A woman with a bold idea, a group of children with brave hearts, and a small maple tree sapling ... these elements shape the story of The Children's Tree of Terezin. During the worst days of the Holocaust, hope still found ways to thrive, even in the horror of a concentration camp. A council of Jewish prisoners at Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, known as Terezin, were determined to share their knowledge and their faith with the children of the camp. One teacher, Irma Lauscher, found a special way to bring hope to the camp through a little cutting of a maple tree. -- Book jacket.
When the Nazis invade Czechoslovakia in 1941, twelve-year-old Michael and his family are deported from Prague to the Terezin concentration camp, where his mother's will and ingenuity keep them from being transported to Auschwitz and certain death.
Hope triumphs over fear in this poignant and impactful true story of the Holocaust—a delicate introduction to World War Two history for older picture book readers. During World War Two, in the concentration camp Terezin, a group of Jewish children and their devoted teacher planted and nurtured a smuggled-in sapling. Over time fewer and fewer children were left to care for the little tree, but those who remained kept lovingly sharing their water with it. When the war finally ended and the prisoners were freed, the sapling had grown into a strong five-foot-tall maple. Nearly eighty years later the tree’s 600 descendants around the world are thriving . . . including one that was planted at New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage in 2021. Students will continue to care for it for generations to come, and the world will remember the brave teacher and children who never gave up nurturing a brighter future.
"Every historical fiction novel should strive to be this compelling, well-researched and just flat-out good." — Associated Press For fans of The Nightingale and The Handmaid's Tale, Cradles of the Reich uncovers a topic rarely explored in fiction: the Lebensborn project, a Nazi breeding program to create a so-called master race. Through thorough research and with deep empathy, this chilling historical novel goes inside one of the Lebensborn Society maternity homes that existed in several countries during World War II, where thousands of "racially fit" babies were bred and taken from their mothers to be raised as part of the new Germany. At the Heim Hochland maternity home in Bavaria, three women's lives coverage as they find themselves there under very different circumstances. Gundi is a pregnant university student from Berlin. An Aryan beauty, she's secretly a member of a resistance group. Hilde, only eighteen, is a true believer in the cause and is thrilled to carry a Nazi official's child. And Irma, a 44-year-old nurse, is desperate to build a new life for herself after personal devastation. Despite their opposing beliefs, all three have everything to lose as they begin to realize they are trapped within Hitler's terrifying scheme to build a Nazi-Aryan nation. A cautionary tale for modern times told in stunning detail, Cradles of the Reich uncovers a little-known Nazi atrocity but also carries an uplifting reminder of the power of women to set aside differences and work together in solidarity in the face of oppression. "Skillfully researched and told with great care and insight, here is a World War II story whose lessons should not—must not—be forgotten." — Susan Meissner, bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things
From 1942 to 1944, twelve thousand children passed through the Theresienstadt internment camp, near Prague, on their way to Auschwitz. Only a few hundred of them survived the war. In The Girls of Room 28, ten of these children—mothers and grandmothers today in their seventies—tell us how they did it. The Jews deported to Theresienstadt from countries all over Europe were aware of the fate that awaited them, and they decided that it was the young people who had the best chance to survive. Keeping these adolescents alive, keeping them whole in body, mind, and spirit, became the priority. They were housed separately, in dormitory-like barracks, where they had a greater chance of staying healthy and better access to food, and where counselors (young men and women who had been teachers and youth workers) created a disciplined environment despite the surrounding horrors. The counselors also made available to the young people the talents of an amazing array of world-class artists, musicians, and playwrights–European Jews who were also on their way to Auschwitz. Under their instruction, the children produced art, poetry, and music, and they performed in theatrical productions, most notably Brundibar, the legendary “children’s opera” that celebrates the triumph of good over evil. In the mid-1990s, German journalist Hannelore Brenner met ten of these child survivors—women in their late-seventies today, who reunite every year at a resort in the Czech Republic. Weaving her interviews with the women together with excerpts from diaries that were kept secretly during the war and samples of the art, music, and poetry created at Theresienstadt, Brenner gives us an unprecedented picture of daily life there, and of the extraordinary strength, sacrifice, and indomitable will that combined—in the girls and in their caretakers—to make survival possible.
