In this beautiful 64-page picture book, Esther Nisenthal Krinitz tells her story of survival during the Holocaust through her art and narrative. Acompanying text by her daughter, Bernice Steinhardt, adds historical detail, context and interpretation. While a beautiful gift for both children and adults, it is also an educational resource for teachers exploring the Holocaust and themes of social justice and tolerance."While the panels speak of an almost unfathomable loss and horror, they also stand as one woman's testimony to hope, endurance and the unquenchable passion to bear witness."Publishers Weekly (October 10, 2005)
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award "An important, revealing story, exceptionally well told." —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Employing the rich testimony of almost three hundred survivors of the slave-labor camps of Starachowice, Poland, Christopher R. Browning draws the experiences of the Jewish prisoners, the Nazi authorities, and the neighboring Poles together into a chilling history of a little-known dimension of the Holocaust. Combining harrowing detail and insightful analysis on the Starachowice camps and their role in the Holocaust, Browning’s history is indispensable scholarship and an unforgettable story of survival.
A heart-stopping survivor story and brilliant historical investigation that offers unprecedented insight into daily life in the Third Reich and the Holocaust and the powers and pitfalls of memory. At the outbreak of World War II, Marianne Strauss, the sheltered daughter of well-to-do German Jews, was an ordinary girl, concerned with studies, friends, and romance. Almost overnight she was transformed into a woman of spirit and defiance, a fighter who, when the Gestapo came for her family, seized the moment and went underground. On the run for two years, Marianne traveled across Nazi Germany without papers, aided by a remarkable resistance organization, previously unknown and unsung. Drawing on an astonishing cache of documents as well as interviews on three continents, historian Mark Roseman reconstructs Marianne's odyssey and reveals aspects of life in the Third Reich long hidden from view. As Roseman excavates the past, he also puts forward a new and sympathetic interpretation of the troubling discrepancies between fact and recollection that so often cloud survivors' accounts. A detective story, a love story, a story of great courage and survival under the harshest conditions, A Past in Hiding is also a poignant investigation into the nature of memory, authenticity, and truth.
"At the end of May 1945, 12,000 Slovene soldiers were put on board trains by the British Army in Austria. They thought they were on their way to freedom in Italy. Their true destination was Slovenia, and death." "One of the most moving and tragic diaspora stories of World War II, Slovenia 1945 follows the fate of a strongly Catholic and non-Communist community in Slovenia, including members of the anti-Communist Home Guard 'domobranci', caught up in the maelstrom of war and politics in the Balkans and the problems of the post-war settlement. Thousands of soldiers returned to face torture and death at the hands of their war-time enemies - Tito's Partisans - who had triumphed by the war's end. Six thousand more civilians narrowly escaped the same fate, after the intervention of Red Cross and Quaker aid workers. Yet the story of exile is also one of triumph as the surviving refugees built new lives in Argentina, the USA, Canada and Britain." "In this volume, the authors call on more than half a century of research and an unsurpassed knowledge of the Slovene migrant communities around the world to tell their stories. For the first time, the survivors tell their tales of wartime cruelty, of reviving their battered community in refugee camps, and of their emigration overseas, building successful new lives through courage, self-help and strong cultural identity."--BOOK JACKET.
Memoirs of crisis--of depression, alienation, divorce, illness, death--have recently become tremendously popular among both readers and critics alike. When poet Kathryn Rhett experienced her own crisis, she found comfort in others' stories of adversity and related to their survival tales. A teacher at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, Rhea taught a course in memoir. She soon came to realize that many memoirs are actually stories of survival and so her new course, survival stories, was born. Survival Stories is an outgrowth of this workshop. A collection of memoirs of crisis, "Survival Stories speaks to our need to write and read about life-changing experiences. Here twenty writers-including Lucy Grealy, Rick Moody, Reynolds Price, and William Styron-reveal the variety and power of crisis memoir. Whether it be Lauren Slater talking about obsessive compulsive disorder, Christopher Davis coping with his brother's murder, or Christina Middlebrook reliving her bone marrow transplant, each of these essays speaks to a fundamental human need to come to terms with difficulty and loss. The writers and readers of crisis memoirs are survivors, the ones left to tell the story, the ones left to live. The experience of crisis is universal, it is the moment of decision or upheaval that profoundly changes the course of a life. "Survival Stories is a celebration of memoir as an art form and the human instinct to survive and adapt to adversity.
Rhoda Kuflik writes from the amazing memories of a five-year-old child growing up in WWII Poland. Hers is a story of kindnesses and miracles that keep her family alive as they escape Nazi control and make their way to America. The photos that she rescues as they flee their home in Poland make this book a true treasure.
