Survivor
Survivor

Author: Sam Pivnik

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2013-06-18

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781250029522

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Now in his eighties, Sam Pivnik tells for the first time the extraordinary story of how he survived the Holocaust Sam Pivnik is the ultimate survivor from a world that no longer exists. On fourteen occasions he should have been killed, but luck, his physical strength, and his determination not to die all played a part in Sam Pivnik living to tell his extraordinary story. In 1939, on his thirteenth birthday, Pivnik's life changed forever when the Nazis invaded Poland. He survived the two ghettoes set up in his home town of Bedzin and six months on Auschwitz's notorious Rampe Kommando where prisoners were either taken away for entry to the camp or gassing. After this harrowing experience he was sent to work at the brutal Fürstengrube mining camp. He could have died on the ‘Death March' that took him west as the Third Reich collapsed and he was one of only a handful of people who swam to safety when the Royal Air Force sank the prison ship Cap Arcona in 1945, mistakenly believing it to be carrying fleeing members of the SS. He eventually made his way to London where he found people too preoccupied with their own wartime experiences on the Home Front to be interested in what had happened to him. Now in his eighties, Sam Pivnik tells for the first time the story of his life, a true tale of survival against the most extraordinary odds.

Survivor: Auschwitz, the Death March and my fight for freedom
Survivor: Auschwitz, the Death March and my fight for freedom

Author: Sam Pivnik

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2012-08-30

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1444758403

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**For fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz** Sam Pivnik is the ultimate survivor from a world that no longer exists. On fourteen occasions he should have been killed, but luck, his physical strength and his determination not to die all played a part in Sam Pivnik living to tell his extraordinary life story. In 1939, on his thirteenth birthday, his life changed forever when the Nazis invaded Poland. He survived the two ghettoes set up in his home town of Bedzin and six months on Auschwitz's notorious Rampkommando where prisoners were either taken away for entry to the camp or gassing. After this harrowing experience he was sent to work at the brutal Furstengrube mining camp. He could have died on the 'Death March' that took him west as the Third Reich collapsed and he was one of only a handful of people who swam to safety when the Royal Air Force sank the prison ship Cap Arcona, in 1945, mistakenly believing it to be carrying fleeing members of the SS. He eventually made his way to London where he found people too preoccupied with their own wartime experiences on the Home Front to be interested in what had happened to him. Now in his eighties, Sam Pivnik tells for the first time the story of his life, a true tale of survival against the most extraordinary odds.

The Choice
The Choice

Author: Edith Eva Eger

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1501130811

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A New York Times Bestseller “I’ll be forever changed by Dr. Eger’s story…The Choice is a reminder of what courage looks like in the worst of times and that we all have the ability to pay attention to what we’ve lost, or to pay attention to what we still have.”—Oprah “Dr. Eger’s life reveals our capacity to transcend even the greatest of horrors and to use that suffering for the benefit of others. She has found true freedom and forgiveness and shows us how we can as well.” —Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate “Dr. Edith Eva Eger is my kind of hero. She survived unspeakable horrors and brutality; but rather than let her painful past destroy her, she chose to transform it into a powerful gift—one she uses to help others heal.” —Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle Winner of the National Jewish Book Award and Christopher Award At the age of sixteen, Edith Eger was sent to Auschwitz. Hours after her parents were killed, Nazi officer Dr. Josef Mengele, forced Edie to dance for his amusement and her survival. Edie was pulled from a pile of corpses when the American troops liberated the camps in 1945. Edie spent decades struggling with flashbacks and survivor’s guilt, determined to stay silent and hide from the past. Thirty-five years after the war ended, she returned to Auschwitz and was finally able to fully heal and forgive the one person she’d been unable to forgive—herself. Edie weaves her remarkable personal journey with the moving stories of those she has helped heal. She explores how we can be imprisoned in our own minds and shows us how to find the key to freedom. The Choice is a life-changing book that will provide hope and comfort to generations of readers.

All But My Life
All But My Life

Author: Gerda Weissmann Klein

Publisher: Hill and Wang

Published: 1995-03-31

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1466812427

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All But My Life is the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein's six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty. From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops--including the man who was to become her husband--in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey. Gerda's serene and idyllic childhood is shattered when Nazis march into Poland on September 3, 1939. Although the Weissmanns were permitted to live for a while in the basement of their home, they were eventually separated and sent to German labor camps. Over the next few years Gerda experienced the slow, inexorable stripping away of "all but her life." By the end of the war she had lost her parents, brother, home, possessions, and community; even the dear friends she made in the labor camps, with whom she had shared so many hardships, were dead. Despite her horrifying experiences, Klein conveys great strength of spirit and faith in humanity. In the darkness of the camps, Gerda and her young friends manage to create a community of friendship and love. Although stripped of the essence of life, they were able to survive the barbarity of their captors. Gerda's beautifully written story gives an invaluable message to everyone. It introduces them to last century's terrible history of devastation and prejudice, yet offers them hope that the effects of hatred can be overcome.

