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Where is thy brother Abel? Documentary Photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto - Joe J. Heydecker
Where is thy brother Abel? Documentary Photographs of the Warsaw GhettoJoe J. HeydeckerAtlantis LivrosSao Paulo, 1981107 pages In 1981, Joe Heydecker, then living in Brazil, decided to publish his Warsaw Ghetto photographs. He wrote: “I find it hard to explain why nearly forty years have passed before I was able to publish these pictures. I believe I simply had not strength enough to write the text, although I tried several times. I still feel unable to do so. Now I do what I can to set... Continue reading
Interview with Miriam Ron, Witness to the Events of Kristallnacht
This exclusive interview was published in our newsletter Teaching the Legacy (December, 2008). Mrs. Ron discusses her experiences and memories surrounding Kristallnacht, the expulsion to Zbaszyn, and her childhood in Germany. Continue reading
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Interview with Dr. Götz Aly, German Historian and Journalist
Dr. Götz Aly is a German historian and journalist researching the Holocaust and German history during the Nazi period. He is presently researching the survivors’ return home to Europe after the Holocaust, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research. We would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Aly for agreeing to share his ideas and thoughts with us. Also, we thank Mr. Enno Raschke for his kind assistance during the interview. Can you... Continue reading
Youth Writing Behind the Walls: Avraham Cytryn’s Lodz notebooks
Youth Writing Behind the Walls: Avraham Cytryn’s Lodz notebooksAvraham CytrynYad Vashem 2005267 pages Avraham Cytryn was born in Lodz in 1927 and was undoubtedly incredibly gifted as a writer of short fiction and poetry. Only 13 when interned in the Lodz Ghetto with his mother and sister, he continued to write in every spare minute he had after work. The security of living within a safe community no longer existed, and perhaps writing helped Avraham and gave him the will to continue the fight... Continue reading
The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp - Rochelle G. Saidel
The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration CampRochelle G. Saidel University of Wisconsin Press. 2004. 279 pages Ravensbrück, the only major Nazi concentration camp for women, was located about fifty miles north of Berlin. The camp, opened in May 1939, was the site of murder by slave labor, torture, starvation, shooting, lethal injection, "medical" experimentation, and gassing. Today it is a memorial site to those who died there. While this camp was designed to hold 5,000 women, the... Continue reading
With a Yellow Star and a Red Cross: A Doctor in the Lodz Ghetto - Arnold Mostowicz
With a Yellow Star and a Red Cross: A Doctor in the Lodz GhettoArnold Mostowicz - Forward by Antony PolonskyTranslation from Polish by Henia and Nochem ReinhartzThe Library of Holocaust TestimoniesVallentine Mitchell 2005, Pp 243 Arnold Mostowicz was born in Lodz in 1914. He was only son of a middle-class Jewish family. Lodz, which had the second largest Jewish population in Poland, was known as the "Polish Manchester", being the largest textile producing city in Poland. At the age of 19,... Continue reading
The Underground Reporters - Kathy Kacer
The Underground ReportersKathy KacerSecond Story Press, 2004156 pages This book presents the true and moving story of a group of young children and adults living under Nazi occupation in Budejovice, Czechoslovakia. As their freedom becomes increasingly curtailed under the Nazis, they are no longer able to go out to play, swim, go to the cinema, or lead a normal life. Fifteen-year-old Ruda Stadler decides to start a newspaper that would prove that Jewish youth could do more than just play. This... Continue reading
The Boy: A Holocaust Story - Dan Porat
The BoyDan PoratHill and Wang, 2010246 pages We may never know the identity of the iconic photograph of a young terrified boy, hands raised above his head, surrounded by soldiers during the final destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943. However, through the use of 60 photographs, Dan Porat unravels the history behind the destruction of the ghetto, and identifies the Nazi soldier, Josef Blosche, who pointed his gun at the boy and those around him. He also focuses on two other Nazis,... Continue reading
A Teenager in Hitler's Death Camps - Benny Grunfeld
A Teenager in Hitler's Death CampsBenny Grunfeld; translated by Ken SchubertBenbella Books Edition, 2007115 pages Benny and his brother Herbert survived the horrors of Auschwitz death camp, a gruelling death march, the labor camp Dora-Mittelbau (Nordhausen), and finally the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, from where they were liberated. Translated from the original Swedish, this autobiography tells the story of Benny, a Hungarian teenager swept into the horrors of the Nazi death camps in... Continue reading
