After being asked so many times by readers and listeners alike about what happened next, I decided to start at my arrival in the US at age 15 and reveal my story to the present day, as I approach my 82nd birthday. The exciting journey of a young Holocaust and WWII survivor in this land of milk and honey is a vibrant testimony to an indomitable human spirit, incorrigible optimism, and tremendous good fortune. Only in America could I have made such a life for myself and my loved ones not anywhere else.
Margit lived but did not tell her story. How a fourteen-year-old German girl in Frankfurt am Main was picked up by the Gestapo in 1944, endured and survived the horrors of the Holocaust, rescued herself, and went on to lead a seemingly perfect life in the United States, was a story she left to her daughter, the author, to discover. This unique account is unembellished beyond ascertainable facts but as riveting as any Holocaust novel. Margit's several cards and letters written from the detention center and the concentration camp are heartrending but reveal an inner strength that carried her through the ordeal. The backstory of how Angie Osborne, motivated by her faith and grandchildren, traveled to Europe to uncover her mother's story from only a few fragments nearly twenty years after Margit's death is awe inspiring. This story will resonate with anyone intrigued by personal stories of World War II, students of that history, especially adolescents, and is a lesson of the price innocents pay in a world ruled by ethnic and racial division. Includes photos, maps, and numerous documents from Margit's personal history. Three appendices.
Can one predict what a child will remember? Paul Schwarzbart vividly recalls looking out his window daily at the Austrian flag atop a school nearby; one day, without warning, the Nazi flag replaced it. "From that moment on," he remembers, "everything deteriorated rapidly. During World War II, Paul Schwarzbart lived a life of secrecy. In the spring of 1943, young Schwarzbart was hidden in the Ardennes by the Jewish underground at the Home Reine Elizabeth, a Catholic boys' school near Luxembourg. There, for two years he assumed the role of a Belgian Catholic under the name of Paul Exsteen. The model student soon became an altar boy and Cub Scout leader and was eventually baptized in secret. Unable to divulge his real identity, he felt a painful loneliness gnawing at his heart. And all the while, he suffered from the agony and uncertainty of not knowing his parents' whereabouts. This book is his story. It is a story of love and hope, as well as man's terrible inhumanity to man.
Challenging the notion that Jewish American and Holocaust literature have exhausted their limits, this volume reexamines these closely linked traditions in light of recent postmodern theory. Composed against the tumultuous background of great cultural transition and unprecedented state-sponsored systematic murder, Jewish American and Holocaust literature both address the concerns of postmodern human existence in extremis. In addition to exploring how various mythic and literary themes are deconstructed in the lurid light of Auschwitz, this book provides critical reassessments of Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth, as well as contemporary Jewish American writers who are extending this vibrant tradition into the new millennium. These essays deepen and enrich our understanding of the Jewish literary tradition and the implications of the Shoah.
In his highly readable, educational and inspiring memoir, Holocaust Survivor Ben Lesser’s warm, grandfatherly tone invites the reader to do more than just visit a time when the world went mad. He also shows how this madness came to be—and the lessons that the world still needs to learn. In this true story, the reader will see how an ordinary human being—an innocent child—not only survived the Nazi Nightmare, but achieved the American Dream.
In 2009, Rachael Cerrotti, a college student pursuing a career in photojournalism, asked her grandmother, Hana, if she could record her story. Rachael knew that her grandmother was a Holocaust survivor and the only one in her family alive at the end of the war. Rachael also knew that she survived because of the kindness of strangers. It wasn’t a secret. Hana spoke about her history publicly and regularly. But, Rachael wanted to document it as only a granddaughter could. So, that’s what they did: Hana talked and Rachael wrote. Upon Hana’s passing in 2010, Rachael discovered an incredible archive of her life. There were preserved albums and hundreds of photographs dating back to the 1920s. There were letters waiting to be translated, journals, diaries, deportation and immigration papers as well as creative writings from various stages of Hana’s life. Rachael digitized and organized it all, plucking it from the past and placing it into her present. Then, she began retracing her grandmother’s story, following her through Central Europe, Scandinavia, and across the United States. She tracked down the descendants of those who helped save her grandmother’s life during the war. Rachael went in pursuit of her grandmother’s memory to explore how the retelling of family stories becomes the history itself. We Share the Same Sky weaves together the stories of these two young women—Hana as a refugee who remains one step ahead of the Nazis at every turn, and Rachael, whose insatiable curiosity to touch the past guides her into the lives of countless strangers, bringing her love and tragic loss. Throughout the course of her twenties, Hana’s history becomes a guidebook for Rachael in how to live a life empowered by grief.
Is Marijuana kosher? Yes, of course it is. But the better question is: If I am going to get higher than high, isn't there some useful, traditional guidance about how to best do so? If not, then what good is the Torah? Join Yosef Leib on his travels and studies throughout Jerusalem, New York, and Rainbow Country, U.S.A., in search of guidance about how Cannabis and psychedelics have and have not been used in both ancient and emerging Hassidic traditions, and what the way we have related to our desires for medicines, gods and intoxicants can teach us about how we relate to ourselves, our community, and our G-d. The glorious problem of how what we can learn can set us free, in all kinds of ways. Chassidis, ("kind-ness") means the way to do all the things we love doing, better, as if any other way was acceptable. Cannabis Chassidis is the way to smoke weed like a mench; to be able to feel the pleasure of understanding secrets, and ground the wisdom that is only received from high places of sublime peace. But this book is not just for the Jews, or the Stoners. It is made to be accessible, useful and fascinating to anyone interested in theology, history, culture, psychedelics, or just good literature, whether they smoke marijuana or practice a western religion, or not. The question of What Jerusalem Means mystifies many people, along with the question of what justifies a religion, and what makes it, or any other structure, ultimately worth hitting, or passing.
One woman's discovery-and the incredible, unexpected journey it takes her on-of how her grandparent's small village of Campagna, Italy, helped save Jews during the Holocaust. Take a journey with Elizabeth Bettina as she discovers-much to her surprise-that her grandparent's small village, nestled in the heart of southern Italy, housed an internment camp for Jews during the Holocaust, and that it was far from the only one. Follow her discovery of survivors and their stories of gratitude to Italy and its people. Explore the little known details of how members of the Catholic church assisted and helped shelter Jews in Italy during World War II.
Based on the experience of real-life Auschwitz prisoner Dita Kraus, this is the incredible story of a girl who risked her life to keep the magic of books alive during the Holocaust. Fourteen-year-old Dita is one of the many imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken, along with her mother and father, from the Terezín ghetto in Prague, Dita is adjusting to the constant terror that is life in the camp. When Jewish leader Freddy Hirsch asks Dita to take charge of the eight precious volumes the prisoners have managed to sneak past the guards, she agrees. And so Dita becomes the librarian of Auschwitz. Out of one of the darkest chapters of human history comes this extraordinary story of courage and hope. This title has Common Core connections. Godwin Books
