Children in the Holocaust and World War II

Children in the Holocaust and World War II
Author: Laurel Holliday
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2014-02-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1439121974

Children in the Holocaust and World War II is an extraordinary, unprecedented anthology of diaries written by children all across Nazi-occupied Europe and in England. Twenty-three young people, ages ten through eighteen, recount in vivid detail the horrors they lived through. As powerful as The Diary of Anne Frank and Zlata's Diary, children's experiences are written with an unguarded eloquence that belies their years. Some of the diarists include: a Hungarian girl, selected by Mengele to be put in a line of prisoners who were tortured and murdered; a Danish Christian boy executed by the Nazis for his partisan work; and a twelve-year-old Dutch boy who lived through the Blitzkrieg in Rotterdam. And many others. These heartbreaking stories paint a harrowing picture of a genocide that will never be forgotten, and a war that shaped many generations to follow. All of their voices and visions ennoble us all.

Justice Matters

Justice Matters
Author: Mona Sue Weissmark
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195157574

Explores how the psychology of hatred and ethnic resentments is passed on from generation to generation, focusing on how children of both Holocaust victims and Nazis were impacted by the experiences of their ancestors.

X Troop

X Troop
Author: Leah Garrett
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0358177421

WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE MONTH "This is the incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now." —Wall Street Journal “Brilliantly researched, utterly gripping history: the first full account of a remarkable group of Jewish refugees—a top-secret band of brothers—who waged war on Hitler.”—Alex Kershaw, New York Times best-selling author of The Longest Winter and The Liberator The incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now June 1942. The shadow of the Third Reich has fallen across the European continent. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees who have escaped to Britain. The resulting volunteers are a motley group of intellectuals, artists, and athletes, most from Germany and Austria. Many have been interned as enemy aliens, and have lost their families, their homes—their whole worlds. They will stop at nothing to defeat the Nazis. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop. Some simply call them a suicide squad. Drawing on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members, Leah Garrett follows this unique band of brothers from Germany to England and back again, with stops at British internment camps, the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and the hellscape of Terezin concentration camp—the scene of one of the most dramatic, untold rescues of the war. For the first time, X Troop tells the astonishing story of these secret shock troops and their devastating blows against the Nazis. “Garrett’s detective work is stunning, and her storytelling is masterful. This is an original account of Jewish rescue, resistance, and revenge.”—Wendy Lower, author of The Ravine and National Book Award finalist Hitler’s Furies

Eavesdropping on Hell

Eavesdropping on Hell
Author: Robert J. Hanyok
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0486481271

This official government publication investigates the impact of the Holocaust on the Western powers' intelligence-gathering community. It explains the archival organization of wartime records accumulated by the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service and Britain's Government Code and Cypher School. It also summarizes Holocaust-related information intercepted during the war years.

Nazis after Hitler

Nazis after Hitler
Author: Donald M McKale
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2023-06-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442213183

The stories of thirty war criminals who escaped accountability, from a historian praised for his “well written, scrupulously researched” work (The New York Times). This deeply researched book traces the biographies of thirty “typical” perpetrators of the Holocaust—some well-known, some obscure—who survived World War II. Donald M. McKale reveals the shocking reality that the perpetrators were rarely, if ever, tried or punished for their crimes, and nearly all alleged their innocence in Germany’s extermination of nearly six million European Jews. He highlights the bitter contrasts between the comfortable postwar lives of many war criminals and the enduring suffering of their victims, and how, in the face of exhaustive evidence showing their culpability, nearly all claimed ignorance of what was going on—and insisted they had done nothing wrong. “McKale ends the book with a haunting question: whether life would be different today if the Allies had pursued Holocaust criminals more aggressively after WWII. History buffs and students of the Holocaust will be fascinated.” ―Publishers Weekly “Gripping and important reading.” —Eric A. Johnson, author of What We Knew

The Pianist

The Pianist
Author: Wladyslaw Szpilman
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2000-09-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1466837624

The “striking” holocaust memoir that that inspired the Oscar-winning film “conveys with exceptional immediacy . . . the author’s desperate fight for survival” (Kirkus Reviews). On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside—so loudly that he couldn’t hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air. Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, The Pianist is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling. “Szpilman’s memoir of life in the Warsaw ghetto is remarkable not only for the heroism of its protagonists but for the author’s lack of bitterness, even optimism, in recounting the events.” —Library Journal “Employing language that has more in common with the understatement of Primo Levi than with the moral urgency of Elie Wiesel, Szpilman is a remarkably lucid observer and chronicler of how, while his family perished, he survived thanks to a combination of resourcefulness and chance.” —Publishers Weekly “[Szpilman’s] account is hair-raising beyond anything Hollywood could invent . . . an altogether unforgettable book.” —The Daily Telegraph “[Szpilman’s] shock and ensuing numbness become ours, so that acts of ordinary kindness or humanity take on an aura of miracle.” —The Observer

Shelter from the Holocaust

Shelter from the Holocaust
Author: Mark Edele
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2017-12-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 081434268X

This pioneering volume will interest scholars of eastern European history and Holocaust studies, as well as those with an interest in refugee and migration issues.

Finding Edith

Finding Edith
Author: Edith Mayer Cord
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2019-05-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1612495974

Finding Edith: Surviving the Holocaust in Plain Sight is the coming-of-age story of a young Jewish girl chased in Europe during World War II. Like a great adventure story, the book describes the childhood and adolescence of a Viennese girl growing up against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the religious persecution of Jews throughout Europe. Edith was hunted in Western Europe and Vichy France, where she was hidden in plain sight, constantly afraid of discovery and denunciation. Forced to keep every thought to herself, Edith developed an intense inner life. After spending years running and eventually hiding alone, she was smuggled into Switzerland. Deprived of schooling, Edith worked at various jobs until the end of the war when she was able to rejoin her mother, who had managed to survive in France. After the war, the truth about the death camps and the mass murder on an industrial scale became fully known. Edith faced the trauma of Germany’s depravity, the murder of her father and older brother in Auschwitz, her mother’s irrational behavior, and the extreme poverty of the postwar years. She had to make a living but also desperately wanted to catch up on her education. What followed were seven years of struggle, intense study, and hard work until finally, against considerable odds, Edith earned the Baccalauréat in 1949 and the Licence ès Lettres from the University of Toulouse in 1952 before coming to the United States. In America, Edith started at the bottom like all immigrants and eventually became a professor and later a financial advisor and broker. Since her retirement, Edith dedicates her time to publicly speaking about her experiences and the lessons from her life.

Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust

Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust
Author: Sara J. Brenneis
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 730
Release: 2020-04-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1487532512

Spain has for too long been considered peripheral to the human catastrophes of World War II and the Holocaust. This volume is the first broadly interdisciplinary, scholarly collection to situate Spain in a position of influence in the history and culture of the Second World War. Featuring essays by international experts in the fields of history, literary studies, cultural studies, political science, sociology, and film studies, this book clarifies historical issues within Spain while also demonstrating the impact of Spain's involvement in the Second World War on historical memory of the Holocaust. Many of the contributors have done extensive archival research, bringing new information and perspectives to the table, and in many cases the essays published here analyze primary and secondary material previously unavailable in English. Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust reaches beyond discipline, genre, nation, and time period to offer previously unknown evidence of Spain’s continued relevance to the Holocaust and the Second World War.