Survivors: True Stories of Children in the Holocaust - Allan Zullo and Mara Bovsun
Survivors: True Stories of Children in the HolocaustAllan Zullo and Mara BovsunScholastic Inc., 2004196 pages Mathei, aged ten, escapes from a crowded cattle car going to Auschwitz and becomes a partisan. Seventeen-year-old Jack Gruener survives a grueling death march, and despite terrible conditions, tries to help a fellow Jew along the way. Five-year-old Sarah is hidden by a Polish family in a small attic with her family for two years. Herbert Karliner leaves Hamburg with his family on the... Continue reading
Poyln – My Life Within Jewish Life in Poland - Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk
Poyln – My Life Within Jewish Life in PolandYehiel Yeshaia Trunk; Translated from Yiddish by Anna ClarkeUniversity of Toronto Press, 2007167 pages Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk, a well-known writer, was born in the Polish village of Osmolsk in 1887. His early works were written in Hebrew, but under the influence of the Jewish writer Isaac Leib Peretz, he began to write in Yiddish. He and his wife left Europe in 1940 and settled in New York, where he began to write his seven-volume memoir originally... Continue reading
The Photographs in Nona’s Album - Jennifer Garsh
The Photographs in Nona’s AlbumJennifer GarshThe Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, 201036 pages In this short but powerful book, suitable for grades 5-12, students will learn about Romaniote Jewry and in particular about the Koen family, through use of family photographs and text. The author, Jennifer Garsh, writes about her grandmother, Stema Koen, who lived in Janina until she was five. She is referred to by her granddaughter as Nona. Through the photographs we learn about Nona’s... Continue reading
Mothers, Sisters, Resisters: Oral Histories of Women Who Survived the Holocaust - Brana Gurewitsch (Ed.)
Mothers, Sisters, Resisters: Oral Histories of Women Who Survived the HolocaustEdited by Brana GurewitschUniversity of Alabama Press, 1998396 pages Brana Gurewitsch has skillfully interviewed twenty-five women, Jewish and non-Jewish, who found themselves in the most difficult of roles during the Shoah. The book covers three of these roles – mothers, sisters, and resisters. Being a mother during the Shoah meant instinctively trying to keep your child or children alive, finding food, providing... Continue reading
Light in Darkness: A Survivor’s Story - Phyllis Sterling Jacobs
Light in Darkness: A Survivor’s StorySimon Sterling as told to Phyllis Sterling JacobsPhyllis Sterling Jacobs, 2005112 pages Simon Sterling finally shared his wartime experiences with his daughter Phyllis. Snippets of information had filtered through the silence of forty years, but she had never heard the full story. The result is a very moving account of his survival while hiding in the forests of Poland with his wife and other family members. The story, recorded, transcribed, and written by... Continue reading
Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction - Martin Gilbert
Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction Martin GilbertHarper Press, 2006314 pages This book presents the true and moving story of a group of young children and adults living under Nazi occupation in Budejovice, Czechoslovakia. Martin Gilbert traces anti-Jewish discrimination and legislation that began when Hitler came to power in 1933, culminating in the 1938 pogrom which became known as the Kristallnacht pogrom or the "Night of Broken Glass". Storm troopers of the S.A. in Germany and Austria... Continue reading
Janusz Korczak's Children - Gloria Spielman
Janusz Korczak's ChildrenGloria Spielman; Illustrations by Matthew ArchambaultKar-Ben Publishing, 200740 pages "Children are not the people of tomorrow, but are the people of today. They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with respect as equals. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be – the unknown person inside each of them is the hope for the future." –Janusz Korczak In this book, Gloria Spielman tells the moving and... Continue reading
The King of Children: A Biography of Janusz Korczak - Betty Jean Lifton
The King of Children – A Biography of Janusz KorczakBetty Jean LiftonFarrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1988353 pages "Children are not future people, because they are people already... Children are people."–Janusz Korczak Putting down a lifetime's work with children in a few short lines is not possible. Here is a book which relates the story of a Polish Jewish doctor, writer, and educator who, in the last years of his life cared for two hundred orphans in the crowded orphanage, forced to move... Continue reading
