto and his friends find themselves caught between invading armies, ruthless rival gangs and a strange Nazi war criminal who stalks them ...A climactic story of truth, friendship and survival against the odds, Wolf Children will thrill readers of Michael Morpurgo and John Boyne.

    Régine Miller was one such child, who left her mother, father, and brother when she was 10 years old. Utterly alone as she is shunted from place to place, told to tell no one she is Jewish, she hears that her mother and brother have been taken by the SS, the German secret police. Only her desperate hope that her father will return sustains her. At war’s end she must learn to live with the terrible truth of “the final solution,” the Nazi’s extermination camps.The people who sheltered Régine cover a wide spectrum of human types, ranging from callous to kind, fearful to defiant, exploitive to caring. This is a story of a brave girl and an equally brave woman to tell the story so many years later.From the Hardcover edition.

    Growing up Jewish in a small Polish town near the German border, my mother and one sister were all that survived from among her parents, 4 sisters, 2 brothers, husband and young daughter. Persecuted and hunted by the Germans. Hiding with friendly Poles. Imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto, labor camps and Auschwitz. This is the story of how many of them died and how my mother struggled to survive.

     The year is 1942, and American secret agent Catherine Thornton has no idea whether she will be dropped behind enemy lines in an inflatable raft launched from a submarine or be flung through the moonlit sky from a low-flying British Halifax. Either way, the young embassy wife and erstwhile journalist knows there’s always the chance she’ll be picked off by German sharpshooters, although nothing in her imagination prepares her for the trial-by-fire to come. Only she understands why she volunteered for such “unwomanly warfare” and the secret reasons she joined a handful of female American spies destined to risk her gilded life on French soil--yet former Vichy diplomat Henri Leblanc, code name Claude Foret, thinks he knows the answers. As Catherine’s missions grow more harrowing each day, and she fears she’s fallen in love with a captured fellow agent, the German SS begin to close in on the world of Madame “Colette Durand” and her Résistance network embedded in coastal cities along the French Riviera—an exposure that could threaten the Allied victory itself. And hanging in the air like a half-opened parachute is the life-or-death question: Who is the betrayer and who will be betrayed in this, their finest hour? New York Times & USA Today bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning former broadcast journalist Ciji Ware once again displays her extraordinary talent for weaving historical fact into compelling fiction to produce novels so engaging that one reviewer warned of her work: “…do not start unless you want to be up all night.” “Thoroughly engaging” - BOOKLIST

    Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence and interviews with survivors, this book reconstructs the daily lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin during the war years. Contrary to the received wisdom that “hidden” Jews stayed in attics and cellars and had minimal contact with the outside world, the author reveals a cohort of remarkable individuals who were constantly on the move and actively fought to ensure their own survival.

     From the middle of December 1944 to January 25, 1945, more than a million Allied and German troops fought for control of Belgium, France, and Luxembourg. The bitter conflict ended with more than 200,000 dead and wounded on both sides. The German counteroffensive was Adolf Hitler's last gasp, born out of desperation as he came to grips with reports that the Third Reich was losing ground in battlefields across Europe. Even in its weakened state, Germany's assault took Allied leaders by surprise. Hitler had correctly calculated that the Allied armies had moved too rapidly: The troops were not only undersupplied but unprepared for a surprise attack. Hitler was betting that a victory would allow Germany to negotiate for peace on its terms. He was almost right. If not for the bravery of American troops, who against all odds held up the German attack – and quick decisions made by General Dwight B. Eisenhower - history may have taken a much different turn. This is the story of World War II's final showdown.

    People are fleeing East Berlin while they can. The East German authorities are ratcheting up the pressure on the "Bordercrossers". Klaus Schultz is handed documents outlining Ulbricht's plans to build a wall, but are they genuine? Impetuous journalist Jack Kaymer discovers an East Berlin warehouse brimming with concrete posts and barbed wire. The headstrong Eva Schultz continues to live in the eastern sector whilst working in the west. The Stasi coerce Jack to stop him publishing his story and take his girlfriend, Eva as the bargaining chip. In spite of their original enmity, Jack and Klaus work together to have Eva released before the border is closed, but Klaus' past comes back to haunt them. Can Jack and Klaus outwit the Stasi? Will they get Eva out alive? Meanwhile, Colonel Hans Erdmann of the People's Army is losing faith in the regime. His bosses want to put him out to grass. When they find Hans harder to dislodge than they anticipated, they resort to dirty tactics. Hans sees the end coming and decides it's time to get out. Their destinies are all firmly in the hands of the wily, KGB spymaster, Burzin and his arch rival General Dobrovsky. Set against the backdrop of the Berlin Crisis, "Caught in the Mousetrap" is a fast-paced thriller for the lovers of Cold War Berlin and those who enjoy a story in the Len Deighton mould, with a touch of Bernie Gunther thrown in. The story of the Schultz family has begun...2x Longlisted Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year. Winner CWA History Dagger.