Deep in the Dutch Veluwe woods lies a secret that frustrates the Germans. Convinced that Jews are hiding close by they can find no proof. For nearly 2 years, the inhabitants of Berkenhout stay safe, helped by the local community. All it takes is one small fatal slip to change the course of all their lives for ever.
'Based on eye-witness accounts, Robert Pike's moving book vividly depicts the lives of the villagers who were caught up in the tragedy of Oradour-sur-Glane and brings their experiences to our attention for the first time.' - Hanna Diamond, author of Fleeing Hitler On 10 June 1944, four days after Allied forces landed in Normandy, the picturesque village of Oradour-sur-Glane in the rural heart of France was destroyed by an armoured SS Panzer division. Six hundred and forty-three men, women and children were murdered in the nation's worst wartime atrocity. Today, Oradour is remembered as a 'martyred village' and its ruins are preserved, but the stories of its inhabitants lie buried under the rubble of the intervening decades. Silent Village gathers the powerful testimonies of survivors in the first account of Oradour as it was both before the tragedy and in its aftermath. A lost way of life is vividly recollected in this unique insight into the traditions, loves and rivalries of a typical village in occupied France. Why this peaceful community was chosen for extermination has remained a mystery. Putting aside contemporary hearsay, Nazi rhetoric and revisionist theories, in this updated third edition Robert Pike returns to the archival evidence to narrate the tragedy as it truly happened – and give voice to the anguish of those left behind.
Available again for the first time in decades, this jewel of a memoir is the poignant story of a young Jewish girl growing up in a Polish farm village, from the peaceful early 1930s through the tragic war years, and finding safe harbor at last. “Deeply moving”—Elie Wiesel “A tone poem evocative of a vanished world”—Chaim Potok In her own words and with her own beautiful paintings and drawings, artist Toby Knobel Fluek (1926–2011) lovingly unfurls a unique view of Jewish life. She introduces us to her village, to her family, to the people among whom they lived; she shows us how customs and holidays were observed; and, with both feeling and restraint, she illustrates how this long-enduring way of life was shattered by World War II. She depicts her family’s experiences through Russian occupation and the devastation wreaked by the Nazis—and, finally, her new beginning in America. New to this edition is a foreword by Rakhmiel Peltz, PhD, PhD, Founding Director of the Judaic Studies Program at Drexel University, which he led for twenty years.
One hundred kilometers from Seville, there is a small village, Marinaleda, that for the last thirty years has been at the center of a long struggle to create a communist utopia. In a story reminiscent of the Asterix books, Dan Hancox explores the reality behind the community where no one has a mortgage, sport is played in the Che Guevara stadium and there are monthly "Red Sundays" where everyone works together to clean up the neighbourhood. In particular he tells the story of the village mayor, Sanchez Gordillo, who in 2012 became a household name in Spain after leading raids on local supermarkets to feed the Andalucian unemployed.
This book is about Gao Village, in Jiangxi province, where the author was born and brought up, leaving when he was twenty-one to study English at Xiamen University. Since emigrating to Australia in 1990, he has returned every year to Gao Village, where his brother still lives. Several accounts of village life in China have been published, but all have been by Western or urban Chinese scholars. Mobo Gao's account is in every sense one from the inside. Though written as an academic work, it does not eschew personal stories and experiences relevant to the themes addressed. These cover a forty-year period and fall into four distinct themes; the village before and after land reform; the commune system; the dismantling of the communes; and the unfolding impact of the market economy, including increased migration to urban areas, from the late 1980s onwards.
The personal stories of the Gao villagers demonstrate and are related to changes in China. This is a close study of Gao Village twenty years after the author, an anthropologist and native of Gao village, wrote his original ethnography Gao Village. It combines ethnographic analysis, personal vignettes, and a number of fascinating stories, which presents a convincing yet complex picture of how Gao villagers interact with the outside world. With his sympathetic and insider's approach, the author argues that rural Chinese display great entrepreneurship and inner strength of selfimprovement; they are active contributors to China's economic boom.