A New York Times Critics’ Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biography From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family’s apartment building in Poland—and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as “The Killer.” A surprise discovery—that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance—material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
At Terezín, many children sang for the Nazi officials and the Red Cross. They were used as propaganda tools, between 1943 and 1944, to make the world believe that Hitler had given a "paradise" to the Jews. Only around 100 of the 15,000 innocent people who passed through this transit camp survived. Ela Stein Weissberger, deported at the age of 11, is one of the few survivors. In Hans Krása's opera Brundibár (The Bumblebee) performed at the camp, she played the role of the Cat, the rebellious animal who attacks the mustached monster in the hope of winning the war! Her poignant testimony gives voice once again to the courageous, hopeful children who left 4,500 drawings, diaries and poems at Terezín. Like an internal road movie, the author offers a parallel narrative—she looks back on her own family history, her search for Ela, her anecdotes from the shooting of a documentary film, and she speaks up for all children targeted by hatred. Writer, journalist, director and stage director, Henriette Chardak has written biographies of Kepler, Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci... and an investigation into the health effects of sweeteners (Le light c'est du lourd, Max Milo, 2018).
A New York Times Bestseller "A sacred reminder of what so many millions suffered, and only a few survived." —Adam Kirsch, New Republic In 1939, Helga Weiss was a young Jewish schoolgirl in Prague. As she endured the first waves of the Nazi invasion, she began to document her experiences in a diary. During her internment at the concentration camp of Terezín, Helga’s uncle hid her diary in a brick wall. Of the 15,000 children brought to Terezín and deported to Auschwitz, there were only one hundred survivors. Helga was one of them. Miraculously, she was able to recover her diary from its hiding place after the war. These pages reveal Helga’s powerful story through her own words and illustrations. Includes a special interview with Helga by translator Neil Bermel.
From 1942 - 1945, Paul (Pavel, in Czech) was a prisoner in the Terezin and Auschwitz concentration camps. He survived the camps, and the final Death March from Auschwitz. Pavel had been a violinist before the war, and after his escape his brother found a "not so new but nice" violin for Pavel to play. Pavel lost many members of his family in the camps, but a few survived. A descendent of one of those survivors inherited the violin and, many years later, became my violin teacher. This is how I came to play "Pavel's Violin." The violin itself is a beautiful Jakob Stainer model, built perhaps in the mid-1800s. In the novel, it is made by Stainer in 1670, and we trace its journey from Stainer's home in Absam, Austria, to the Prince-Bishop's Palace in Kromeriz, Moravia, to the Jewish community in the Moravian countryside, to the great synagogue at Olomouc, to Terezin, then Auschwitz, and finally to the Carpathian Mountain, where it finally becomes "Pavel's Violin." Along the way, the Violin is a metaphor for the human condition: our joys, fears, sorrows, hatred, loves, and our hope for a good future. "Pavel's Violin" is a work of historical fiction, a genre peculiar enough to be seriously misunderstood. Historical fiction is not literal history that has been fictionalized to the point that its details are not reliable news accounts of what happened. It is fiction inspired by historical events in order to convey truths which are deeper than literal. Historical fiction, at its best, serves as a metaphor that can draw a reader into a story as a first hand participant, rather than as a consumer of facts. This is what I have tried to do with the story of "Pavel's Violin." I hope you will not just learn about what happened, but that you will become part of the story, yourself. That you will stand beside Jakob atop Kartellerjochl, with Pavel in a cattle car transport on its way to Auschwitz, with Nurse Ilse and her children as Zyklon B pellets fall among them in the gas chamber. And more. I hope you will not only hear the Violin, but will experience the playing of it. The sound of its music under your left ear. The vibrations of the wood upon your chin and shoulder. Most of all, I hope you, too, will realize the compulsion of the story, and the obligation to recount it, in your own way, to others. This story is inspired by the memoir of Tommy Lustig, Pavel's son, "Children on Death Row," also available on Amazon. All author royalties from the sale of "Pavel's Violin" are donated to various Holocaust Memorial organizations including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Hololcaust Museum Houston, and the Whitwell Middle School Childrens Holocaust Memorial.
