Download or read book Into the Inferno The Memoir of a Jewish Paratrooper behind Nazi Lines written by Yoel Palgi and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-16 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1944, thirty-two young Palestinian Jews parachuted into Nazi-held Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Their goal was to encourage Jewish resistance where possible and to organize rescue schemes thwarting deportations to the death camps. Linking up in Yugoslavia and impelled by the hope that the Jews trapped in Hungary were still capable of fighting back, some of the volunteers set out for Budapest. Tragically, they were betrayed by their local guides, who turned out to be double agents also working for the Hungarian Fascists. The volunteers reached Budapest where the young woman volunteer, Hannah Szenes, was executed and another deported to a death camp. Into the Inferno is the remarkable first-hand account of this mission by the only member of the group who miraculously survived from among those who penetrated into Hungary. He endured imprisonment and torture both by the Gestapo and the Hungarian Fascists, escaped from a deportation train, and joined the Zionist youth rescue underground in Budapest. “In May 1944, Palgi was one of three Jews from Palestine who parachuted into Nazi-held Yugoslavia and headed for Hungary... His memoir... is an incredible account of this daring mission by its only survivor. Without a doubt, a vivid chronicle of bravery and compassion.” — George Cohen, Booklist “More than half a century has elapsed since [Yoel Palgi’s] paratrooper operations in occupied Europe. The world has appreciably changed since... Yet there are events, fragments of history, whose significance time and place do not alter. It seems that a special place in history is reserved for the story of this remarkable group of courageous Jews that did the impossible. It is vital that [this] story be told.” —Shimon Peres, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Israel “Palgi describes in riveting human terms an excruciatingly painful piece of Israeli and world history, and does so with extraordinary psychological and ethical insight.” —Robert J. Lifton, author of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide “This gripping account of a desperate rescue mission goes beyond conveying the horror of the Holocaust and the brutality of the Nazis. The rescuers worked within an ambiguity where every alliance was questionable and noble decisions could prove fatal. This is the illuminating story of a thoughtful man, driven by history to courageous improvisation and ethical struggle, acting and remembering in spite of uncertainty.” —Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Full Circles, Overlapping Lives “Yoel Palgi’s story is one of heroism, inner conflict and questioning. His readiness to go behind the Nazi lines to rescue the Jews of Hungary reflected his extraordinary courage. He paints a vivid picture of the danger of his effort both behind enemy lines and the emotional scars that were left after the war. This is a must-read for any student of the Holocaust.” — Dennis Ross, Director, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Download or read book The London Budapest Game written by Catherine Eva Schandl and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2007 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The London-Budapest Game' is the true sequel to 'Sword of the Turul, ' with a unique glimpse into the British underground in World War II Hungary - and its aftermath. From 1991 to 2001, a Swedish-Russian joint Commission investigating the fate of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg discovered that 3 Hungarian numbered prisoners secretly held in Vladimir prison, Soviet Union had been connected to his case. One was Karoly Schandl, a young lawyer in Budapest who lived near the Swedish Embassy. This is the continuation of his shocking true story, supported by historical documents and excerpts from his private writings. Karoly's anti- Nazi resistance group was led by his childhood friend, Gabor Haraszty, a.k.a. British agent ALBERT. The group had links to MI9, ISLD (MI6), SOE, Colonel Howie, the Dutch and Polish Underground, the Tito partisans, and a group of famous Jewish parachutists from Palestine, with whom they had planned to collaborate in Hungary. It was a dangerous game, and only a few would survive ..

