I’m a German History professor who focuses on the Holocaust, but I’ve been educating myself on the topic since 5th grade, when a friend suggested some children’s literature on the Holocaust. So, I guess this is a topic that has interested me for some thirty years now. I can’t stop asking why, I can’t stop reading, and I can’t stop educating, especially as Holocaust denial and antisemitism are on the rise. History, in general, can teach us so much about who we are and who we have the potential to become. The Holocaust is a prime example of what happens when humanity fails to achieve its potential.
With a narrative of just over 650 pages, this is thebook for the reader out there who wants it all: the names, the dates, the facts, the figures, the individual experience, and the analysis, all wrapped up in an engrossing, readable narrative. Friedländer’s impeccable scholarship speaks to the historian in me, but, more importantly, it speaks to the humanity in me. When I sat down to read this second volume, I wasn’t struck by how thick it was. I was struck by the magnitude of tragedy that the book represented. For the reader who has read widely on the Holocaust, in particular, this book will answer many of your questions. What appeals to me most, though, is the historical data never obscures the victims or their experiences.
A magisterial history of the Jews in Nazi Germany and the regime's policies towards them in the years prior to World War II and the Holocaust. Written by arguably the world's leading scholar on the subject.
Himself a survivor, Friedlander has been a leading figure in Holocaust studies for decades and this book represents a definitive summing up of his research and that of hundreds of other historians.
NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWS: THE YEARS OF PERSECUTION is perhaps the richest examination of the subject yet written, and, crucially, one that never loses sight of the experiences of individuals in…
I’ve been drawn to the Holocaust ever since a school project in the tenth grade. Later, as I worked to become a professional musician, the passion to learn more about the topic never left me. When I was first asked to perform some music of the Holocaust, the reaction of the audience (tears) and my own realization that through the power of this music, I could return a voice to so many who had their own voices so cruelly silenced changed my life. To date, I have interviewed multiple survivors of the Holocaust. Many became very dear friends, and my life has been infinitely enriched by knowing them.
I love this book because, long ago, it was one of the books that sparked my initial interest in the Second World War and the Holocaust. Through Wouk’s vivid and wonderful story of a fictional family living through the period, he also unexpectedly provided me with a terrific foundation of well-researched historical knowledge.
I had read the prequel a few years earlier and when I discovered this book was coming out (as a poor student, I couldn’t afford it), I eagerly asked for it for Christmas. When the big day arrived, I gleefully tore open the present and spent the next two days reading it nonstop, ignoring all else.
A masterpiece of historical fiction and "a journey of extraordinary riches" (New York Times Book Review), War and Remembrance stands as perhaps the great novel of America's "Greatest Generation."
These two classic works capture the tide of world events even as they unfold the compelling tale of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.
The multimillion-copy bestsellers that capture all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of the Second World War -- and that constitute Wouk's crowning achievement -- are available for the first time in trade paperback.
I am an accidental emigrant now living in Auckland, New Zealand. I arrived with my then husband and our three sons in 1990 for a three-year spell. And here I am with two sons now settled in New Zealand and one in Sweden and me in a very awkward split position between the two. I am also an accidental author as my first career was in law and finance. I am presently working on my seventh novel. My novels are what my publishers call literary fiction and they often involve characters who, like me, have no fixed abode.
Based on a true story, this is an important, thought-provoking book in these times of mass migrations around the globe. The story follows the thirteen-year-old boy Otto Ullman’s journey from Vienna to Trelleborg in southern Sweden. He is sent by his adoring Jewish parents as the persecution of Jews escalates in Austria during the lead-up to the second world war. The letters between Otto and his family, other relatives, and friends left behind are difficult to read. The efforts they all make to keep a brave face in spite of intolerable circumstances are utterly moving. Amongst the letters are official Swedish documents revealing the extent of racism and prejudice in Sweden. There are many similar stories. But I find this one particularly heartbreaking.
Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and a Notable Translated Book of the Year by World Literature Today
Winner of the August Prize, the story of the complicated long-distance relationship between a Jewish child and his forlorn Viennese parents after he was sent to Sweden in 1939, and the unexpected friendship the boy developed with the future founder of IKEA, a Nazi activist.
Otto Ullmann, a Jewish boy, was sent from Austria to Sweden right before the outbreak of World War II. Despite the huge Swedish resistance to Jewish refugees, thirteen-year-old Otto was granted permission to…
I grew up on Chicago’s home front during WW2. President Roosevelt wanted everyone—adults and children—to do their part for the war effort. So we neighborhood kids formed a Victory club, where we marched around singing, “Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor,” and other patriotic songs. And though we had fun, we understood the meaning of the gold stars in the windows, and knew that terrible things were happening on the other side of the world. There are so many wonderful books set during this time period, and I can never read enough of them. These books, along with my memories, are what inspire me to write historical fiction of my own.
