This volume sheds light on two brilliant but lesser known ghetto journalists: Josef Zelkowicz and Peretz Opoczynski. An ordained rabbi, Zelkowicz became a key member of the archive in the Lodz ghetto. Opoczynski was a journalist and mailman who contributed to the Warsaw ghetto’s secret Oyneg Shabes archive. While other ghetto writers sought to create an objective record of their circumstances, Zelkowicz and Opoczynski chronicled daily life and Jewish responses to ghettoization by the Nazis with powerful immediacy. Expertly translated by David Suchoff, with an elegant introduction by Samuel Kassow, these profound writings are at last accessible to contemporary readers.
Zelkowicz (b. 1897) was the scion of a wealthy Hassidic family, and had been ordained as a rabbi by age 18, but he soon left the study hall, and became teacher, bookkeeper and writer. He wrote short stories, folk tales, humorous pieces, plays, literary studies, reportage and articles. His pieces on Jewish folklore and history were published in newspapers and literary supplements in Poland and America. He became a member of the executive board of YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Research, and joined the staff in Lodz.When he was deported to Auschwitz in August 1944, the rich amount of research and copious notes that he took with him disappeared with him, but 27 notebooks remained behind in the Lodz Ghetto. His personal diary and the variety of articles that he wrote reflect the diversity and richness of his writings even under conditions of extreme physical deprivation and present a moving document of the nightmarish days with great precision and vivid details.
The powerful writings and art of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto Hidden in metal containers and buried underground during World War II, these works from the Warsaw Ghetto record the Holocaust from the perspective of its first interpreters, the victims themselves. Gathered clandestinely by an underground ghetto collective called Oyneg Shabes, the collection of reportage, diaries, prose, artwork, poems, jokes, and sermons captures the heroism, tragedy, humor, and social dynamics of the ghetto. Miraculously surviving the devastation of war, this extraordinary archive encompasses a vast range of voices—young and old, men and women, the pious and the secular, optimists and pessimists—and chronicles different perspectives on the topics of the day while also preserving rapidly endangered cultural traditions. Described by David G. Roskies as “a civilization responding to its own destruction,” these texts tell the story of the Warsaw Ghetto in real time, against time, and for all time.
Furiously Happy meets Elaine Lui in this truly original—and surprisingly hilarious—memoir about one woman’s journey to learn how to walk after a debilitating diagnosis turned her life upside down. Learn How to Walk (Again) To-Do List: Step 1: Stand Step 2: Step Step 3: Pee (Yes!) Step 4: Walk with walker Step 5: Walk with sticks Step 6: Walk without props Recreational interlude for sex Step 7: RUN! Ruth Marshall—power mom, wife, actor, and daughter—was in great health, until one day, her feet started to tingle. She visited doctors and specialists for tests, but no one could figure out the cause of her symptoms. Was she imagining those pesky tingles? She tried to brush it off, even as she tripped over curbs and stumbled into people. Clumsiness is charming, right? But when Ruth suddenly couldn’t feel her legs at all, she knew something was terribly wrong. Her fears were confirmed by an MRI revealing a rare tumour that had been quietly growing on her spine for more than a decade. Within days, surgery was scheduled, and after the intense eight-hour ordeal, Ruth woke up to find her legs and feet had forgotten how to do...well, everything. The question that burned in her mind was, “Will I ever walk again?” What Ruth thought would be three days in the hospital turned into months of rehabilitation as she relearned not only how to walk, run, pee, and even have sex again, but how to better appreciate everyone around her—including her devoted husband, her two young sons, her worried parents, her sisters, her loving friends, and the caring staff at the rehab center who help her tackle her recovery head-on. Laugh-out-loud outrageous and searingly honest, this is a memoir that not only entertains but inspires readers to put their best foot forward and walk off anything life throws their way.
In 1940, in the Jewish ghetto of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, the Polish historian Emanuel Ringelblum established a clandestine scholarly organization called the Oyneg Shabes to record the experiences of the ghetto's inhabitants. For three years, members of the Oyneb Shabes worked in secret to chronicle the lives of hundereds of thousands as they suffered starvation, disease, and deportation by the Nazis. Shortly before the Warsaw ghetto was emptied and razed in 1943, the Oyneg Shabes buried thousands of documents from this massive archive in milk cans and tin boxes, ensuring that the voice and culture of a doomed people would outlast the efforts of their enemies to silence them. Impeccably researched and thoroughly compelling, Samuel D. Kassow's Who Will Write Our History? tells the tragic story of Ringelblum and his heroic determination to use historical scholarship to preserve the memory of a threatened people.