Download or read book Shanghai Refuge A Memoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto written by Ernest Heppner and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-09 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Nazis took power, Heppner, a member of a privileged middle-class German Jewish family, suffered from constant anti-Semitism. But Kristallnacht, in November 1938, introduced a new level of Nazi horror: Heppner and his mother used the family’s resources to escape to Shanghai, the only city in the world that did not require a visa. Heppner was taken aback by experiences on the ocean liner that took him and other refugees to Shanghai: he was embarrassed and confounded when Egyptian Jews offered worn clothing to the Jewish passengers, he resented the edicts against Jewish passengers disembarking in any ports on the way, and he was unprepared for the poverty and cultural dislocation of the great city of Shanghai. But being self-reliant, energetic, and clever, Heppner found niches for his skills that enabled him to survive in a precarious fashion in Shanghai’s ghetto. In 1945, after the liberation of China, Heppner found a responsible position with the American forces in Nanjing. He and his wife, a fellow refugee he had met and married in Shanghai, arrived in the United States in 1947 with only eleven dollars but boundless hope and energy. “This inspiring memoir is a story of survival... The unique and traumatic experiences of tens of thousands of Jews who managed to escape for the ‘temporary’ haven of Shanghai are described with objectivity and clarity.” — Leonard H. D. Gordon, Shofar “The author describes in detail the sights and sounds of his adopted environment, the mingling of Jews and many nationalities, the choking stench and the humidity, the decadent, exotic underworld of criminals and beggars, the terror of air raids and Japanese guards, the rampant poverty and disease. The general tone, however, is positive, even inspiring, and behind all the experiences lurks a sense of adventure and simple good luck.” — Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter “A fascinating and moving memoir that begins with [Heppner’s] childhood in Nazi Germany and moves briskly from one compelling scene to the next.” — Forward “Ernest G. Heppner’s Shanghai Refuge fills in the fragments... of this little-known Jewish community... His story is an odd mixture of defiance, courage, endurance and survival. His experience [is] fascinating.” — Michael Berenbaum, Director, U.S. Holocaust Research Institute “An important addition to the historical record of World War II, an autobiography of a remarkable man’s formative years, and a testimony to the power of community and human perseverance.” — Indianapolis Star “Heppner’s descriptions... ring true and carry conviction, especially when he recalls in evocative detail his day-to-day experiences in Nazi Germany. Similarly, his recollection of Shanghai, with its small, telling details of privations, indignities, anxieties, and horrors make maximum impact—from the rat in the bakery that he lifted up by its tail to the carnage following an American air raid.” — Bernard Wasserstein, author ofThe Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln

Download or read book A History of the Jews in the Modern World written by Howard M. Sachar and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 924 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distinguished historian of the Jewish people, Howard M. Sachar, gives us a comprehensive and enthralling chronicle of the achievements and traumas of the Jews over the last four hundred years. Tracking their fate from Western Europe’s age of mercantilism in the seventeenth century to the post-Soviet and post-imperialist Islamic upheavals of the twenty-first century, Sachar applies his renowned narrative skill to the central role of the Jews in many of the most impressive achievements of modern civilization: whether in the rise of economic capitalism or of political socialism; in the discoveries of theoretical physics or applied medicine; in “higher” literary criticism or mass communication and popular entertainment. As his account unfolds and moves from epoch to epoch, from continent to continent, from Europe to the Americas and the Middle East, Sachar evaluates communities that, until lately, have been underestimated in the perspective of Jewish and world history—among them, Jews of Sephardic provenance, of the Moslem regions, and of Africa. By the same token, Sachar applies a master’s hand in describing and deciphering the Jews’ unique exposure and functional usefulness to totalitarian movements—fascist, Nazi, and Stalinist. In the process, he shines an unsparing light on the often widely dissimilar behavior of separate European peoples, and on separate Jewish populations, during the Holocaust. A distillation of the author’s lifetime of scholarly research and teaching experience, A History of the Jews in the Modern World provides a source of unsurpassed intellectual richness for university students and educated laypersons alike.

Download or read book Women of the Resistance written by Marc E. Vargo and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women took part in perilous resistance missions during World War II alongside a much larger number of male resistance agents. This book presents the lives of eight women who, at profound risk to themselves, chose to challenge the Third Reich. Hailing from diverse regions of the world--the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and North America--the women shared privileged backgrounds of financial and social prominence as well as a profound sense of social justice. As to their deeds with the Resistance, they ranged from forging documents and hiding persecuted Jews to orchestrating sabotage operations and crafting a nonviolent protest movement within Nazi Germany itself. As could be expected, the costs were great, capture and execution among them, but the women's achievements did succeed in helping to win the war.