It would be hard to find a better, more beautiful picture book to introduce young children to the Holocaust. The lyrical prose and haunting illustrations tell the story of a young Jewish girl and her older sister who have escaped the ghetto and live as non-Jewish Poles. Now they’re part of the resistance and devise ways to smuggle food into the ghetto. The latest plan involves a train carrying resistance members with suitcases filled with food to be smuggled in. But word comes that the Gestapo has learned of the plan and is waiting at the station with their dogs. The girl and her sister, along with their friends, quickly gather up the many cats in Krasinski Square and let them loose just as the passengers pour out of the train. Chaos erupts. Dogs chase the cats, the soldiers chase the dogs, and the smuggled food reaches the ghetto walls.…
Newbery medalist Karen Hesse tells a harrowing, true story about life in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII.
When Karen Hesse came upon a short article about cats out-foxing the Gestapo at the train station in Warsaw during WWII, she couldn't get the story out of her mind. The result is this stirring account of a Jewish girl's involvement in the Resistance. At once terrifying and soulful, this fictional account, borne of meticulous research, is a testament to history and to our passionate will to survive, as only Newbery Medalist Karen Hesse can write it.
I’m a Cuban refugee. I came with my family in the early 1960s a few years after the Cuban revolution. I served 4 years in the U.S. Marines. I went to school and in 1982 married. Both of my daughters became college professors. The younger works for the CUNY system, while the oldest teaches at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. I have always had a passion for modern European history. It grew from an interest in military history when I was a Marine.
Professor Theo J. Schulte has written a well-documented, well researched study of the Ostheer(German Army in the East) covering the Russian campaign.
I loved this book because, like almost all of the recommendations that I have listed, it is a single volume with a concise yet thorough enough study of the German Army and its connection to the Genocide and Democide in the Soviet Union.
The book taught me that there was a reason why, during the war, out of the approximately twenty-five million Soviet citizens who died in the war, thirteen million were civilians. The reason, Schulte points to, is the purposeful targeting of the civilian population for murder (Democide).
The book made me realize that the study of Nazi policies in the East should not only include the Holocaust, but should also cover the “other” deaths that occurred as well.
Whereas it is now generally accepted that the Wehrmacht leadership became deeply implicated in Nazi war crimes and atrocities in occupied Soviet Russia during the Second World War, little is known about the responses of the lower ranks to these policies. This study of two rear areas examines these responses in respect of such issues as POW treatment, partisan warfare, relations with the civilian populations, economic policy and attitudes towards the SS. Above all it moves into the territory of the social history of the Wehrmacht, based on documents and statistical data.
I loved this story because it showed me insights of the terrible existence of the prisoners at Auschwitz.
Iturbe details the food and lack thereof, the clothing and lack thereof, the beds and lack thereof. But also he showed how they managed to survive on their own terms in some ways. Knowing that this young adult historical fiction is based on the life of a survivor of Auschwitz made reading it all the more compelling and often eye-opening.
The main character, 14-year-old Dita, is both endearing and strong thus becoming the perfect navigator through the harsh details of life in an internment camp. I highly recommend reading this story.
Fourteen-year-old Dita is one of the many imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken, along with her mother and father, from the Terezin ghetto in Prague, Dita is adjusting to the constant terror that is life in the camp. When Jewish leader Freddy Hirsch asks Dita to take charge of the eight precious volumes the prisoners have managed to sneak past the guards, she agrees. And so Dita becomes the librarian of Auschwitz.
Out of one of the darkest chapters of human history comes this extraordinary story of courage and hope.
I am a member of a generation that wasn’t supposed to be born. My parents were Hungarian Holocaust survivors and I was born amidst the fragments of European Jewry that remained. As a psychotherapist, I have specialized in helping people navigate the multigenerational reverberations of the Holocaust. Having a witness to your own experience, in therapy and through books, provides comfort, understanding, and hope.
I have read many moving memoirs by survivors and members of the second generation like myself. This one by the Swedish journalist son of a Polish survivor is like no other. I could hardly breathe while reading it, or after I finished it. Gripping, poetic, and calmly devastating, the author recreates his father’s Holocaust journey through family documents and historical research, trying to imagine what exactly his father experienced. And then the devastating aftermath, as his father attempts to rebuild his shattered life. “Luck, chance, and freak are the stones with which every road from Auschwitz are paved,” the author tells us.
On the 2nd of August 1947 a young man gets off a train in a small Swedish town. He has survived the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz, and the harrowing slave camps and transports during the final months of Nazi Germany. Now he has to learn to live with his memories.
