Book picks similar to
Prague Winter by Nikolaus Martin
history
memoir
survival
non-fiction
Architecture of Survival: Holocaust Diaries (WW2 Memoirs Book 1)
Israel Stein - 2017
Paula, a polyglot architect, and Meir, a textile industrialist, fled with their only child, Israel, to Vilnius, Lithuania, and later to Bialystok, attempting to save themselves from certain death in the extermination camps.
In the midst of terror, there they found grace
In August 1943, the Bialystok Ghetto was emptied by the Nazis and all its occupants were sent to extermination. The Steins had managed to remain hidden in the Ghetto for five more weeks, before escaping to their new hideout—the home of a Polish family, backed by a German official, that gave them refuge. They remained hidden there for nearly a year, until the war ended, with the daily danger of being discovered and sent to death. They lived to see Bialystok liberated by the Russian Red Army, and eventually settled in the new state of Israel.
The events of the Holocaust as they were seen through the eyes of a real middle-class Polish Jewish family
Architecture of Survival brings forward the diaries Paula and Meir Stein wrote while in hideout during the Second World War, accompanied by the vivid visual memories of their son, Israel Stein, who witnessed the horrors as a child. It is a rare historical documentation, read in bated breath. Get your copy of Architecture of Survival now!
Hiding in Plain Sight: My Holocaust Story of Survival
Beatrice Sonders - 2018
But when the Germans and Ukrainians obliterated David-Horodok in 1941, killing off all Jewish men in the town, everything changed.Left to fend for themselves, Basia and her mother fled 100 kilometers south, driven into the infamous Sarny ghetto. Tragedy struck again as the Germans liquidated the ghetto in 1942, and Basia went into the first of many hiding places. After years of running from soldiers, changing her identity, and hiding her faith, Basia emerged as a survivor – shepherding the rebirth of her faith and her family in America.
Here There Is No Why
Rachel Roth - 2002
Joseph Mengele’s answer to Roma, the author, and to millions of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Written to fulfill a promise made in the darkest moment of human history, this simple and eloquent story is unique in that it spans the geography of the Nazi’s Final Solution. Rachel (Roma in Polish), the teenage daughter of a journalist, relays to us the experiences of a schoolgirl and her classmates under the German occupied Warsaw Ghetto. She is a witness and participant in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. After the Nazis smoke her out of hiding, she bravely faces the reality of the gas chambers and concentration camps in Poland and Germany. Originally written in Polish, this is an eloquent and unforgettable account of survival.
I Only Wanted to Live: The Struggle of a Boy to Survive the Holocaust
Arie Tamir - 2015
The epic history is narrowed down to the struggle of a single boy nicknamed Leosz to survive the war. From age 7 to age 13, he endures all the horrors that the Holocaust brings upon the Jewish people. Life hangs on split-second timing, decision-making in impossibly cruel circumstances, incredible resourcefulness, luck and the help of others, even Germans.In the Krakow Ghetto, Leosz is saved from three mass deportations to the death camps. He escapes the ghetto, survives for several weeks pretending to be a Polish street child, and then goes into hiding. Although sentenced to die after being caught, he is instead miraculously reunited with his family in the Plaszow labor camp. A year later, father and son become slave laborers in the Gozen 2 camp in Austria, where his father perishes. Close to death himself, Leosz is finally liberated by the American army on May 5th, 1945.
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The Long Road to Auschwitz
Anthony Vincent Bruno - 2019
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.
When the War is Over
Anja May - 2018
The true account of a teenage soldier in World War 2 Germany. Germany, 1945. Ever since Anton Kohler first heard the vibrant sound of the violin, he’s dreamed of mastering the instrument. But when his father dies, the fifteen-year-old must give up his passion to support his seven younger siblings. As the Russian army marches closer to his hometown, Anton and his best friend Gerhard are pulled from their families and forced to help defend their home in a last desperate stand. When Anton witnesses the slaughter of concentration camp prisoners, he vows to escape the war and find a way home to his family and his girl, Luise. In the chaos of impending defeat, Anton is torn between his promise to protect the life of his best friend and his desire to survive the war with his conscience intact. Based on a true account, this coming-of-age story set in the last turbulent months of World War 2, Germany, is a tale of love and friendship, of hope and loss. Read When the War is Over now to experience the poignant journey of a teenage soldier.