Fathoming the Holocaust represents the culmination of a singular effort to attempt to explain the Final Solution to the "Jewish Problem" in terms of a general theory of social problems construction. The book is comprehensive in scope, covering the origins and emergence of the Final Solution, wartime reaction to it, and the postwar memory of the genocide. It does so within the framework of a social problems construction, a perspective that treats social problems not as a condition but as an activity that identifies and defines problems, persuades others that something must be done about them, and generates practical programs of remedial action. Berger holds that social problems have a "natural history," that is, they evolve through a sequence of stages that entail the development and unfolding of claims about problems and the formulation and implementation of solutions. Fathoming the Holocaust is therefore a book that aims to advance sociological understanding of the Holocaust, not simply to describe its history, but to examine its social construction, that is, to understand it as a consequence of concerted human activity. In doing so, Berger hopes to encourage the teaching of the Holocaust in the social scientific curricula of higher education. In contrast to the extensive historical literature on the Holocaust, Berger offers a distinctly sociological approach that examines how the Holocaust was constructed--first as a social policy designed by the Nazis, implemented by functionaries, and resisted by its victims and opponents; later as several varying layers of historical memory. The scope of this book extends from the prewar through the contemporary periods, focusing on the societal issues governing the interpreting of these events in Israel, the German Federal Republic, and the United States. Berger's is a text with both large general interest and essential material for courses in social problems, European history, and Jewish studies. Ronald J. Berger, professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has previously published six books and numerous articles and book chapters. His earlier book on the Holocaust was a sociological account of his father and uncle's survival experiences.
RENEE: I was ten years old then, and my sister was eight. The responsibility was on me to warn everyone when the soldiers were coming because my sister and both my parents were deaf. I was my family's ears. Meet Renee and Herta, two sisters who faced the unimaginable -- together. This is their true story. As Jews living in 1940s Czechoslovakia, Renee, Herta, and their parents were in immediate danger when the Holocaust came to their door. As the only hearing person in her family, Renee had to alert her parents and sister whenever the sound of Nazi boots approached their home so they could hide. But soon their parents were tragically taken away, and the two sisters went on the run, desperate to find a safe place to hide. Eventually they, too, would be captured and taken to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Communicating in sign language and relying on each other for strength in the midst of illness, death, and starvation, Renee and Herta would have to fight to survive the darkest of times. This gripping memoir, told in a vivid "oral history" format, is a testament to the power of sisterhood and love, and now more than ever a reminder of how important it is to honor the past, and keep telling our own stories.
One life, two choice: hate or forgiveness? Which one will you choose? From childhood to adulthood, a father I sometimes likened to Hitler, bombings, fear, starvation, and emotional despair from ever feeling loved, find out through my story which choice I will make. "A strong story written by a strong woman, yet at the heart of her story is grace and mercy and love. If you have any disappointments in your life, I recommend this book for healing and encouragement." --Honorable J. Gary Pate, Circuit Court Judge, Retired Tenth Judicial Circuit of Alabama Rosemarie Reinhard Musso is currently a practicing family law attorney who earned her Juris Doctor degree at Birmingham School of Law and is a Certified Guardian ad Litem and Mediator. She is a member of the Alabama State Bar and the Birmingham Bar Association, Solo Practitioners and the Association of Jefferson County Family Court Advocates; she has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Management of Human Resources from Faulkner University. She is a licensed and ordained minister as well as a Motivational Speaker. She shares her struggles and pain of growing up under the horrific Nazi regime during WWII. She not only experienced starvation, fear of screeching sirens and bombings, but the worse starvation she experienced was the absence of love. As you read her compelling story of survival and constant fear of death during the years of growing up under the terror-driven times in Nazi Germany, it will instill in you the desire to overcome and not to succumb or surrender to hate and fear, but to overcome disappointments, hurts, and pressures of this life with love and forgiveness. She has appeared as guest on the Dr. Marie Blackwell's TV Program (Glen Iris Baptist Church), the Promised Land (Public TV Program), shared her story at Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, Wheaton College, Chicago, and appeared on TLN TV Network, Chicago--Aspiring Women.
Buried Memories: Katie Beers' Story is a never-before-told true story of survival, memory and recovery. Beers was a profoundly neglected and abused child even before she was kidnapped on Long Island in 1992. Abducted by a family friend, she was held captive in an underground cell for 17 days and sexually abused. With smarts and strength, she slipped the bonds of captivity and began a new life.--Publisher.