Download or read book When Angels Fooled the World Rescuers of Jews in Wartime Hungary written by Charles Fenyvesi and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2024-04-14 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is a beautiful book in many ways. Beautiful not only for its writing but also for its portrayal of decent, heroic gentiles during the Holocaust. I defy anyone reading this account of angels under the German occupation not to shed tears by the end of the book — beneficent tears of hope, joy and gratitude. When Angels Fooled the World tells of five individuals: Raoul Wallenberg, a Lutheran pastor, a janitor, a woman who worked in a municipal birth registry, and a journalist who happened to be the author’s uncle by marriage. All dared to go against the prevailing Nazi German policy and saved Jews from deportation and death... a unique blend of passionate engagement and clear, level-headed analysis of the crucial months in 1944 when the Germans and their Hungarian Arrow Cross supporters ruled the land. The book’s lambent prose, as well as its mixture of memoir and broad sweep of Hungarian-Jewish ambience and history, enhance its fascination and appeal.” — Sun Sentinel “This captivating writing by a noted Hungarian-American author and journal editor, himself a Holocaust survivor, focuses on Hungary during the Holocaust period and the outstanding courage of a group of Righteous Gentiles (viewed as “angels” of salvation) including, among others, the well-known Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews with exit passports; a civil servant woman who provided Jews with certificates that they were Christians; and a Lutheran priest who saved Jewish children in a Christian orphanage. The book is based on historical facts, anecdotes, interviews, and the author’s family experiences and tribulations. Family photos and a relevant bibliography enhance this interesting volume.” — Multicultural Review

Download or read book Hotel Bolivia The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism written by Leo Spitzer and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-09 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Desperate to escape the increasingly vehement persecution in their homelands, thousands of refugees from Nazi-dominated Central Europe, the majority of them Jews, found refuge in Latin America in the 1930s. Bolivia became a principal recipient of this influx — one of the few remaining places in the entire world to accept Jewish refugees after the German Anschluss of Austria in 1938. Some 20,000 refugees arrived in Bolivia, more than in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa — the leading British Commonwealth countries — combined. In Bolivia, the refugees began to reconstruct a version of the world that they had been forced to abandon. Their own origins and social situations had been diverse in Central Europe, ranging across generational, class, educational, and political differences, and incorporating various professional, craft, and artistic backgrounds. But it was Austro/German Jewish bourgeois society that provided them with a model for emulation and a common locus for identification in their place of refuge. Indeed, at the very time when that dynamic social and cultural amalgam was being ruthlessly and systematically destroyed by the Nazis, the Jewish refugees in Bolivia attempted to recall and revive a version of it in a land thousands of miles from their home: in a country that offered them a haven, but in which many of them felt themselves as mere sojourners. Hotel Bolivia explores an important, but generally neglected, aspect of the experience of group displacement — the relationship between memory and cultural survival during an era of persecution and genocide. Employing oral histories, family photographs, artistic and documentary portrayals, it considers the Third Reich background for the emigration, the refugees’ perceptions of past and future, and the role of images and stereotypes in shaping refugee and Bolivian cross-cultural communication and acceptance. It examines how the immigrants remembered, recalled and reshaped the European world they had been forced to abandon in the institutions, culture, and community they created in Bolivia. In documenting life stories and reclaiming the memories and discourses of ordinary persons who might otherwise remain hidden from history, Hotel Bolivia contributes to a major objective of contemporary historical studies. But it is also directly concerned with theoretical issues, increasingly evident in historical writing, focusing on the contextualization of memory and the interdependence – and tension – between memory and history. In reflecting on remembered experience, over time and between people, the ultimate objective of this book is to contribute to the historical study of memory itself. “A curiously inspiring corner of Holocaust history: the story is of how culture and memory survive, and change, in the shock of new surroundings.” — Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost “A form of doing history that offers fresh intellectual insights while touching the heart.” — Ruth Behar, University of Michigan, author of The Vulnerable Observer andTranslated Women “It is rare that a scholarly book reads like a novel. Leo Spitzer’s compelling Hotel Bolivia not only is beautifully written but changes the way we think about history... This groundbreaking book will become required reading in numerous fields, including Latin American studies, Jewish studies, diaspora studies, immigration studies, and ethnic studies.” — Jeffrey Lesser, Brown University, author of Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question “Evocative, thoughtful, and otherwise impressive... Vividly introduces readers to a little-known aspect of refugee history during the Holocaust.” — Kirkus “A searing account of the Jewish refugees’ checkered experience... Part memoir, part oral history, Spitzer’s eye-opening study uses interviews with surviving refugees (now widely dispersed around the world), plus letters, photographs, family albums and archival documents to explore the trauma of displacement.” — Publishers Weekly

