Author: Magda Hellinger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982181249
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The “thought-provoking…must-read” (Ariana Neumann, author of When Time Stopped) memoir by a Holocaust survivor who saved an untold number of lives at Auschwitz through everyday acts of courage and kindness—in the vein of A Bookshop in Berlin and The Nazi Officer’s Wife. In March 1942, twenty-five-year-old kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger and nearly a thousand other young women were deported as some of the first Jews to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The SS soon discovered that by putting prisoners in charge of the day-to-day accommodation blocks, they could deflect attention away from themselves. Magda was one such prisoner selected for leadership and put in charge of hundreds of women in the notorious Experimental Block 10. She found herself constantly walking a dangerously fine line: saving lives while avoiding suspicion by the SS and risking execution. Through her inner strength and shrewd survival instincts, she was able to rise above the horror and cruelty of the camps and build pivotal relationships with the women under her watch, and even some of Auschwitz’s most notorious Nazi senior officers. Based on Magda’s personal account and completed by her daughter’s extensive research, this is “an unputdownable account of resilience and the power of compassion” (Booklist) in the face of indescribable evil.
The Nazis Knew My Name
Author: Magda Hellinger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982181249
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The “thought-provoking…must-read” (Ariana Neumann, author of When Time Stopped) memoir by a Holocaust survivor who saved an untold number of lives at Auschwitz through everyday acts of courage and kindness—in the vein of A Bookshop in Berlin and The Nazi Officer’s Wife. In March 1942, twenty-five-year-old kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger and nearly a thousand other young women were deported as some of the first Jews to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The SS soon discovered that by putting prisoners in charge of the day-to-day accommodation blocks, they could deflect attention away from themselves. Magda was one such prisoner selected for leadership and put in charge of hundreds of women in the notorious Experimental Block 10. She found herself constantly walking a dangerously fine line: saving lives while avoiding suspicion by the SS and risking execution. Through her inner strength and shrewd survival instincts, she was able to rise above the horror and cruelty of the camps and build pivotal relationships with the women under her watch, and even some of Auschwitz’s most notorious Nazi senior officers. Based on Magda’s personal account and completed by her daughter’s extensive research, this is “an unputdownable account of resilience and the power of compassion” (Booklist) in the face of indescribable evil.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982181249
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The “thought-provoking…must-read” (Ariana Neumann, author of When Time Stopped) memoir by a Holocaust survivor who saved an untold number of lives at Auschwitz through everyday acts of courage and kindness—in the vein of A Bookshop in Berlin and The Nazi Officer’s Wife. In March 1942, twenty-five-year-old kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger and nearly a thousand other young women were deported as some of the first Jews to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The SS soon discovered that by putting prisoners in charge of the day-to-day accommodation blocks, they could deflect attention away from themselves. Magda was one such prisoner selected for leadership and put in charge of hundreds of women in the notorious Experimental Block 10. She found herself constantly walking a dangerously fine line: saving lives while avoiding suspicion by the SS and risking execution. Through her inner strength and shrewd survival instincts, she was able to rise above the horror and cruelty of the camps and build pivotal relationships with the women under her watch, and even some of Auschwitz’s most notorious Nazi senior officers. Based on Magda’s personal account and completed by her daughter’s extensive research, this is “an unputdownable account of resilience and the power of compassion” (Booklist) in the face of indescribable evil.
Holocaust Memories
Author: Paul Davidovits
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789493231740
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Book Description
This Holocaust memoir began with an album of photographs, one of the few family possessions that survived WWII. After his mother's death the album passed on to Paul Davidovits, who became keenly aware that he was now the only person alive who recognized the people in the photographs, remembered how they were interconnected, knew about their journey through life. Davidovits now tells the stories of the inhabitants of this lost world, guiding us through his own childhood. He evocatively portrays the harrowing and traumatic unfolding of history, but also lingers on poignant moments of love, bravery, generosity and humor. Davidovits' stories are unique and finely honed, and while highly personal, their vivid depiction of survival and the determination of the human spirit - even in the face of barbarity and seemingly insurmountable odds - is universal and will remain relevant to every generation.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789493231740
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Book Description
This Holocaust memoir began with an album of photographs, one of the few family possessions that survived WWII. After his mother's death the album passed on to Paul Davidovits, who became keenly aware that he was now the only person alive who recognized the people in the photographs, remembered how they were interconnected, knew about their journey through life. Davidovits now tells the stories of the inhabitants of this lost world, guiding us through his own childhood. He evocatively portrays the harrowing and traumatic unfolding of history, but also lingers on poignant moments of love, bravery, generosity and humor. Davidovits' stories are unique and finely honed, and while highly personal, their vivid depiction of survival and the determination of the human spirit - even in the face of barbarity and seemingly insurmountable odds - is universal and will remain relevant to every generation.
Gatehouse to Hell
Author: Felix Opatowski
Publisher: Azrieli Series of Holocaust Su
ISBN: 9781897470268
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
"I was stubborn. I didn't want to stay in Auschwitz. I didn't want to go to the gas chambers. I didn't want to be cremated. I didn't want to die there, and I kept pushing back."
