He has endured more than any child ever should, but now he must survive Block 66.
January, 1945. 14-year-old Moshe Kessler steps off the train at Buchenwald concentration camp with several hundred other children. Having endured the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, lost touch with his entire family, and survived the death march in the freezing European winter, Moshe has seen more than his share of tragedy.
At Buchenwald, the new arrivals are assigned to their barracks. Kinder Block 66 is to be Moshe's new home, but he doesn't yet realize just how significant this placing will turn out to be. For just a short time later, the Germans decide to destroy the camp and send its remaining inmates to the death march once more - but they are not prepared for Buchenwald's secret resistance, which rises up with one mission: to protect the camp's children from harm.
This is the incredible true story of Moshe Kessler and Block 66 - the children's block that was at the forefront of one of the most shocking and inspiring stories of Holocaust survival.
National Jewish Book Award finalist and one of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2024
A lost classic of Holocaust literature translated for the first time--from journalist, poet and survivor József DebreczeniLong before their country officially joined the war, American aid workers were active in rescue efforts across Europe. Two such Americans were Martha and Waitstill Sharp, who were originally sent to Prague as part of a relief effort but turned immediately to helping Jews and dissidents after the 1939 invasion by Germany.
They were not the only ones. Renowned historian Debórah Dwork follows the story of rescue workers in five major cities as the refugee crisis expanded to Vilna, Shanghai, Marseille, and Lisbon. Followed by Nazi agents, spiriting people across borders, they learned secrecy.
Others negotiated with government representatives, like Laura Margolis, who worked with the Japanese, to get enough food and warm shelter for the refugees in Shanghai. Yet, the women also often faced lack of support from their agencies; if part of a couple, they fought to get paid even at a low salary despite working as long and hard as their husbands.
Moving and revelatory, Saints and Liars illuminates the unpredictable circumstances and often fast-changing historical events with which these aid workers contended, while revealing the moral questions they encountered and the devastating decisions they had to make.
Drawing on a multitude of archival documents, from letters to diaries and memos, Dwork offers us a rare glimpse into the lives of individuals who--at times with their organizations' backing, but sometimes against their directives--sought to help people find safe haven from persecution.
Eger tenía dieciséis años cuando los nazis invadieron su pueblo de Hungría y se la llevaron con el resto de su familia a Auschwitz. Al pisar el campo, sus padres fueron enviados a la cámara de gas y ella permaneció junto a su hermana, pendiente de una muerte segura. Pero bailar El Danubio azul para Mengele salvó su vida, y a partir de entonces empezó una nueva lucha por la supervivencia. Primero en los campos de exterminio, luego en la Checoslovaquia tomada por los comunistas y, finalmente, en Estados Unidos, donde acabaría convirtiéndose en discípula de Viktor Frankl. Fue en ese momento, tras décadas ocultando su pasado, cuando se dio cuenta de la necesidad de curar sus heridas, de hablar del horror que había vivido y de perdonar como camino a la sanación.
Su mensaje es claro: tenemos la capacidad de escapar de las prisiones que construimos en nuestras mentes y podemos elegir ser libres, sean cuales sean las circunstancias de nuestra vida.
Este libro es un regalo para la humanidad. Una de esas historias únicas y eternas que nunca quieres terminar de leer y que te cambian la vida para siempre. Desmond Tutu, premio Nobel de la Paz
From an award-winning historian comes a fresh analysis of the rise of Nazi extremism, how such thinking gained popularity, and why it is vital to fight burgeoning extremist movements today
How could the SS have committed the crimes they did? How were the killers who shot Jews at close quarters able to perpetrate this horror? Why did commandants of concentration and death camps willingly--and often enthusiastically--oversee mass murder? How could ordinary Germans have tolerated the removal of the Jews? In The Nazi Mind, bestselling historian Laurence Rees seeks answers to some of the most perplexing questions surrounding the Second World War and the Holocaust. Ultimately, he delves into the darkness to explain how and why these people were capable of committing the worst crimes in the history of the world. From the fringe politics of the 1920s to the electoral triumph and mass mobilization of the 1930s, and from the Holocaust through to the regime's eventual demise, Rees charts the rise and fall of Nazi mentalities--including the conditions that allowed such a violent ideology to flourish and the sophisticated propaganda effort that sustained it. Using previously unpublished testimony from former Nazis and those who grew up in the Nazi system, and in-depth insights based on the latest research of psychologists, The Nazi Mind brings fresh understanding to one of the most appalling regimes in history.Is there a soul that outlives the body? Could that soul come back to a new body carrying the memories of the former? Is there any evidence that makes reincarnation not only plausible but likely? Through 100 first-person stories, author Sara Rigler introduces readers to people from all over the world whose experiences defy rational explanation - unless they are, as they claim to be, reincarnated souls from the Holocaust.
Beautifully written and compellingly argued, Sara Yoheved Rigler's groundbreaking book is a significant contribution to our understanding of how the Holocaust continues to impact on the Jewish psyche and soul. Even for someone like me, who is an agnostic on the claims raised by this book, the stories told here present a formidable challenge to how we perceive the post-Holocaust era.