Download or read book Kasztner s Crime written by Paul Bogdanor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book re-examines one of the most intense controversies of the Holocaust: the role of Rezs Kasztner in facilitating the murder of most of Nazi-occupied Hungary's Jews in 1944. Because he was acting head of the Jewish rescue operation in Hungary, some have hailed him as a saviour. Others have charged that he collaborated with the Nazis in the deportations to Auschwitz. What is indisputable is that Adolf Eichmann agreed to spare a special group of 1,684 Jews, who included some of Kasztner's relatives and friends, while nearly 500,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to their deaths. Why were so many lives lost?After World War II, many Holocaust survivors condemned Kasztner for complicity in the deportation of Hungarian Jews. It was alleged that, as a condition of saving a small number of Jewish leaders and select others, he deceived ordinary Jews into boarding the trains to Auschwitz. The ultimate question is whether Kastztner was a Nazi collaborator, as branded by Ben Hecht in his 1961 book Perfidy, or a hero, as Anna Porter argued in her 2009 book Kasztner's Train. Opinion remains divided.Paul Bogdanor makes an original, compelling case that Kasztner helped the Nazis keep order in Hungary's ghettos before the Jews were sent to Auschwitz, and sent Nazi disinformation to his Jewish contacts in the free world. Drawing on unpublished documents, and making extensive use of the transcripts of the Kasztner and Eichmann trials in Israel, Kasztner's Crime is a chilling account of one man's descent into evil during the genocide of his own people.

Download or read book No Fixed Abode A Jewish Odyssey to Africa written by Peter Fraenkel and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this memoir, Fraenkel writes as a member of an enclosed minority: German Jew within a predominantly Lithuanian Jewish community which was part of a white settler community, itself a minority in a predominantly black African territory. A young settler reprimanded him for stepping out of the way of an African family on a narrow bush path: “Walk straight on. They must know who is the master in the land.” Fraenkel found himself whistling the Nazis’ anthem “Clear the streets for the brown battalions. The storm troopers are marching.” He was coming to learn the importance of not conforming. “A vivid account of a childhood in a middleclass, non-observant Jewish family in Nazi Germany, forced to emigrate to Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) in 1939.” — Trevor Gundry, Jewish Chronicle “Peter Fraenkel... and his family emigrated in 1939 from Breslau to Northern Rhodesia, where he forged a successful career... in the Central African Broadcasting Service. Fraenkel was thus given the opportunity of using his undoubted skills as a broadcaster to help in the education of black people, using new methods of mass education... his sojourn in Northern Rhodesia came to an end in 1957, a few years after the country was refashioned by the British government as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland — a big mistake, Fraenkel thinks, and one that wasn’t undone until much later when the independent state of Zambia was created. His love affair with Africa came to an end, and he felt impelled to leave, because of his ‘dislike of racist politics in this bastion of white privilege’... Peter Fraenkel’s account of the 20 years in Northern Rhodesia is absorbing... there are riveting chapters on his activities as a somewhat subversive broadcaster, working together with like-minded whites and Blacks... The book is written in a very lively manner and there are countless anecdotes, many of them in direct speech... I recommend it strongly.” — Leslie Baruch Brent, Association of Jewish Refugees “The book bursts with life. Countries like these Central African territories are... far more exciting than countries with a settled structure. Here a new society is emerging. This excitement is lost in official reports and academic studies and one of Fraenkel’s achievements is that he conveys it in full measure. I know of no book which more vividly describes the variety and throb of a modern African township.” — Max Gluckman, The Observer “He brings out the formation of the new African metropolitan and rural societies... I know of no book which describes this surging varied vitality so well.” — Africa

