Troubled Memory

Troubled Memory
Author: Lawrence N. Powell
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 614
Release: 2003-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807860484

This powerful work tells the story of Anne Skorecki Levy, the Holocaust survivor who transformed the horrors of her childhood into a passionate mission to defeat the political menace of reputed neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. The first book to connect the prewar and wartime experiences of Jewish survivors to the lives they subsequently made for themselves in the United States, Troubled Memoryis also a dramatic testament to how the experiences of survivors as new Americans spurred their willingness to bear witness. Perhaps the only family to survive the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto as a group, the Skoreckis evaded deportation to Treblinka, by posing as Aryans and ultimately made their way to New Orleans, where they became part of a vibrant Jewish community. Lawrence Powell traces the family's dramatic odyssey and explores the events that eventually triggered Anne Skorecki Levy's brave decision to honor the suffering of the past by confronting the recurring specter of racist hatred. Breaking decades of silence, she played a direct role in the unmasking and defeat of Duke during his 1991 campaign for the governorship of Louisiana.

Hope Is the Last to Die

Hope Is the Last to Die
Author: Halina Birenbaum
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1996-06-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780765633736

This book is an important work in Holocaust literature and was originally published in Poland in 1967. Covering the years 1939-1945, it is the author's account of her experience growing up in the Warsaw ghetto and her eventual deportation to, imprisonment in, and survival of the Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and Neustadt-Glewe camps. Since the old, the weak, and children were summarily executed by the Nazis in these camps, Mrs Birenbaum's survival and coming of age is all the more remarkable. Her story is told with simplicity and clarity and the new edition contains revisions made by the author to the original English translation, and is expanded with a new epilogue and postscripts that bring the story up to date and complete the circle of Mrs Birenbaum's experiences.

The Holocaust

The Holocaust
Author: Martin Gilbert
Publisher: Rosetta Books
Total Pages: 848
Release: 2014-06-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0795337191

The renowned historian weaves a definitive account of the Holocaust—from Hitler’s rise to power to the final defeat of the Nazis in 1945. Rich with eyewitness accounts, incisive interviews, and first-hand source materials—including documentation from the Eichmann and Nuremberg war crime trials—this sweeping narrative begins with an in-depth historical analysis of the origins of anti-Semitism in Europe, and tracks the systematic brutality of Hitler’s “Final Solution” in unflinching detail. It brings to light new source materials documenting Mengele’s diabolical concentration camp experiments and documents the activities of Himmler, Eichmann, and other Nazi leaders. It also demonstrates comprehensive evidence of Jewish resistance and the heroic efforts of Gentiles to aid and shelter Jews and others targeted for extermination, even at the risk of their own lives. Combining survivor testimonies, deft historical analysis, and painstaking research, The Holocaust is without doubt a masterwork of World War II history. “A fascinating work that overwhelms us with its truth . . . This book must be read and reread.” —Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prizing–winning author of Night

Survival

Survival
Author: Ita Dimant
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2024-02-20
Genre: History
ISBN:

"This standout survivor’s account will move and inform even those well versed in the inhumanity of the Shoah." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) Ita Dimant’s gripping diary is a detailed account of her experiences during the Holocaust. She describes the chaotic living conditions in the Warsaw ghetto and her dramatic escape to the ‘Aryan’ side. She wrestles repeatedly with the burden of losing close friends and family, revealing her emotional responses to the unfolding tragedy. As one ghetto after another is liquidated, she becomes a courier carrying vital information and supplies between Polish cities. Ita must rely on her wits, skillful deception, and a few trusted friends, as she seeks to evade the noose closing around her.

Polish-Jewish Relations 1939-1945

Polish-Jewish Relations 1939-1945
Author: Ewa Kurek
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2012-08-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1475938322

The following book was translated and published in English: Ewa Kurek, YOUR LIFE IS WORTH MINE - How Polish Nuns Saved Hundreds of Jewish Children in German-Occupied Poland, foreword by Prof. Jan Karski, New York 1998. She has also contributed articles in English that were published in Polin (Oxford: Institute for Polish Jewish Studies), Embracing the Other (New York University Press) and From Shtetl to Socialism (LondonWashington). Her research on the subject of Polish-Jewish relations in World War II in Poland has been presented at several international academic congresses, including Yad Vashem, Jerusalem (1988), Princeton University (1993), and Columbia University (2007). In the book POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS 1939-1945; BEYOND THE LIMITS OF SOLIDARITY, Ewa Kurek reconstructs the wartime history based almost exclusively on Jewish sources. Like in her other books, Ewa Kurek has the courage to raise important questions and the courage to search for equally important answers.