Yossi Klein Halevi, NY Times bestselling author
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
Winner of the Florida Book Awards Gold Medal
New York Times bestselling author and master of nonfiction spy thrillers Larry Loftis writes the first major biography of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker who saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during WWII--at the cost of losing her family and being sent to a concentration camp, only to survive, forgive her captors, and live the rest of her life as a Christian missionary.
The Watchmaker's Daughter is one of the greatest stories of World War II that readers haven't heard: the remarkable and inspiring life story of Corrie ten Boom--a groundbreaking, female Dutch watchmaker, whose family unselfishly transformed their house into a hiding place straight out of a spy novel to shelter Jews and refugees from the Nazis during Gestapo raids. Even though the Nazis knew what the ten Booms were up to, they were never able to find those sheltered within the house when they raided it.
Corrie stopped at nothing to face down the evils of her time and overcame unbelievable obstacles and odds. She persevered despite the loss of most of her family and relied on her faith to survive the horrors of a notorious concentration camp. But even more remarkable than her heroism and survival was Corrie's attitude when she was released. Miraculously, she was able to eschew bitterness and embrace forgiveness as she ministered to people in need around the globe. Corrie's ability to forgive is just one of the myriad lessons that her life story holds for readers today.
Reminiscent of Schindler's List and featuring a journey of faith and forgiveness not unlike Unbroken, The Watchmaker's Daughter is destined to become a classic work of World War II nonfiction.
Denmark's World War II rescue of its Jewish population was a shining example of courage, morality and national resolve.
In September 1943, three years after they invaded Denmark, the Nazis set a plan in motion to capture the country's nearly 8,350 Jews in a single night and send them on the path to annihilation. Word of the plan got out seventy-two hours before the Nazis were set to pounce, triggering a nationwide effort to warn and hide the Jews. On the night of the scheduled raids, the Gestapo came up almost empty-handed. The chase, however, had just begun. The only safe place within reach was Sweden, and the only way to get there was by boat.
Danes organized escape routes on hundreds of boats from points all along Denmark's eastern shore. Gerda III -- Henny's Boat -- was one of the most successful. During a month of clandestine crossings, Gerda III and the people associated with it saved at least three hundred Jews, ten to fifteen on each early morning passage.
Twenty-two-year-old Henny Sinding was at the heart of Gerda III's rescue missions. Working with the boat's four-man crew, a university-based resistance group, and a young navy cadet with whom she was falling in love, Henny escorted Jews from rendezvous points around Copenhagen to a warehouse attic overlooking the boat . Then, in pre-dawn darkness, she slipped them into the boat's cargo hold, eluding Nazi sentries who patrolled the dock. Gerda III's crew completed the escape, traveling past German warships and mines to Swedish ports.
When the Jewish rescue operation was complete, Henny's team became leaders in the armed resistance, and Gerda III continued to be a lifeboat for persons hunted by the Nazis. conducting daring sabotage missions throughout Denmark, and Gerda III continued to be a lifeboat for persons hunted by the Nazis. Their story epitomizes the story of a nation that rose from a humbling surrender to battle the Nazis and hand the Gestapo its most glaring defeat.
The book is an expanded and enhanced version of the author's earlier book, Henny and Her Boat, Righteousness and Resistance in Nazi Occupied Denmark.
The secret lay dormant for 50 years until Andrew Laszlo decided to share his past, the story of how his family perished in the Holocaust and only he survived. From his youth in Papa, Hungary, to his experiences with the Nazis, his will to survive was tested again and again.
On March 19, 1944, Germany invaded Hungary. He wrote, As I warned you, from here on, this account is going to get rough.
Andrew's family was relocated to the ghetto and forced to wear the yellow star. He was conscripted into the Hungarian Labor Service. His father and mother were taken away. As the war dragged on, Andrew was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Years later, his children learned that Anne Frank was a prisoner in the camp at the same time.
At 20 years old, having nothing left, Andrew escaped Russian-occupied Hungary and made his way to a displaced persons camp in Ulm, Germany. He was granted emigration to the United States. He arrived in New York Harbor on January 17, 1947, with two dollars in his pocket. He did not speak the English language.
He became a world-class cinematographer.
Rosie was always told her red hair was a curse, but she never believed it. She often dreamed what it would look like under a white veil with the man of her dreams by her side. However, her life takes a harrowing turn in 1944 when she is forced out of her home and sent to the most gruesome of places: Auschwitz.
Upon arrival, Rosie's head is shaved and along with the loss of her beautiful hair, she loses the life she once cherished. Among the chaos and surrounded by hopelessness, Rosie realizes the only thing the Nazis cannot take away from her is the fierce redhead resilience in her spirit. When all of her friends conclude they are going to heaven from Auschwitz, she remains determined to get home. She summons all of her courage, through death camps and death marches to do just that.
This victorious biography, written by Nechama Birnbaum in honor of her grandmother, is as full of life as it is of death. It is about the intricacies of Jewish culture that still exist today and the tender experiences that are universal to all humanity. It is a story about what happens when we choose hate over love.