Download or read book Social Science Methods for Psychodynamic Inquiry written by William R Meyers and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-06 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains, with case examples, a variety of social science research methods suitable for studying the unconscious components of irrational social and political actions in world affairs, which can be defined as those that are intensely destructive, self-destructive, or extremely bizarre. The book argues that they are driven in part by feelings and fantasies that are outside of conscious awareness. Meyers explores the role of empathy in clinical understanding, as well as the value of exposing assertions to empirical disconfirmation. With a variety of research methods such as survey research, content analysis, and narrative analysis, and case examples such as studies of 'irreal' statements by authoritarian leaders, fabricated newspaper articles and climate change denial, this book sheds light on how to conduct research on psychodynamic matters in a scientifically valid and credible way.

Download or read book Kasztner s Train written by Anna Porter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heroic story of the "Hungarian Oscar Schindler" who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis, only to be accused of collaboration and assassinated in Israel twelve years after WWII ended. Oscar Schindler's and Raoul Wallenberg's efforts to save people from Nazi extinction are legendary; Rezso Kasztner, by contrast, is practically unknown, even though he may have been the greatest rescuer of Jews during World War II. He was also the most controversial, and that, along with the relative lack of focus on events in Hungary toward the end of the war, has no doubt led to his anonymity. Now, with the publication of Anna Porter's remarkable chronicle, Kasztner's achievements are in full view. Based on interviews with those who were on the train and with family members of those denied a place on it, as well as documents and correspondence not previously published, Anna Porter tells the dramatic full story of one of the heroes of the twentieth century.

Download or read book Less Than Slaves Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation written by Benjamin B. Ferencz and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2022-06-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[T]his [2002] reprint of Benjamin B. Ferencz’s 1979 book on Jewish forced labor under the Third Reich and the attempt by various Jewish organizations to win compensation for former slave laborers from private corporations in West Germany after the war is very welcome... This book tells two related stories — as the subtitle indicates. The first is the story of the use of slave labor by German industry during the Third Reich. The second is the story of the dedicated individuals, many of them Jewish lawyers, most of them working for the various interrelated Jewish agencies created to administer the German government’s compensation to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, to win compensation from these firms... this book is as much a memoir as it is a history. It is a story told very much from the perspective of a participant, for Ferencz was the guiding light behind the efforts to win compensation... Constructed as a series of case studies, the book tells the story of five major firms or conglomerates (I.G. Farben, Krupp, the electric companies AEG, Telefunken, and Siemens, Rheinmetall Berlin A.G., and the Flick concern) and a number of smaller concerns. In each of his case studies, Ferencz intertwines the history of the firm’s use of slave labor with that of the efforts by survivor organizations and individual survivors to win compensation after the war... All in all, this book tells the story of great courage and determination by survivors and their allies to try to compel German companies to make at least partial amends for the use of slave labor during the war. Yet it is also a story of an equally determined refusal to see that past honestly, to own up to it, and to voluntarily try to make it right. As such... it will undoubtedly continue to serve as a valuable starting point for thinking about the efforts to make good again the harm done during the Third Reich.” — Devin O. Pendas, H-German “This short book is of extreme importance... This is a book to ponder.” — Martin Gilbert, The New York Times “[A] deeply disturbing book... Mr. Ferencz’s book is most impressive because it is meticulous in its evidence and exact in its sources, like a good lawyer’s brief. Nothing is left to the imagination.” — Leonard Silk, The New York Times “Ferencz, with fascinating clarity, supported by German documents, describes the exploitation and murder of human beings for German industrial profit... Less Than Slaves is a major contribution to Holocaust history.” — Josephine Z. Knopp, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science “As Telford Taylor says in his impressive foreword, this is a ‘moving, melancholy, and altogether unique’ book.” — John H. E. Fried, The American Journal of International Law “Less Than Slaves is an appropriate title for a volume describing an industrial labor system in which the work became the means of execution. The book is a meticulously documented account of former Jewish laborers seeking compensation for the work they were forced to do for German industrialists. Benjamin B. Ferencz, an attorney specializing in international law was a war crimes investigator who later aided Jewish claimants. He describes how I.G. Farben, Krupp, AEG, Telefunken, Siemens, and Rheinmetall attempted to elude payment and morally exonerate themselves from responsibility for the slave labor system.” — Alan M. Kraut, The Business History Review “This is an essential book... Ferencz... served as American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials and then director of the worldwide restitution action on behalf of Jewish survivors. His presentation of the painful procedure, the procrastination of officialdom, the remorselessness of the German companies and their lack of humaneness even after the war make one wonder about the decency of the human race.” — Vera Laska, Social Science “[T]he story [Ferencz] unfolds is not only remarkable, it is revolting... [a] grisly but unforgettable chronicle.” — Ronald Lewin, International Affairs

