The Nazi's Granddaughter

The Nazi's Granddaughter

Author: Silvia Foti

Publisher: Regnery History

Published: 2021-03-09

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 1684511089

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Hero–or Nazi? Silvia Foti was raised on reverent stories about her hero grandfather, a martyr for Lithuanian independence and an unblemished patriot. Jonas Noreika, remembered as “General Storm,” had resisted his country’s German and Soviet occupiers in World War II, surviving two years in a Nazi concentration camp only to be executed in 1947 by the KGB. His granddaughter, growing up in Chicago, was treated like royalty in her tightly knit Lithuanian community. But in 2000, when Silvia traveled to Lithuania for a ceremony honoring her grandfather, she heard a very different story—a “rumor” that her grandfather had been a “Jew-killer.” The Nazi’s Granddaughter is Silvia’s account of her wrenching twenty-year quest for the truth, from a beautiful house confiscated from its Jewish owners, to familial confessions and the Holocaust tour guide who believed that her grandfather had murdered members of his family. A heartbreaking and dramatic story based on exhaustive documentary research and soul-baring interviews, The Nazi’s Granddaughter is an unforgettable journey into World War II history, intensely personal but filled with universal lessons about courage, faith, memory, and justice.


My German Question

My German Question

Author: Peter Gay

Publisher: Yale.ORIM

Published: 1998-10-07

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0300133146

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“Not only a memoir, it’s also a fierce reply to those who criticized German-Jewish assimilation and the tardiness of many families in leaving Germany” (Publishers Weekly). In this poignant book, a renowned historian tells of his youth as an assimilated, anti-religious Jew in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1939—“the story,” says Peter Gay, “of a poisoning and how I dealt with it.” With his customary eloquence and analytic acumen, Gay describes his family, the life they led, and the reasons they did not emigrate sooner, and he explores his own ambivalent feelings—then and now—toward Germany its people. Gay relates that the early years of the Nazi regime were relatively benign for his family, yet even before the events of 1938–39, culminating in Kristallnacht, they were convinced they must leave the country. Gay describes the bravery and ingenuity of his father in working out this difficult emigration process, the courage of the non-Jewish friends who helped his family during their last bitter months in Germany, and the family’s mounting panic as they witnessed the indifference of other countries to their plight and that of others like themselves. Gay’s account—marked by candor, modesty, and insight—adds an important and curiously neglected perspective to the history of German Jewry. “Not a single paragraph is superfluous. His inquiry rivets without let up, powered by its unremitting candor.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “[An] eloquent memoir.” —The Wall Street Journal “A moving testament to the agony the author experienced.” —Chicago Tribune “[A] valuable chronicle of what life was like for those who lived through persecution and faced execution.” —Choice


The Perfect Nazi

The Perfect Nazi

Author: Martin Davidson

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2011-03-31

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1101513527

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What if you found out that your grandfather had been a Nazi SS officer? This is the confession that Martin Davidson received from his mother upon the death of demanding, magnetic grandfather Bruno Langbehn. The Perfect Nazi is Davidson's exploration of his family's darkest secret. As Davidson dove into his research, drawing on an astonishing cache of personal documents as well as eyewitness accounts of this historical period, he learned that Bruno's story moved lock-step in time with the rise and fall of the Nazi party: from his upbringing in a fiercely military environment amid the aftermath of World War I, to his joining the Nazi party in 1926 at the age of nineteen, more than six years before Hitler came to power, to his postwar involvement with the Werewolves, the gang of SS stalwarts who vowed to keep on after the defeat of Nazism. Davidson realized that his grandfather was in many ways the "perfect Nazi," his individual experiences emblematic of the generation of Germans who would plunge the world into such darkness. But he also realized that every fact he uncovered was a terrible truth he himself would have to come to terms with...


When Will We Talk About Hitler?

When Will We Talk About Hitler?

Author: Alexandra Oeser

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2019-08-01

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 1789202876

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For more than half a century, discourses on the Nazi past have powerfully shaped German social and cultural policy. Specifically, an institutional determination not to forget has expressed a “duty of remembrance” through commemorative activities and educational curricula. But as the horrors of the Third Reich retreat ever further from living memory, what do new generations of Germans actually think about this past? Combining observation, interviews, and archival research, this book provides a rich survey of the perspectives and experiences of German adolescents from diverse backgrounds, revealing the extent to which social, economic, and cultural factors have conditioned how they view representations of Germany’s complex history.