Holocaust Survivor Cookbook- Joanne Caras
Holocaust Survivor CookbookJoanne CarasCaras and Associates, Inc., 2007350 pages As the title might imply, this is not a regular cookbook. In fact, it is quite unusual. Sarah Caras, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and her husband Jonathan (new immigrants to Israel from the U.S.A.), have succeeded in collecting 100 stories from Holocaust survivors from many countries all over the world including Argentina, Australia, China, England, Sweden, and the United States. The authors' mothers... Continue reading
A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry - Sheila Isenberg
A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry Sheila IsenbergRandom House 2001 349 pages The story of Varian Fry is perhaps less well known than that of Oscar Schindler, but to some he became known as the "American Schindler" or The Artist's Schindler". In 1940, Fry was sent to France by the Emergency Rescue Committee in New York, with a list of two hundred names and only three thousand dollars in his pocket. The list was made up by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Eleanor Roosevelt,... Continue reading
I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing up in the Holocaust - Livia Bitton-Jackson
I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing up in the HolocaustLivia Bitton-JacksonSimon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1997216 pages The author, whose former name was Elli Friedmann, lives a happy carefree life in her village of Somorja, Czechoslovakia, set in the beautiful Carpathian foothills. She writes of the life of any thirteen-year-old who has only the future to look forward to. But everything changes for her in March, 1944, when the Nazis invade Hungary. Her school closes, and soon a... Continue reading
The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt - Hannelore Brenner
The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in TheresienstadtHannelore BrennerShocken Books, 2009322 pages Translated from the original German into English, this book relates the story of several of the over one hundred children who were incarcerated in Girl’s Home L410, Room 28 in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. The “girls” who survived and found each other after many years, meet regularly in Spindlemuhle, Czech Republic, and Brenner joined them several times, in order to interview... Continue reading
For The People I Love and Can't Forget: Poems and Memories of the Holocaust - Maria Szapszewicz
For The People I Love and Can't Forget: Poems and Memories of the HolocaustMaria SzapszewiczJacob's House Press, 2006194 pages Born in Lodz, Maria (nee Wajchendler) survived the Holocaust, as did her mother and one brother. Her other brother, father, and extended family perished. She spent time in the Lodz and Szydlowiec ghettos, worked in an ammunition factory in Starochowice, and was eventually sent to Auschwitz. She was liberated in the Bergen Belsen Nazi concentration camp. In 1959 Maria... Continue reading
Dividing Hearts: The Removal of Jewish Children from Gentile Families in Poland in the Immediate Post-Holocaust Years - Emunah Nachmany-Gafny
Dividing Hearts: The Removal of Jewish Children from Gentile Families in Poland in the Immediate Post-Holocaust YearsEmunah Nachmany-GafnyYad Vashem Publications, 2009389 pages Towards the end of the Second World War, and in the wake of the Nazi retreat, the allies began liberating occupied Europe. Thousands of Jewish children had been in hiding for years in convents, placed with gentile families, or simply wandered from place to place unattended and fending for themselves. Many of these... Continue reading
Clara’s War: One Girl’s Story of Survival - Clara Kramer with Stephen Glantz
Clara’s War: One Girl’s Story of SurvivalClara Kramer with Stephen GlantzHarper Collins, 2009339 pages This book is based on Clara Kramer’s diary of her years in hiding from the Nazis. Valentine Beck, a Volksdsdeutsch (ethnic German), his wife Julia, and their daughter Ala allowed eighteen Jews, including Clara and her family, to hide in a small, suffocating bunker that was dug out of the basement underneath his house. Beck was known as a womanizer, a rabid antisemite and an alcoholic... Continue reading
48 Hours of Kristallnacht: Night of Destruction/Dawn of the Holocaust – An Oral History - Mitchell G. Bard
48 Hours of Kristallnacht: Night of Destruction/Dawn of the Holocaust – An Oral HistoryMitchell G. Bard, PhD.The Lyons Press, 2008256 pages Published to coincide with the 70th anniversary of this pivotal event, Bard uses eyewitness accounts of those who were young children and teenagers to describe the incidents that took place on November 9-10, 1938, which became known as the Kristallnacht pogrom, or the "Night of the Broken Glass". By reading these accounts, and thus conveying the vivid... Continue reading