A Girl Called Renee: The Incredible Story of a Holocaust Survivor
Ruth Uzrad - 2017
This is the unbelievable autobiographical story of Ruth Uzrad, a Jewish teenager whose life was turned upside down by the Nazi regime. After her father was arrested one night from their Berlin apartment by the Gestapo, Ruth’s mother sends 13 year-old Ruth and her two younger sisters out on their escape route across Europe by train to the safety of Belgium.
But then the Nazis also reach Belgium, driving Ruth into the French Jewish underground…
Later, when the Nazis conquer Belgium, Ruth and one of her sisters escape to France, leaving the youngest sister behind to be taken in by a Belgian foster family. Later, Ruth joins the Jewish underground movement in France and takes on a false identity and a new name, Renee. As an underground fighter, she participates in special operations aimed at rescuing Jews in danger. When the German police set out to arrest her, she manages to cross the border into Spain and eventually makes her way to Israel, where she makes her home and spends the rest of her life.
Invisible Jews: Surviving the Holocaust in Poland
Eddie Bielawski - 2017
Not a propitious time and place for a Jewish child to be born.One memory that has been etched indelibly in my mind is the sight of the Nazi army marching toward Russia. Our house was located on the main road leading to the Russian frontier. Day and night they marched - soldiers, trucks, tanks, and more soldiers, in a never ending line - an invincible force. I remember my father, holding me in his arms, saying to my mother, "Who is going to stop them? Certainly not the Russians." One night, my father had a dream. In this dream he saw what he had to do: where to build the bunker, how to build it, and even its dimensions.He would build a bunker under a wooden storage shed behind the house. It would be covered with boards, on top of which would be placed soil and bits of straw which would render it invisible. In order to camouflage the entrance, he would construct a shallow box and fill it with earth and cover it with straw so that it would be indistinguishable from the rest of the earthen floor. Air would be supplied through a drain pipe buried in the earth. This was to be our Noah's Ark that would save us from the initial deluge. It took my father about three weeks to finish the job. When he was done, he took my mother and sister into the shed and asked them if they could find the trap door. When they could not, he was satisfied.My mother prepared dry biscuits, jars of jam made out of beets, some tinned goods such as sardines, some sugar and salt. We placed two buckets in the bunker. One bucket was filled with water, the other bucket was empty and would serve as the latrine. We also took down some blankets, a couple of pillows and some warm clothing. We were ready.For three long years, starting in 1941 when the Nazis started the deportations and mass killings, we hid in secret bunkers, dug in fields, under sheds, or constructed in barn lofts. It seems that the only way that a Jew could survive in wartime Poland was to become invisible. So we became invisible Jews.
Submerged on the Surface: The Not-So-Hidden Jews of Nazi Berlin, 1941–1945
Richard N. Lutjens Jr. - 2019
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.
Courage and Grace
Yoseph Komem - 2019
Perpetual mortal danger. Only a combination of resourcefulness and pure luck can save them.
Joseph and Yitzhak are two young brothers hiding under fake Christian identities in the Aryan section of a city in Poland during the Holocaust.The two brothers, like their parents, know their lives are in constant danger and that any mistake may expose their true identities, sending them to a painful death.The small family does everything in its power to save itself and is lucky to receive assistance from their courageous gentile friends, but their seemingly free lives outside the ghetto becoming increasingly difficult and complex with every passing day…Before their eyes lies one thing only—the extraordinary struggle to stay alive against all odds.Courage and Grace is the chilling and inspiring documentation of a story that will leave you riveted to your seat, flood you with heartbreaking emotions and, at the same time, with enormous hope for a better future.