I Came Home and There Was No One There

I Came Home and There Was No One There
Author: Hanka Grupińska
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2023-07-25
Genre: History
ISBN:

This book comprises interviews with some of the last surviving veterans of the Jewish Fighting Organization in the Warsaw ghetto, accompanied by never previously published photographic “postcards” from a number of ghettos, and a reconstruction of the only surviving contemporary list of those soldiers. The first part of the book, “Still Circling,” is a collection of interviews with the last surviving soldiers of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB), which fought in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The section opens with an interview recorded in 1985 with ŻOB commander Marek Edelman, and ends with another conversation with him recorded in 2000. Grupińska’s other interlocutors are also ŻOB veterans—rank-and-file soldiers, men and women. These veterans relate the stories of their homes and their backgrounds—some were Bundists, others from Zionist or religious families—followed by their recollections of how they experienced and remembered the uprising, which provides several unique perspectives of shared episodes. Images include portraits of Grupińska’s interlocutors as well as never before published photographs of the ghetto and its surroundings that are reminiscent of postcards. The second part of the book, “Rereading the List,” is intended to function like a litany of the names of the ŻOB members who fought in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. This “list” was compiled by a group of fighters in 1943 and rediscovered by the author in 2000. Each name is accompanied by a short story about the fighter—sometimes only a sentence or two—as well as any available photograph of them. The list is followed by a reconstruction of the ŻOB army, which captures its divisions and the places they fought.

Space and the Memories of Violence

Space and the Memories of Violence
Author: Estela Schindel
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2014-11-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137380918

Authors from a variety of disciplines dealing with diverse historical cases engage with the spatial deployment of violence and the possibilities for memory and resistance in contexts of state sponsored violence, enforced disappearances and regimes of exception. Contributors include Aleida Assmann, Jay Winter and David Harvey.

Drohobycz, Drohobycz and Other Stories

Drohobycz, Drohobycz and Other Stories
Author: Henryk Grynberg
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2002-10-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101176989

In Drohobycz, Drohobycz, one of our most highly regarded Polish writers, Henryk Grynberg, delivers thirteen authentic tales of the Holocaust, including the riveting title story, which reconstructs the assassination of the celebrated writer and artist Bruno Schulz. In each of these stories, it is not only the devastation of the Holocaust that resonates so clearly, but also the trauma that endures among its victims and survivors today. Going beyond the age-old question of individual crime and punishment, Drohobycz, Drohobycz explores the concepts of collective guilt and the impunity of the twentieth century's two most genocidal political systems: Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. With its profound investigation of bravery, baseness, and the vulnerability of human beings, this incredible collection is a critically acclaimed and highly anticipated contribution to contemporary fiction.

Two Flags

Two Flags
Author: Marian Apfelbaum
Publisher: Gefen Publishing House Ltd
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789652293565

The Warsaw ghetto uprising was planned and accomplished by two organizations, the ZOB (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa Jewish Fighting Organization) and the ZZW (Zydowska Zwiazek Wojskowy Jewish Military Union). While the part of the ZOB is well known though multiple books and articles, the part of the ZZW has been largely ignored for political reasons. Using extensive primary source material from Polish, Jewish and German sources, much of it here translated into English for the first time, the role of the ZZW is reported and analyzed, with special attention given to the fierce battle waged over the Polish and Jewish flags hoisted over the ghetto.

Warsaw Ghetto Police

Warsaw Ghetto Police
Author: Katarzyna Person
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2021-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501754092

In Warsaw Ghetto Police, Katarzyna Person shines a spotlight on the lawyers, engineers, young yeshiva graduates, and sons of connected businessmen who, in the autumn of 1940, joined the newly formed Jewish Order Service. Person tracks the everyday life of policemen as their involvement with the horrors of ghetto life gradually increased. Facing and engaging with brutality, corruption, and the degradation and humiliation of their own people, these policemen found it virtually impossible to exercise individual agency. While some saw the Jewish police as fellow victims, others viewed them as a more dangerous threat than the German occupation authorities; both were held responsible for the destruction of a historically important and thriving community. Person emphasizes the complexity of the situation, the policemen's place in the network of social life in the ghetto, and the difficulty behind the choices that they made. By placing the actions of the Jewish Order Service in historical context, she explores both the decisions that its members were forced to make and the consequences of those actions. Featuring testimonies of members of the Jewish Order Service, and of others who could see them as they themselves could not, Warsaw Ghetto Police brings these impossible situations to life. It also demonstrates how a community chooses to remember those whose allegiances did not seem clear. Published in Association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.