Publisher: Azrieli Series of Holocaust Su
ISBN: 9781897470268
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
"I was stubborn. I didn't want to stay in Auschwitz. I didn't want to go to the gas chambers. I didn't want to be cremated. I didn't want to die there, and I kept pushing back."
We Are Here
Author: Ellen Cassedy
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803240228
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Ellen Cassedy’s longing to recover the Yiddish she’d lost with her mother’s death eventually led her to Lithuania, once the “Jerusalem of the North.” As she prepared for her journey, her uncle, sixty years after he’d left Lithuania in a boxcar, made a shocking disclosure about his wartime experience, and an elderly man from her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. How does a nation—how do successor generations, moral beings—overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in We Are Here, one woman’s exploration of Lithuania’s Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own family’s place in it. Digging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her; interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to “speak to a Jew” before he dies; discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation—Cassedy finds that it’s not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them.
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803240228
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Ellen Cassedy’s longing to recover the Yiddish she’d lost with her mother’s death eventually led her to Lithuania, once the “Jerusalem of the North.” As she prepared for her journey, her uncle, sixty years after he’d left Lithuania in a boxcar, made a shocking disclosure about his wartime experience, and an elderly man from her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. How does a nation—how do successor generations, moral beings—overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in We Are Here, one woman’s exploration of Lithuania’s Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own family’s place in it. Digging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her; interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to “speak to a Jew” before he dies; discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation—Cassedy finds that it’s not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them.
A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz
Author: Göran Rosenberg
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1590516087
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Book Description
This shattering memoir by a journalist about his father’s attempt to survive the aftermath of Auschwitz in a small industrial town in Sweden won the prestigious August Prize On August 2, 1947 a young man gets off a train in a small Swedish town to begin his life anew. Having endured the ghetto of Lodz, the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the slave camps and transports during the final months of Nazi Germany, his final challenge is to survive the survival. In this intelligent and deeply moving book, Göran Rosenberg returns to his own childhood to tell the story of his father: walking at his side, holding his hand, trying to get close to him. It is also the story of the chasm between the world of the child, permeated by the optimism, progress, and collective oblivion of postwar Sweden, and the world of the father, darkened by the long shadows of the past.
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1590516087
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Book Description
This shattering memoir by a journalist about his father’s attempt to survive the aftermath of Auschwitz in a small industrial town in Sweden won the prestigious August Prize On August 2, 1947 a young man gets off a train in a small Swedish town to begin his life anew. Having endured the ghetto of Lodz, the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the slave camps and transports during the final months of Nazi Germany, his final challenge is to survive the survival. In this intelligent and deeply moving book, Göran Rosenberg returns to his own childhood to tell the story of his father: walking at his side, holding his hand, trying to get close to him. It is also the story of the chasm between the world of the child, permeated by the optimism, progress, and collective oblivion of postwar Sweden, and the world of the father, darkened by the long shadows of the past.
I Want You to Know We're Still Here
Author: Esther Safran Foer
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0525576002
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS FINALIST • “Part personal quest, part testament, and all thoughtfully, compassionately written.”—The Washington Post “Esther Safran Foer is a force of nature: a leader of the Jewish people, the matriarch of America’s leading literary family, an eloquent defender of the proposition that memory matters. And now, a riveting memoirist.”—Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching. So when Esther’s mother casually mentions an astonishing revelation—that her father had a previous wife and daughter, both killed in the Holocaust—Esther resolves to find out who they were, and how her father survived. Armed with only a black-and-white photo and a hand-drawn map, she travels to Ukraine, determined to find the shtetl where her father hid during the war. What she finds reshapes her identity and gives her the opportunity to finally mourn. I Want You to Know We’re Still Here is the poignant and deeply moving story not only of Esther’s journey but of four generations living in the shadow of the Holocaust. They are four generations of survivors, storytellers, and memory keepers, determined not just to keep the past alive but to imbue the present with life and more life.
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0525576002
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS FINALIST • “Part personal quest, part testament, and all thoughtfully, compassionately written.”—The Washington Post “Esther Safran Foer is a force of nature: a leader of the Jewish people, the matriarch of America’s leading literary family, an eloquent defender of the proposition that memory matters. And now, a riveting memoirist.”—Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching. So when Esther’s mother casually mentions an astonishing revelation—that her father had a previous wife and daughter, both killed in the Holocaust—Esther resolves to find out who they were, and how her father survived. Armed with only a black-and-white photo and a hand-drawn map, she travels to Ukraine, determined to find the shtetl where her father hid during the war. What she finds reshapes her identity and gives her the opportunity to finally mourn. I Want You to Know We’re Still Here is the poignant and deeply moving story not only of Esther’s journey but of four generations living in the shadow of the Holocaust. They are four generations of survivors, storytellers, and memory keepers, determined not just to keep the past alive but to imbue the present with life and more life.
