Book picks similar to
We Wept Without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz by Gideon Greif
holocaust
history
non-fiction
nonfiction
Run, Boy, Run
Uri Orlev - 2001
Srulik is only eight years old when he finds himself all alone in the Warsaw ghetto. He escapes into the countryside where he spends the ensuing years hiding in the forest, dependent on the sympathies and generosity of the poor farmers in the surrounding area. Despite the seemingly insurmountable odds, several chases, captures, attempted executions, and even the loss of his arm, Srulik miraculously survives.
Nowhere in Africa: An Autobiographical Novel
Stefanie Zweig - 1995
Abandoning their once-comfortable existence in Germany, Walter Redlich, his wife Jettel, and their five-year-old daughter, Regina, each deal with the harsh realities of their new life in different ways. Attorney Walter is resigned to working the farm as a caretaker; pampered Jettel resists adjustment at every turn; while the shy yet curious Regina immediately embraces the country—learning the local language and customs, and finding a friend in Owuor, the farm's cook. As the war rages on the other side of the world, the family’s relationships with their strange environment become increasingly complicated as Jettel grows more self-assured and Walter more haunted by the life they left behind. In 1946, with the war over, Regina's fondest dream comes true when her brother Max is born. Walter's decision, however, to return to his homeland to help rebuild a new Germany puts his family into turmoil again.Visit the Web site for the film at www.nowhereinafrica.com
The Children of Willesden Lane. Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival
Mona Golabek - 2002
Jewish musical prodigy Lisa Jura has a wonderful life in Vienna. But when the Nazis start closing in on the city, life changes irreversibly. Although he has three daughters, Lisa's father is only able to secure one berth on the Kindertransport. The family decides to send Lisa to London so that she may pursue her dreams of a career as a concert pianist. Separated from her beloved family, Lisa bravely endures the trip and a disastrous posting outside London before finding her way to the Willesden Lane Orphanage. It is in this orphanage that Lisa's story truly comes to life. Her music inspires the other orphanage children, and they, in turn, cheer her on in her efforts to make good on her promise to her family to realize her musical potential. Through hard work and sheer pluck, Lisa wins a scholarship to study piano at the Royal Academy. As she supports herself and studies, she makes a new life for herself and dreams of reconnecting with the family she was forced to leave behind. The resulting tale delivers a message of the power of music to uplift the human spirit and to grant the individual soul endurance, patience, and peace.
I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years
Victor Klemperer - 1995
I Will Bear Witness is a work of literature as well as a revelation of the day-by-day horror of the Nazi years. A Dresden Jew, a veteran of World War I, a man of letters and historian of great sophistication, Klemperer recognized the danger of Hitler as early as 1933. His diaries, written in secrecy, provide a vivid account of everyday life in Hitler's Germany. What makes this book so remarkable, aside from its literary distinction, is Klemperer's preoccupation with the thoughts and actions of ordinary Germans: Berger the greengrocer, who was given Klemperer's house ("anti-Hitlerist, but of course pleased at the good exchange"), the fishmonger, the baker, the much-visited dentist. All offer their thoughts and theories on the progress of the war: Will England hold out? Who listens to Goebbels? How much longer will it last? This symphony of voices is ordered by the brilliant, grumbling Klemperer, struggling to complete his work on eighteenth-century France while documenting the ever- tightening Nazi grip. He loses first his professorship and then his car, his phone, his house, even his typewriter, and is forced to move into a Jews' House (the last step before the camps), put his cat to death (Jews may not own pets), and suffer countless other indignities. Despite the danger his diaries would pose if discovered, Klemperer sees it as his duty to record events. "I continue to write," he notes in 1941 after a terrifying run-in with the police. "This is my heroics. I want to bear witness, precise witness, until the very end." When a neighbor remarks that, in his isolation, Klemperer will not be able to cover the main events of the war, he writes: "It's not the big things that are important, but the everyday life of tyranny, which may be forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow on the head. I observe, I note, the mosquito bites."
Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler: A True Love Story Rediscovered
Trudi Kanter - 1984
Spearman. Largely unread, it went out of print until it was re-discovered by a British editor in 2011 and now, for the first time, it is available to readers everywhere. In 1938, Trudi Miller, stunningly beautiful, chic, and charismatic, was a hat designer for the best-dressed women in Vienna. She frequented cafes. She had suitors. She flew to Paris to see the latest fashions. And she fell deeply in love with Walter Ehrlich, a charming and romantic businessman. But as Hitler’s tanks roll into Austria, the world this young Jewish couple knows and loves collapses leaving them desperate to find a way to survive. Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler is an enchanting true story that moves from Vienna to Prague to blitzed London, as Trudi seeks safety for her and Walter amid the horror engulfing Europe. In prose that cuts straight to the bone, Trudi Kanter has shared her indelible story. Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler is destined to become a World War II classic.
A Delayed Life: The True Story of the Librarian of Auschwitz
Dita Kraus - 2020
Here, Dita writes with startling clarity on the horrors and joys of a life delayed by the Holocaust. From her earliest memories and childhood friendships in Prague before the war, to the Nazi-occupation that saw her and her family sent to the Jewish ghetto at Terezín, to the unimaginable fear and bravery of her imprisonment in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and life after liberation.Dita writes unflinchingly about the harsh conditions of the camps and her role as librarian of the precious books that her fellow prisoners managed to smuggle past the guards. But she also looks beyond the Holocaust – to the life she rebuilt after the war: her marriage to fellow survivor Otto B Kraus, a new life in Israel and the happiness and heartbreaks of motherhood.Part of Dita's story was told in fictional form in the Sunday Times bestseller The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe. Her memoir tells the full story in her own words.
I Carried Them with Me: A Young Girl's Journey to Survive
Sara Lumer - 2016
When she was 16 years old her parents sent her to Budapest, Hungary, where her two older brothers were already living. They felt she would be safer there. But in March of 1944 Germany invaded Hungary and began to round up all the Jews. Sara was sent to two different labor camps and endured two long death marches. She is a Holocaust Survivor.
The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World
Kati Marton - 2006
'The Great Escape' is the story of the breathtaking journey of nine extraordinary men from war-torn Budapest to freedom, what they experienced along their dangerous route, and how they changed the world.
Triumph of Hope: From Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to Israel
Ruth Elias - 1988
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.
Boy 30529: A Memoir
Felix Weinberg - 2013
The typical camp story of the millions ended in death ... We, the few who survived the war and the majority who perished in the camps, did not use and would not have understood terms such as 'holocaust' or 'death march.' These were coined later, by outsiders.In 1939 twelve-year-old Felix Weinberg fell into the hands of the Nazis. Imprisoned for most of his teenage life, Felix survived five concentration camps, including Terezin, Auschwitz, and Birkenau, barely surviving the Death March from Blechhammer in 1945. After losing his mother and brother in the camps, he was liberated at Buchenwald and eventually reunited at seventeen with his father in Britain, where they built a new life together. Boy 30529 is an extraordinary memoir of the Holocaust, as well as a moving meditation on the nature of memory.
An Unlikely Warrior: A Jewish Soldier in Hitler's Army
Georg Rauch - 2006
His family was among the few who worked underground to resist Nazi rule. Then came the day he was drafted into Hitler's army and shipped out to fight on the Eastern front as part of the German infantry―in spite of his having confessed his own Jewish ancestry. Thus begins the incredible journey of a nineteen year old thrust unwillingly into an unjust war, who must use his smarts, skills, and bare-knuckled determination to stay alive in the trenches, avoid starvation and exposure during the brutal Russian winter, survive more than one Soviet labor camp, and somehow find his way back home. Unlikely Warrior is Rauch's true account of this extraordinary adventure.
But You Did Not Come Back
Marceline Loridan-Ivens - 2015
It is the profoundly moving and poetic memoir by Marceline Loridan-Ivens, who at the age of fifteen was arrested in occupied France, along with her father. Later, in the camps, he managed to smuggle a note to her, a sign of life that made all the difference to Marceline—but he died in the Holocaust, while Marceline survived. In But You Did Not Come Back, Marceline writes back to her father, the man whose death overshadowed her whole life. Although her grief never diminished in its intensity, Marceline ultimately found her calling, working as both an activist and a documentary filmmaker. But now, as France and Europe in general faces growing anti-Semitism, Marceline feels pessimistic about the future. Her testimony is a memorial, a confrontation, and a deeply affecting personal story of a woman whose life was shattered and never totally rebuilt.