The Weight of Freedom
The Weight of Freedom

Author: Nate Leipciger

Publisher:

Published: 2015-09

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 9781897470558

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"To avoid thinking I repeated the words 'after the war.' The words stuck in my mind like a mantra. After the war. The words blended into the clang of the wheels. Would there ever be an end to the war?" Nate Leipciger, a thoughtful, shy eleven-year-old boy, is plunged into an incomprehensible web of ghettos, concentration and death camps during the German occupation of Poland. As he struggles to survive, he forges a new, unbreakable bond with his father and yearns for a free future. But when he is finally liberated, the weight of his pain will not ease, and his memories remain etched in tragedy. Introspective, complicated and raw, The Weight of Freedom is Nate's journey through a past that he can never leave behind.

Rena's Promise
Rena's Promise

Author: Rena Kornreich Gelissen

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2015-03-17

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0807093130

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An expanded edition of the powerful memoir about two sisters' determination to survive during the Holocaust featuring new and never before revealed information about the first transport of women to Auschwitz In March 1942, Rena Kornreich and 997 other young women were rounded up and forced onto the first Jewish transport of women to Auschwitz. Soon after, Rena was reunited with her sister Danka at the camp, beginning a story of love and courage that would last three years and forty-one days. From smuggling bread for their friends to narrowly escaping the ever-present threats that loomed at every turn, the compelling events in Rena’s Promise remind us that humanity and hope can survive inordinate brutality.

The Druggist of Auschwitz
The Druggist of Auschwitz

Author: Dieter Schlesak

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2011-04-26

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1429958928

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Dieter Schlesak's haunting novel The Druggist of Auschwitz—beautifully translated from the German by John Hargraves—is a frighteningly vivid portrayal of the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of criminal and victim alike. Adam, known as "the last Jew of Schäßburg," recounts with disturbing clarity his imprisonment at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. Through Adam's fictional narrative and excerpts of actual testimony from the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial of 1963–65, we come to learn of the true-life story of Dr. Victor Capesius, who, despite strong friendships with Jews before the war, quickly aided in and profited from their tragedy once the Nazis came to power. Interspersed with historical research and the author's face-to-face interviews with survivors, the novel follows Capesius from his assignment as the "sorter" of new arrivals at Auschwitz—deciding who will go directly to the gas chamber and who will be used for labor—through his life of lavish wealth after the war to his arrest and eventual trial. Schlesak's seamless incorporation of factual data and testimony—woven into Adam's dreamlike remembrance of a world turned upside down—makes The Druggist of Auschwitz a vital and unique addition to our understanding of the Holocaust.

War in the Shadow of Auschwitz
War in the Shadow of Auschwitz

Author: John Wiernicki

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2001-12-01

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9780815607229

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1943: Polish underground fighter John Wiernicki is captured and beaten by the Gestapo, then shipped to Auschwitz. In this chilling memoir, Wiernicki, a Gentile, details "life" in the infamous death camp, and his battle to survive, physically and morally, in the face of utter evil. The author begins by remembering his aristocratic youth, an idyllic time shattered by German invasion. The ensuing dark days of occupation would fire the adolescent Wiernicki with a burning desire to serve Poland, a cause that led him to valiant action and eventual arrest. As a young non-Jew, Wiernicki was acutely sensitive to the depravity and injustice that engulfed him at Auschwitz. He bears witness to the harrowing selection and extermination of Jews doomed by birth to the gas chambers, to savage camp policies, brutal SS doctors, and rampant corruption with the system. He notes the difference in treatment between Jews and non-Jews. And he relives fearful unexpected encounters with two notorious "Angels of Death": Josef Mengele and Heinz Thilo. War in the Shadow of Auschwitz is an important historical and personal document. Its vivid portrait of prewar and wartime Poland, and of German concentration camps, provides a significant addition to the growing body of testimony by gentile survivors and a heartfelt contribution to fostering comprehension and understanding.

The Auschwitz Volunteer
The Auschwitz Volunteer

Author: Witold Pilecki

Publisher: Aquila Polonica

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781607720102

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September 1940. Polish Army officer Witold Pilecki deliberately walked into a Nazi German street round-up in Warsaw and became Auschwitz Prisoner No. 4859. He had volunteered for a secret undercover mission: smuggle out intelligence about the new German concentration camp, and build a resistance organization among prisoners. Pilecki's clandestine intelligence, received by the Allies in 1941, was among earliest. He escaped in 1943 after accomplishing his mission. Dramatic eyewitness report, written in 1945 for Pilecki's Polish Army superiors, published in English for first time.

LIVING A LIFE THAT MATTERS
LIVING A LIFE THAT MATTERS

Author: Ben Lesser

Publisher: Abbott Press

Published: 2012-04-19

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1458202739

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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.