The hidden history of a nation sleepwalking its way into evil
Charlotte Beradt began having unsettling dreams after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. She envisioned herself being shot at, tortured and scalped, surrounded by Nazis in disguise, and breathlessly fleeing across fields with storm troopers at her heels. Shaken by these nightmares and banned as a Jew from working, she began secretly collecting dreams from her friends and neighbors, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Disguising these diaries of the night in code and concealing them in the spines of books from her extensive library, she smuggled them out of the country one by one. Available again for the first time since its publication in the 1960s, this sensational book brings together this uniquely powerful dream record, offering a visceral understanding of how terror is internalized and how propaganda colonizes the imagination. After Beradt herself fled Germany for New York, she collected these dream accounts and began to trace the common symbols and themes that appeared in the collective unconscious of a traumatized nation. The fear of dictatorship was ever-present. Dreams of thought control, even the prohibition of dreaming itself, bore witness to the collapse of outer and inner worlds. Now in a haunting new translation by Damion Searls and with an incisive foreword by Dunya Mikhail, The Third Reich of Dreams provides a raw, unfiltered, and prophetic look inside the experience of living through Hitler's terror.Rudolf Hoess was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. He was the longest-serving commandant of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp (from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, and again from 8 May 1944 to 18 January 1945). He tested and implemented means to accelerate Hitler's order to systematically exterminate the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the Final Solution. On the initiative of one of his subordinates Hoess introduced the pesticide Zyklon B to be used in gas chambers, where more than a million people were killed. Hoess was hanged in 1947 following a trial before the Polish Supreme National Tribunal. During his imprisonment, at the request of the Polish authorities, he wrote his memoirs, released in English under the title Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess. Like most things in his life, Hoess undertook the autobiography with great diligence. A careful checking by researchers showed he took great pains to tell the truth. The result: a vivid and unforgettable picture of the 20th century's defining and most horrific event.
When the Germans march into their little Polish shtetl at the start of World War II, the Jews of Wlodawa see their lives abruptly torn apart. For Hil and Alexandra it marks the beginning of a struggle to survive during which they will experience ghettos, roundups, hiding places, and false identities, a struggle where the line between life and death will depend on small decisions made along the way.
With the story of the destruction of Polish Jewry as a backdrop, Jeannette Grunhaus de Gelman tells us the remarkable tale of her parents' journey, which will take them from the dark years in a Europe at war to safety and a new life in Venezuela.
In the Garden of the Righteous brilliantly describes how in the midst of the brutality of the Holocaust and the collaboration, acquiescence and passivity of millions, there were people who risked their lives to save others out of a sense of shared humanity. This book is more timely than ever.--Stuart E. Eizenstat, author of Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II
These powerfully illuminating and inspiring profiles pay tribute to the incredible deeds of the Righteous Among the Nations, little-known heroes who saved countless lives during the Holocaust.
Less than a century ago, the Second World War took the lives of more than fifty million people; more than six million of them were systematically exterminated through crimes of such enormity that a new name to describe the horror was coined: the Holocaust. Yet amid such darkness, there were glimmers of light--courageous individuals who risked everything to save those hunted by the Nazis. Today, as bigotry and intolerance and the threats of fascism and authoritarianism are ascendent once again, these heroes' little-known stories--among the most remarkable in human history--resonate powerfully. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, has recognized more than 27,000 individuals as Righteous Among the Nations--non-Jewish people such as Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler who risked their lives to save their persecuted neighbors.
In the Garden of the Righteous chronicles extraordinary acts at a time when the moral choices were stark, the threat immense, and the passive apathy of millions predominated. Deeply researched and astonishingly moving, it focuses on ten remarkable stories, including that of the circus ringmaster Adolf Althoff and his wife Maria, the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Italian cycling champion Gino Bartali, the Polish social worker Irena Sendler, and the Japanese spy Chinue Sugihara, who provided hiding places, participated in underground networks, refused to betray their neighbors, and secured safe passage. They repeatedly defied authorities and risked their lives, their livelihoods, and their families to save the helpless and the persecuted. In the Garden of the Righteous is a testament to their kindness and courage.
For decades scholars have pored over Hitler's autobiographical journey/political treatise, debating if Mein Kampf has genocidal overtones and arguably led to the Holocaust. For the first time, Hitler's Mein Kampf and the Holocaust sees celebrated international scholars analyse the book from various angles to demonstrate how it laid the groundwork for the Shoah through Hitler's venomous attack on the Jews in his text.
Split into three main sections which focus on 'contexts', 'eugenics' and 'religion', the book reflects carefully on the point at which the Fuhrer's actions and policies turn genocidal during the Third Reich and whether Mein Kampf presaged Nazi Germany's descent into genocide. There are contributions from leading academics from across the United States and Germany, including Magnus Brechtken, Susannah Heschel and Nathan Stoltzfus, along with totally new insights into the source material in light of the 2016 German critical edition of Mein Kampf. Hitler's views on Marxism, violence, and leadership, as well as his anti-Semitic rhetoric are examined in detail as you are taken down the disturbing path from a hateful book to the Holocaust.