In this intelligent and deeply moving book, Goeran Rosenberg returns to his own childhood in order to tell his father's story. It is also the story of the chasm that soon opens between the world of the child, suffused with the optimism, progress and collective oblivion of post-war Sweden, and the…
As a descendant of Jewish refugees, from pogroms in Russia and from Nazi persecution in Germany, I grew up with stories of war, exile, and loss. As a writer, these themes have been very important for me, not only in the series of four books about Stephie and Nellie, but also in a novel for adults and a picture book for younger children. As a reader, I am interested in stories that deal with the same themes – stories that may be set in the past, the present, or the future. As a mother and grandmother, I know that good books can help us talk to our young about the most difficult matters.
"It was like living on a desert island. Instead of the sea, there were houses and people around me." Aleks, aged 11, uses a metaphor fetched from his favorite book, Robinson Crusoe, to describe his own struggle for survival. But his "island" is a ruined house in the ghetto, where he hides after having been separated from his father during a raid by the Nazis. Just as resourceful and inventive as his literary role model, Aleks manages to fend for himself while hoping for his father to return.
Uri Orlev, himself a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto and Bergen-Belsen, succeeds in combining a classic adventure story with a realistic narrative of the Holocaust. I don't know how he does it, but I know that his book is a masterpiece.
During World War II a Jewish boy is left on his own for months in a ruined house in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he must learn all the tricks of survival under constantly life-threatening conditions.
I received my B.S. in geology and spent my career in commercial banking. How did I go from banking to becoming an author? I learned to write as a banker back in the “good old” days when the loan officer had to write their own credit memorandum. I enjoyed it so much I told myself, “One day, I'm going to write a book.” Then I found a book called Walks Through Lost Paris by Leonard Pitt. As my wife and I walked through the streets of Paris, I said, “I can write a book like this.” And so I did. We're about to publish our sixth book in an anticipated series of nine.
Studying the history of the German occupation of France must include a knowledge of Gestapo history and its crimes against humanity. This book is an introductory overview of the German security forces (RSHA) and in particular, Amt IV, or the Gestapo. The book focuses on the Gestapo forces in Paris and how they interacted with other security units including the Sicherheitdienst (SD), or Nazi political intelligence agency (Amt VI).
The author was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1944 after he was caught as a saboteur in the Combat resistance movement. During his post-war career, Delarue was called as a prosecution witness at Klaus Barbie’s trial, and he was assigned to investigate the French war criminal, Paul Touvier. I recommend this book to anyone who needs an overview of the Gestapo from Berlin to Paris.
From 1933 to 1945, the Gestapo was Nazi Germany's chief instrument of counter-espionage, political suppression, and terror. Jacques Delarue, a saboteur arrested by the Nazis in occupied France, chronicles how the land of Beethoven elevated sadism to a fine art. The Gestapo: A History of Horror draws upon Delarue's interviews with ex-Gestapo agents to deliver a multi-layered history of the force whose work included killing student resisters, establishing Aryan eugenic unions, and implementing the Final Solution. This is a probing look at the Gestapo and the fanatics and megalomaniacs who made it such a successful and heinous organization-Barbie, Eichmann, Himmler,…
The Whale Surfaces follows a daughter of Holocaust survivors who tries to deal with trans-generational trauma.
From the age of eleven to 22, she struggles to be ‘normal’ and to conceal the demons haunting her. Her sensitivity to her parents’ past and to injustices everywhere prevents her from enjoying life.…
I’ve always loved history and have written four novels set in the past. Maybe I was drawn to the past because I partly grew up in Bath–a city where you seem to be living in the eighteenth century. But recent history tells us who we are now, and I’ve always wanted to deal with the subject of the Holocaust since, at the age of thirteen, I came across a book about it in my town’s public library. At that time, nobody talked about it, and I was traumatized by it. How could human beings do such things? I think puzzling over that is partly why I became a writer.
This is a vivid and gripping true account of how a brilliant Polish Jewish pianist survived by a fluke the Nazi mass-murder of Warsaw’s Jews in which his parents and three siblings died. The author hid in the ruins of Warsaw through two winters without heating and eating only scraps of food he managed to scavenge. Near death, he was, almost unbelievably, found and helped by a German SS officer who had heard him playing a battered piano.
The book shows humanity at both its worst and its best. The film by Roman Polanski is brilliant, but this memoir is even more powerful.
The powerful and bestselling memoir of a young Jewish pianist who survived the war in Warsaw against all odds. Made into a Bafta and Oscar-winning film.
'You can learn more about human nature from this brief account of the survival of one man throughout the war years in the devastated city of Warsaw than from several volumes of the average encyclopaedia' Independent on Sunday
'We are drawn in to share his surprise and then disbelief at the horrifying progress of events, all conveyed with an understated intimacy and dailiness that render them painfully close - riveting' Observer
