100 Books Like Things We Couldn't Say

When I was secretly working as an escort, living and working ‘underground’, and came upon this book, I was immediately drawn in because here, too, despite and thankfully many different circumstances, was a woman witnessing and taking notes not only to keep herself sane but also to bear witness to the real events as they affected women in this terrible and extraordinary moment in history.

Instead of events and general washes of the main players, as is so often what we get when studying a period of history, here was a true, authentic voice of the actual effects and aftermath of the war on the people living through it. And she wrote it as it was being lived! …” with nothing but a pencil stub, writing by candlelight since Berlin had no electricity…”

As the author, she chose to remain anonymous to protect herself. This choice resonated with me until… show more.

Though this book was first published in 1971, its message of courage in the face of tyranny and forgiveness in response to evil remains stunning to this day.

I have read this book twice, twenty years apart, and both times I came away with a sense of awe that because of their strong faith, Corrie ten Boom and her family were willing to risk their own lives to protect those who were being hunted down by the Nazis.

Even when caught and sent to a concentration camp where they endured unspeakable cruelty, Corrie ten Boom and her sister, Betsie, did not lose their faith but instead ministered to the women around them.

I can only hope that I would have the same courage if I were in Corrie’s shoes.   

This book provided an insight into WWII in Italy. It is captivating and informative.

It tells the story of Pino, a brave 17-year-old who not only spied on the Germans who occupied his homeland but also crossed the Alps many times to save Jewish people. Full of mystery and intrigue, it was hard to put down until the end.

I love this book because it breathes WWII in a way I’ve never read. This book is a story about the siege of Leningrad. I loved the imagery captured by a curator of the Hermitage, skillfully interwoven with a back story in the United States.

As the Hermitage is dismantled in anticipation of the German bombs, the women commit the placement of the precious artwork to memory in images and story form. The tension rises with the scarcity of food and fuel and the loss of friends.

It is a love story told in imagery and heartbreak: an excellent emotional capture and an example for Sixty Blades of Grass.

This is the extraordinary memoir of Irene, a young Catholic woman from Poland who was forced to work for the Russians and the Nazis. Her compassion began as a young child when she rescued and healed injured wild animals.  She later trained as a nurse. What began as small, very risky acts to smuggle food to Jews in the Polish ghetto, soon turned into much more perilous endeavors. She ultimately singlehandedly hid and fed 12 Jews in the basement of a Nazi Major’s home while she was caring for him. Irene served as a resistance fighter and a partisan who hid in the woods with other saboteurs. This is a gripping, beautifully written story of the bravery and brilliance of a 20-year-old rescuer, recounted in her own words. 

Social worker, Irene Sendler went into the Warsaw Ghetto, her job ostensibly as a public health specialist. The Jewish inmates allowed her to take their children out of the ghetto and to safety. She ultimately rescued several thousand children, down sewers, through abandoned buildings, and sometimes in her large medical bag. She kept the names of all rescued children in a glass bottle under an apple tree so that, at the end of the war, those Jewish mothers who survived would be reunited with their children. Her heroism is inspiring.

Anti-semitism is on the rise again, but not many kids’ books provide examples of how to stand against it. I was excited to discover this little-known story of how Arabs did just that. During the Nazi occupation of France, Muslims used the Grand Mosque of Paris to hide Jews and smuggle them out to freedom, right in front of oblivious Nazi soldiers. Arabs and Jews are so often portrayed as enemies, but this book defies that stereotype as well. 

In 1938, a young Englishman named Nicholas Winton canceled his ski vacation. Instead, he went to Prague to help the Jewish children seeking refuge there from the Nazis. Up until the start of the war in 1939, he made arrangements to send nearly 700 children to safety in England. He did everything from raising funds and locating foster families, to obtaining travel documents—even forging them when necessary. Then he went home and never told anyone what he had done. Fifty years later, his wife found all the records he’d kept and she tracked down as many of those children as she could. A now-famous video clip from a British TV show, “That’s Life,” shows an elderly and very surprised Nicholas as dozens of those he saved stand up in the audience to thank him. Among them was Vera Diamontova, who was just eleven years old when Nicholas saved her life.… show more.

Miep Gies was one of the people who hid Anne Frank, her family, and four friends in the Secret Annex in Amsterdam in 1942.

At great risk, four of Otto Frank’s employees secured food stamps from the underground and took care of the hiders for an astonishing two years and one month before they were betrayed. Gies’s book gives a real sense of what it was like to live under enemy occupation when it was impossible to trust anyone.

“We were no longer keeping silent. We had lost the habit of speech. Do you understand the difference?” she once said. She didn’t consider herself heroic for helping the Franks. “It was simple. You were asked. You said yes.”

Just because you are a good person, does not mean that those who occupy your social class are not equally good people. It often takes personal sacrifice, and a willingness to face personal risk, in order to help those who are  deserving.

Even if it means you may be found out and punished for your good deeds.