Priestblock 25487: a Memoir of Dachau
Jean Bernard - 1962
Casts light into dark and previously neglected corners of the horror that was the Third Reich.'' —Richard John Neuhaus, Editor in Chief First Things ''Father Jean Bernard's portrait of survival in a German concentration camp is simple, forceful and vivid and therefore impossible to put down or forget. It ranks with the great 20th Century personal testimonies against totalitarian violence... Priestblock 25487 is a diary of Catholic discipleship under extreme conditions that will deeply move all persons of conscience.'' —Charles J. Chaput, Archbishop of Denver ''Gripping! This crisp story of the 3,000-plus Christian clergy at Dachau in 1941 forces me to turn pages quickly, in horror... In its understated power, this brief book is unforgettable.'' —Michael Novak, author of Washington's God (with Jana Novak) ''Many hundreds of books have been written and published about German concentration and extermination camps during World War II, including at least two or three dozens written or dictated by their actual survivors. Of these, Father Jean Bernard's Priestblock 25487 is among the very best, because of the exceptional intelligence and honesty of its author. Dachau, where he was imprisoned, was not the worst of all those camps, and Father Bernard was, surprisingly, released after two years of imprisonment: but perhaps because of these very circumstances his diary is extraordinarily telling, convincing, and graphic. Every scholar and student of that dreadful chapter of twentieth-century history ought to read—and ponder—its contents.'' —John Lukacs, author of The Hitler of History; and Five Days in London: May 1940 ''Father Bernard has left readers with a gripping testimony of the brutal treatment the Catholic clergy received at the hands of the Nazis in Dachau. Despite t
First One In, Last One Out: Auschwitz Survivor 31321
Marilyn Shimon - 2016
She saw his scars, gaped at his “31321” tattoo, and listened to his horrific stories of the Holocaust. However, she could not relate to the suffering he endured or understand the significance of his accounts—until now. In this grisly memoir, Marilyn resurrects Murray Scheinberg’s stories of six hellish years in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The Polish Jew was one of the first eight men to enter Auschwitz, as a political prisoner in 1940, and one of the last to escape Dachau. Rejected by a publisher in the 1960s because of its incredible details, this true story, finally available to the public, will shock, horrify, and touch readers. Abraham H. Foxman, national director emeritus at the Anti-Defamation League, says of the book: "First One In, Last One Out:Auschwitz Survivor 31321 is a harrowing tale of endurance, luck, egotism, and morality, one man's story of survival in the face of Nazi brutality and anti-Semitism. Murray Scheinberg’s memoir of survival through the Nazi Holocaust symbolizes man’s determination to live no matter the odds. But it also represents the degradation of the human spirit imposed on the Jews of Europe by the evil Nazi machine. It is both an uplifting tale and a sorry one about human nature in the face of evil.” “A magnificent telling of a moving and heartfelt story.” ––Ira Hochman, Friendly Visitors Program/Holocaust Survivors “I am moved to tears beyond what I can express. This is an exceptionally incredible story and the author's writing is extremely moving.The story is a testament of life and will teach future generations that good triumphs over evil.” ––Ruth Baran Gerold, child of Holocaust survivors "The author brilliantly wrote about her uncle's life throughout the Nazi regime. She successfully engages the reader in the emotions and drama of this horrific period.This is a must-read-page turner." ––Larry Klass, Retired Veteran-US Army "It is a powerful and compelling story that should be promoted in schools and read by all." ––Faye Kilstein, child of Auschwitz survivor
The Last of the Just
André Schwarz-Bart - 1959
As legend has it, God blessed the only survivor of this medieval pogrom, Rabbi Yom Tov Levy, as one of the Lamed-Vov, the thirty-six Just Men of Jewish tradition, a blessing which extended to one Levy of each succeeding generation. This terrifying and remarkable legacy is traced over eight centuries, from the Spanish Inquisition, to expulsions from England, France, Portugal, Germany, and Russia, and to the small Polish village of Zemyock, where the Levys settle for two centuries in relative peace. It is in the twentieth century that Ernie Levy emerges, The Last of the Just, in 1920s Germany, as Hitler’s sinister star is on the rise and the agonies of Auschwitz loom on the horizon. This classic work, long unavailable in a trade edition, is one of those few novels that, once read, is never forgotten.