A couple find themselves at a fading, grand European hotel full of eccentric and sometimes unsettling patrons in this "faultlessly elegant and quietly menacing" allegorical story that examines the significance of shifting desires and the uncertainty of reality (Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness). An unnamed American couple travels to a strange, snowy European city to adopt a baby. It’s a difficult journey that leaves the wife, who is struggling with cancer, desperately weak, and her husband worries that her illness will prevent the orphanage from releasing their child. On arrival, the couple checks into the cavernous and eerily deserted Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel where the bar is always open and the lobby populated with an enigmatic cast of characters ranging from an ancient, flamboyant chanteuse to a debauched businessman to an enigmatic faith healer. Nothing is as it seems in this baffling, frozen world, and the more the couple struggles to claim their baby, the less they seem to know about their marriage, themselves, and life itself. For readers of Ian McEwan, Elizabeth Strout, and Iris Murdoch, What Happens at Night is a "masterpiece" (Edmund White) poised on the cusp of reality, told by "an elegantly acute and mysteriously beguiling writer" (Richard Eder, The Boston Globe).
Introduction : the role of gender in the Holocaust / Lenore J. Weitzman and Dalia Ofer -- Gender and the Jewish family in modern Europe / Paula E. Hyman -- Keeping calm and weathering the storm : Jewish women's responses to daily life in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 / Marion Kaplan -- The missing 52 percent : research on Jewish women in interwar Poland and its implications for Holocaust studies / Gershon Bacon -- Women in the Jewish labor bund in interwar Poland / Daniel Blatman -- Ordinary women in Nazi Germany : perpetrators, victims, followers, and bystanders / Gisela Bock -- The Grodno Ghetto and its underground : a personal narrative / Liza Chapnik -- The key game / Ida Fink -- 5050
"Coraline meets Monsters, Inc. in this delightfully entertaining offering from actor [Jason] Segel and co-author [Kirsten] Miller."—Publishers Weekly The hilariously frightening, middle-grade novel Nightmares! is a Texas Bluebonnet nominee and the first book in a trilogy about a boy named Charlie and a group of kids who must face their fears to save their town. Sleeping has never been so scary. And now waking up is even worse! Charlie Laird has several problems. 1. His dad married a woman he is sure moonlights as a witch. 2. He had to move into her purple mansion, which is NOT a place you want to find yourself after dark. 3.He can’t remember the last time sleeping wasn’t a nightmarish prospect. Like even a nap. What Charlie doesn’t know is that his problems are about to get a whole lot more real. Nightmares can ruin a good night’s sleep, but when they start slipping out of your dreams and into the waking world—that’s a line that should never be crossed. And when your worst nightmares start to come true . . . well, that’s something only Charlie can face. And he’s going to need all the help he can get, or it might just be lights-out for Charlie Laird. For good. Praise for Nightmares! Book one is a New York Times bestseller and Texas Bluebonnet nominee! "Charlie Laird, who learns fear will eat you alive if you feed it, makes an impression, and...readers will want to accompany him again."—The New York Times Book Review "A touching comical saga...about facing things that go bump in the night."—US Weekly "“[Nightmares!] succeeds at scaring and amusing in equal measure…[It's] sweet, charming, and imaginative."—Kirkus Reviews "Segel...and Miller build an entertaining, cartoony world full of scary (but not too scary) monsters, silly jokes, plucky kid heroes...with a promise of adventures to come."—Booklist "An engaging and creative story...woven with a generous amount [of] humor."—VOYA "There's humor and a fairly high ick-factor."—School Library Journal "Cleverly crafted...This novel presents just the right mix of 'scary and humorous.'"—ILA Literacy Daily
In a sleepy, secluded Alaska town called Barrow, the sun sets and doesn't rise for more than thirty consecutive days and nights from November to December. During this time a few years ago, from the darkness and across the frozen wasteland, an evil that normally preferred to exist in the shadows descended upon Barrow and brought the residents to their knees. Barrow's only hope was Eben and Stella Olemaun, a husband-and-wife law enforcement team who were torn between their own survival and saving the town they loved. Months later, as Stella Olemaun attempts to warn the world about the looming vampire threat by any means necessary, a rogue government agent may be taking more than an active interest in her story. And meanwhile, further north, a new sheriff and his young son must solve the lingering mystery of Barrow, even as the survivors of the original attack prepare for the sun to set once again -- however this time, they're ready. 30 Days Of Night: Rumors Of The Undead is Steve Niles's innovative and eagerly anticipated expansion of a nightmarish narrative that explores the nature of ancient evil existing -- and thriving -- in an unsuspecting modern world.
In honor of Frank’s 20th anniversary Fantagraphics is re-releasing the massive, long out of print Frank Book omnibus, which collected all the Frank material up to the mid-aughts, including several jaw-droppingly beautiful full-color stories, literally dozens of lushly-delineated black-and-white stories, and a treasure trove of covers and illustrations. The Frank Book also features an introduction by one of Frank’s biggest fans (himself a Frank, or almost): Francis Ford Coppola.