Our Nazi

Our Nazi

Author: Michael Soffer

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2024-09-24

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0226835553

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first book to lay bare the life of a Nazi camp guard who settled in a Chicago suburb and to explore how his community and others responded to discoveries of Nazis in their midst. Reinhold Kulle seemed like the perfect school employee. But in 1982, as his retirement neared, his long-concealed secret came to light. The chief custodian at Oak Park and River Forest High School outside Chicago had been a Nazi, a member of the SS, and a guard at a brutal slave labor camp during World War II. Similar revelations stunned communities across the country. Hundreds of Reinhold Kulles were gradually discovered: men who had patrolled concentration camps, selected Jews for execution, and participated in mass shootings—and who were now living ordinary suburban lives. As the Office of Special Investigations raced to uncover Hitler’s men in the United States, neighbors had to reconcile horrific accusations with the helpful, kind, and soft-spoken neighbors they thought they knew. Though Nazis loomed in the American consciousness as evil epitomized, in Oak Park—a Chicago suburb renowned for its liberalism—people rose to defend Reinhold Kulle, a war criminal. Drawing on archival research and insider interviews, Oak Park and River Forest High School teacher Michael Soffer digs into his community’s tumultuous response to the Kulle affair. He explores the uncomfortable truths of how and why onetime Nazis found allies in American communities after their gruesome pasts were uncovered.


Hitler's American Friends

Hitler's American Friends

Author: Bradley W. Hart

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books

Published: 2018-10-02

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1250148960

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A book examining the strange terrain of Nazi sympathizers, nonintervention campaigners and other voices in America who advocated on behalf of Nazi Germany in the years before World War II. Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided. Bradley W. Hart's Hitler's American Friends exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime. Some of these friends were Americans of German heritage who joined the Bund, whose leadership dreamed of installing a stateside Führer. Some were as bizarre and hair-raising as the Silver Shirt Legion, run by an eccentric who claimed that Hitler fulfilled a religious prophesy. Some were Midwestern Catholics like Father Charles Coughlin, an early right-wing radio star who broadcast anti-Semitic tirades. They were even members of Congress who used their franking privilege—sending mail at cost to American taxpayers—to distribute German propaganda. And celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh ended up speaking for them all at the America First Committee. We try to tell ourselves it couldn't happen here, but Americans are not immune to the lure of fascism. Hitler's American Friends is a powerful look at how the forces of evil manipulate ordinary people, how we stepped back from the ledge, and the disturbing ease with which we could return to it.


Blowback

Blowback

Author: Christopher Simpson

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-06-10

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1497623065

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A searing account of a dark “chapter in U.S. Cold War history . . . to help the anti-Soviet aims of American intelligence and national security agencies” (Library Journal). Even before the final shots of World War II were fired, another war began—a cold war that pitted the United States against its former ally, the Soviet Union. As the Soviets consolidated power in Eastern Europe, the CIA scrambled to gain the upper hand against new enemies worldwide. To this end, senior officials at the CIA, National Security Council, and other elements of the emerging US national security state turned to thousands of former Nazis, Waffen Secret Service, and Nazi collaborators for propaganda, psychological warfare, and military operations. Many new recruits were clearly responsible for the deaths of countless innocents as part of Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution,” yet were whitewashed and claimed to be valuable intelligence assets. Unrepentant mass murderers were secretly accepted into the American fold, their crimes forgotten and forgiven with the willing complicity of the US government. Blowback is the first thorough, scholarly study of the US government’s extensive recruitment of Nazis and fascist collaborators right after the war. Although others have approached the topic since, Simpson’s book remains the essential starting point. The author demonstrates how this secret policy of collaboration only served to intensify the Cold War and has had lasting detrimental effects on the American government and society that endure to this day.


Heidegger and Nazism

Heidegger and Nazism

Author: Víctor Farías

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780877228301

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first book to document Heidegger's close connections to Nazism-now available to a new generation of students


My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past

Author: Nikola Sellmair

Publisher: The Experiment, LLC

Published: 2016-04-05

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1615192549

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Now in paperback: The New York Times bestselling memoir hailed as “unforgettable” (Publishers Weekly) and “a stunning memoir of cultural trauma and personal identity” (Booklist). At age 38, Jennifer Teege happened to pluck a library book from the shelf—and discovered a horrifying fact: Her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the vicious Nazi commandant depicted in Schindler’s List. Reviled as the “butcher of Plaszów,” Goeth was executed in 1946. The more Teege learned about him, the more certain she became: If her grandfather had met her—a black woman—he would have killed her. Teege’s discovery sends her into a severe depression—and fills her with questions: Why did her birth mother withhold this chilling secret? How could her grandmother have loved a mass murderer? Can evil be inherited? Teege’s story is cowritten by Nikola Sellmair, who also adds historical context and insight from Teege’s family and friends, in an interwoven narrative. Ultimately, Teege’s search for the truth leads her, step by step, to the possibility of her own liberation.


Inside the Third Reich

Inside the Third Reich

Author: Albert Speer

Publisher:

Published: 1970

Total Pages: 832

ISBN-13: 9781857998566

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

'INSIDE THE THIRD REICH is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler's inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production and the inner struggle of Albert Speer. The author does not try to make excuses, even by implication, and is unrelenting toward himself and his associates... Speer's full-length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. The Fuhrer emerges as neither an incompetent nor a carpet-gnawing madman but as an evil genius of warped conceits endowed with an ineffable personal magic' NEW YORK TIMES