The Hitler I Knew: Memoirs of the Third Reich's Press Chief
Otto Dietrich - 2010
Only at the end, when I watched the inglorious collapse and the obstinacy of his final downfall, was I able suddenly to fit together the bits of mosaic I had been amassing for twelve years into a complete picture of his opaque and sphinx like personality. If my contemporaries fail to understand me, those who came after will surely profit from this account.”—Otto Dietrich When Otto Dietrich was invited in 1933 to become Adolf Hitler’s press chief, he accepted with the simple uncritical conviction that Adolf Hitler was a great man, dedicated to promoting peace and welfare for the German people. At the end of the war, imprisoned and disillusioned, Otto Dietrich sat down to write what he had seen and heard in twelve years of the closest association with Hitler, requesting that it be published after his death. Dietrich’s role placed him in a privileged position. He was hired by Hitler in 1933, was his confidant until 1945, and he worked—and clashed—with Joseph Goebbels. His direct, personal experience of life at the heat of the Reich makes for compelling reading.
Resistance Girl: A True Survival Story of a Brave Jewish Girl During WW2
Hassia Knaani - 2021
Jewish historical fiction
Three Voices
Nora Sarel - 2018
Now an elderly woman with nothing but her memories to guide her – she embarks on a journey to unravel the truth of her past, once and for all.You have never read a story quite like this. Based on real events, Three Voices illustrates the trauma and relief of a woman escaping the atrocities of the Holocaust, traveling the world and eventually reclaiming her childhood. This incredible tale, pieced together from three unique perspectives, weaves past, present and future into a heart-wrenching experience that will change you.
Watch Lena take her life back
Lena remembers everything from her childhood. She doesn’t know that her whole life is about to be turned upside down as she comes face-to-face with another Lena. A once-in-a-lifetime meeting between the two Lena’s and the town's priest, sends shockwaves that reverberate through the truth that was known to her.
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Love in a World of Sorrow: A Teenage Girl's Holocaust Memoirs
Fanya Gottesfeld Heller - 1993
From the unrelenting fear of death and gnawing pain of hunger, to the budding relationships of an adolescent girl growing into womanhood during the worst of all times, the author withholds nothing. Fanya Gottesfeld Heller's subtle depiction of her parents knowledge that it was a non-Jew's love for their daughter that had moved him to hide them, and their embarrassment and ultimate acceptance of the situation, lead us to wonder how we would have acted under the same circumstances as father, mother, or daughter. Love in a World of Sorrow features Fanya's gripping tale of survival and an updated foreword and epilogue by the author, reflecting more than a decade of experience bearing witness to the Holocaust before hundreds of audiences around the world. On the reading list at Princeton University, the University of Connecticut, and Ben Gurion Univesity of the Negev, among others. Fanya Gottesfeld Heller's book is an indispensable educational tool for teaching future generations about the human potential for both good and evil.
The 12th Man: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance
Astrid Karlsen Scott - 2017
Then when we went to Norway to do a docudrama, people told us again and again that certain parts were pure fiction. Since I was a Norwegian that was not good enough; I had to find the truth. I sincerely believe we did,” writes author Astrid Karlsen Scott.The 12th Man is the true story of Jan Baalsrud, whose struggle to escape the Gestapo and survive in Nazi-occupied Norway has inspired the international film of the same name. In late March 1943, in the midst of WWII, four Norwegian saboteurs arrived in northern Norway on a fishing cutter and set anchor in Toftefjord to establish a base for their operations. However, they were betrayed, and a German boat attacked the cutter, creating a battlefield and spiraling Jan Baalsrud into the adventure of his life. The only survivor and wounded, Baalsrud begins a perilous journey to freedom, swimming icy fjords, climbing snow-covered peaks, enduring snowstorms, and getting caught in a monstrous avalanche. Suffering from snowblindness and frostbite, more than sixty people of the Troms District risk their lives to help Baalsrud to freedom. Meticulously researched for more than five years, Karlsen Scott and Haug bring forth the truth behind this captivating, edge-of-your-seat, real-life survival story.