The Boy on the Wooden Box
Author: Leon Leyson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471119939
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 139
Book Description
Leon Leyson (born Leib Lezjon) was only ten years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and his family was forced to relocate to the Krakow ghetto. With incredible luck, perseverance and grit, Leyson was able to survive the sadism of the Nazis, including that of the demonic Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszow, the concentration camp outside Krakow. Ultimately, it was the generosity and cunning of one man, a man named Oskar Schindler, who saved Leon Leyson's life, and the lives of his mother, his father, and two of his four siblings, by adding their names to his list of workers in his factory - a list that became world renowned: Schindler's List. This, the only memoir published by a former Schindler's List child, perfectly captures the innocence of a small boy who goes through the unthinkable. Most notable is the lack of rancour, the lack of venom, and the abundance of dignity in Mr Leyson's telling. The Boy on the Wooden Boxis a legacy of hope, a memoir unlike anything you've ever read.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471119939
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 139
Book Description
Leon Leyson (born Leib Lezjon) was only ten years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and his family was forced to relocate to the Krakow ghetto. With incredible luck, perseverance and grit, Leyson was able to survive the sadism of the Nazis, including that of the demonic Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszow, the concentration camp outside Krakow. Ultimately, it was the generosity and cunning of one man, a man named Oskar Schindler, who saved Leon Leyson's life, and the lives of his mother, his father, and two of his four siblings, by adding their names to his list of workers in his factory - a list that became world renowned: Schindler's List. This, the only memoir published by a former Schindler's List child, perfectly captures the innocence of a small boy who goes through the unthinkable. Most notable is the lack of rancour, the lack of venom, and the abundance of dignity in Mr Leyson's telling. The Boy on the Wooden Boxis a legacy of hope, a memoir unlike anything you've ever read.
And Peace Never Came
Author: Elisabeth M. Raab
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889202923
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Raab recounts being deported from Hungary with her parents and daughter in 1944 at age 23, her experience in the concentration camp at Auschwitz, and life as her family's sole survivor after being liberated a year later. No index. Canadian card order number: C96-931983-5. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889202923
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Raab recounts being deported from Hungary with her parents and daughter in 1944 at age 23, her experience in the concentration camp at Auschwitz, and life as her family's sole survivor after being liberated a year later. No index. Canadian card order number: C96-931983-5. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors
Author: Bernice Eisenstein
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771030649
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors distills, through text and drawings, including panels in the comic-book format, Bernice Eisenstein’s memories of her 1950s’ childhood in Toronto with her Yiddish-speaking parents, whose often unspoken experiences of war were nevertheless always present. The memories also draw on inherited fragments of stories about relatives lost to the war whom she never met. Eisenstein’s parents met in Auschwitz, near the end of the war and were married shortly after Liberation. The book began to take root in her imagination several years ago, almost a decade after her father’s death. With poignancy and searing honesty, Eisenstein explores with ineffable sadness and bittersweet humour her childhood growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust. But more than a book about the Holocaust and its far-reaching shadows, this moving, visually ravishing graphic memoir speaks universally about memory, loss, and recovery of the past. No one who sees this book will not be deeply affected by its beautiful, highly evocative writing and brilliantly original and haunting artwork created by the author. I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors is destined to become a classic. “I am lost in memory. It is not a place that has been mapped, fixed by coordinates of longitude and latitude, whereby I can retrace a step and come to the same place again. Each time is different. . . . “While my father was alive, I searched to find his face among those documented photographs of survivors of Auschwitz — actually, photos from any camp would do. If I could see him staring out through barbed wire, I thought I would then know how to remember him, know what he was made to become, and then possibly know what he might have been. All my life, I’ve looked for more in order to fill in the parts of my father that had gone missing. . . .” —Excerpts from I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771030649
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors distills, through text and drawings, including panels in the comic-book format, Bernice Eisenstein’s memories of her 1950s’ childhood in Toronto with her Yiddish-speaking parents, whose often unspoken experiences of war were nevertheless always present. The memories also draw on inherited fragments of stories about relatives lost to the war whom she never met. Eisenstein’s parents met in Auschwitz, near the end of the war and were married shortly after Liberation. The book began to take root in her imagination several years ago, almost a decade after her father’s death. With poignancy and searing honesty, Eisenstein explores with ineffable sadness and bittersweet humour her childhood growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust. But more than a book about the Holocaust and its far-reaching shadows, this moving, visually ravishing graphic memoir speaks universally about memory, loss, and recovery of the past. No one who sees this book will not be deeply affected by its beautiful, highly evocative writing and brilliantly original and haunting artwork created by the author. I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors is destined to become a classic. “I am lost in memory. It is not a place that has been mapped, fixed by coordinates of longitude and latitude, whereby I can retrace a step and come to the same place again. Each time is different. . . . “While my father was alive, I searched to find his face among those documented photographs of survivors of Auschwitz — actually, photos from any camp would do. If I could see him staring out through barbed wire, I thought I would then know how to remember him, know what he was made to become, and then possibly know what he might have been. All my life, I’ve looked for more in order to fill in the parts of my father that had gone missing. . . .” —Excerpts from I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors
Plunder
Author: Menachem Kaiser
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1328506460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
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.
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1328506460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
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.