Hanna's Diary, 1938-1941
Hanna's Diary, 1938-1941

Author: Hanna Spencer

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2001-06-08

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0773569472

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From the preface: "For forty-five years I had not opened the wooden box with the fancy hand-carved lid. I knew what was in it. Together with miscellaneous keepsakes and photographs, it contained six notebooks written in German. This was the journal I kept from 1938 to 1941, during a crucial period in many people's lives, including mine. The box had remained locked since 1942, when I had pulled down my own "iron curtain," shutting out the memories preserved on those pages. But the time eventually came for the curtain to be raised. The main reason for this change of mind was my profound regret that I had not quizzed my parents more about their personal history; I didn't want this to happen to my children and grandchildren. Thus I brought myself to open the box, literally and figuratively, and set about translating the diaries from German into English - strictly for the use of my family, or so I thought." Hanna Fischl, a Czech of Jewish descent, was a twenty-four-year-old teacher in a German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia when Hitler's shadow loomed over Europe in 1938. No longer able to associate openly with her lover, Hans Feiertag, the talented, Christian composer whom she had loved since her teens, she began writing a diary at his request so that, once they were reunited, he could learn about her life while they had been apart. Written in a touching and candid style, Hanna's Diary, 1938-1941 is the result of that request. Hanna's Diary, 1938B1941 offers an intimate view of sweeping historical events that engulfed Europe and the world, evoking the creeping fear, desperate hopes, desertion of friends, and sense of isolation that Hanna Spencer felt as Nazism spread. The diary follows Spencer to England - where she faced misery of a different kind - and then to Canada, where, as a young immigrant with a PhD, she worked in her uncle's glove-making factory before finally landing a teaching job in Ottawa. Spencer describes her experiences lecturing on Czechoslovaki's history and its takeover by the Nazis, and her resulting celebrity on the Ontario lecture circuit. Written with clear wit and a sharp eye for detail, Hanna's Diary, 1938B1941 is a must-read for anyone interested in the human side of the Second World War.

Making the Best of It
Making the Best of It

Author: Sarah Glassford

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2020-04-15

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0774862807

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Many women who lived through the Second World War believed it heralded new status and opportunities, but scholars have argued that very little changed. How can these interpretations be reconciled? Making the Best of It examines the ways in which gender and other identities intersected to shape the experiences of female Canadians and Newfoundlanders during the war. The contributors to this thoughtful collection consider mainstream and minority populations, girls and women, and different parts of Canada and Newfoundland. They reassess topics such as women in the military and in munitions factories, and tackle entirely new subjects such as wartime girlhood in Quebec. Collectively, these essays broaden the scope of what we know about the changes the war wrought in the lives of Canadian women and girls, and address wider debates about memory, historiography, and feminism.

Far to Go
Far to Go

Author: Alison Pick

Publisher: House of Anansi

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0887842380

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Winner of the Helen and Stan Vine Jewish Book Award and finalist for the Man Booker Prize In Far to Go, one of our most accomplished young writers takes us inside the world of an affluent Jewish family in Prague during the lead-up to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1939, Pavel and Anneliese Bauer are secular Jews whose lives are turned upside down by the arrival of Hitler. They are unable to leave the country in time to avoid deportation, but they do manage to get their six-year-old son Pepik a place on a Kindertransport. Meanwhile, a fascinating and compelling present-day strand in the story slowly reveals the unexpected fates of each of the Bauers. Through a series of surprising twists, Pick leads us to ask: What does it mean to cling to identity in the face of persecution? And what are the consequences if you attempt to change your identity? Inspired by the harrowing five-year journey Alison Pick's own grandparents embarked upon from their native Czechoslovakia to Canada during the Second World War, Far to Gois an epic historical novel that traces one family's journey through these tumultuous and traumatic events. A layered, beautifully written, moving, and suspenseful story by one of our rising literary stars.

Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20th-Century Europe
Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20th-Century Europe

Author: Jan Lánícek

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-11-17

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1472585909

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In this analysis of the life of Arnošt Frischer, an influential Jewish nationalist activist, Jan Lánícek reflects upon how the Jewish community in Czechoslovakia dealt with the challenges that arose from their volatile relationship with the state authorities in the first half of the 20th century. The Jews in the Bohemian Lands experienced several political regimes in the period from 1918 to the late 1940s: the Habsburg Empire, the first democratic Czechoslovak republic, the post-Munich authoritarian Czecho-Slovak republic, the Nazi regime, renewed Czechoslovak democracy and the Communist regime. Frischer's involvement in local and central politics affords us invaluable insights into the relations and negotiations between the Jewish activists and these diverse political authorities in the Bohemian Lands. Vital coverage is also given to the relatively under-researched subject of the Jewish responses to the Nazi persecution and the attempts of the exiled Jewish leadership to alleviate the plight of the Jews in occupied Europe. The case study of Frischer and Czechoslovakia provides an important paradigm for understanding modern Jewish politics in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, making this a book of great significance to all students and scholars interested in Jewish history and Modern European history.

Journeys from the Abyss
Journeys from the Abyss

Author: Tony Kushner

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2017-09-28

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1786948346

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This is the first study to place Jewish refugee movements from Nazism into a wider framework of global forced migration from the late nineteenth through to the twenty first century.

Servants
Servants

Author: Lucy Lethbridge

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-03-14

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1408834073

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'Hugely enjoyable' - Kathryn Hughes, Guardian Glorious ... Full of eyebrow-raising and laughter-inducing vignettes' - Daily Telegraph Servants is the social history of the last century through the eyes of those who served. From the butler, the footman, the maid and the cook of 1900 to the au pairs, cleaners and childminders who took their place seventy years later, a previously unheard class offers a fresh perspective on a dramatic century. Here, the voices of servants and domestic staff are at last brought to life: their daily household routines, attitudes towards their employers, and to each other, throw into sharp and intimate relief the period of feverish social change through which they lived. Sweeping in its scope, extensively researched and brilliantly observed, Servants is an original and fascinating portrait of twentieth-century Britain; an authoritative history that will change and challenge the way we look at society.