Download or read book Hell s Highway written by John Antal, George E. Koskimaki and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Emissary A Life of Enzo Sereni written by Ruth Bondy and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Enzo Sereni was physically tiny, a peanut with spectacles. Born in 1905 into a cultivated, wealthy Italian Jewish family, he steeped himself as a youth in traditional Italian culture. Burning with visions of Eden, he became one of the little band of Italian Zionists — more precisely, the still littler band of Italian Socialist Zionists, dreamers of a new life for Jews as a people and as people. At 22, he went off with his wife to Palestine, the two of them the first Italians to work as “pioneers.” He became a founder of kibbutz Givat Brenner, working on and off as laborer in the fields and then racing away to beg/borrow money for the kibbutz from Jewish agencies and Italian relatives. During the war he served with British intelligence in Cairo, and then worked as a secret agent in Iraq, helping endangered Jews to flee. Finally, 39, he parachuted behind the Nazi lines in northern Italy, hoping to save a few of the remaining Jews stranded there. Caught by the Nazis, he was shipped to Dachau. The few surviving witnesses record that he behaved with notable courage. In 1944 the Nazis killed him... As Ruth Bondy, an Israeli journalist, tells the story in her unadorned and disciplined book, the bare events take on color, shape and nuance, and one comes to think of Sereni as a heroic figure. He seems heroic not just because of his readiness to face death, by no means unusual in our century, but because of his wish to live out his life to the brim of consciousness — which for him meant the brim of responsibility and risk... Sereni’s story is the best testimony I have ever read to the moral energy Zionism commanded during its heroic period... Ruth Bondy has told his story with an admirable plainness, out of an understanding that in our time nothing is finally more moving than the record of an exemplary life.” — Irving Howe, The New York Times “When I think about Enzo there is one thought on my mind: he was unique. Of course, he lived in our midst, in the kibbutz, in political life; he had many friends who were near to him; he loved people — and yet, I always felt that he was one of a kind. You cannot say about Enzo: he was one of those who... There was nobody like him.” —Golda Meir, from the Afterword “Enzo Sereni’s life is the stuff of legend. His passionate nature and reflective intelligence were both animated and tempered by the most scrupulous ethical judgments. A dashing and romantic figure in the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, he should become — through Ruth Bondy’s sensitive and deeply human evocation — an inspiration for all who genuinely care about justice. Here was a man who had roots and wings at once.” — Martin Peretz, Editor, The New Republic “Enzo Sereni’s life was climaxed by an act of desperate heroism in World War II — parachuting behind the Nazi lines to bring courage to the beleaguered and alert them that the outside world was concerned with their fate. Precisely because Ruth Bondy writes of him in a low key, without forced drama, and with the larger perspective never lost, her biography of this Italian-born Israeli leaves an unforgettable impact.” — Abram L. Sachar, Chancellor, Brandeis University

Download or read book Spies in the Promised Land Isser Harel and the Israeli Secret Service written by Michael Bar-Zohar and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For 15 years the name of Isser Harel, the man in charge of all the intelligence branches of Israel, was top secret in Israel. Even when he resigned from office in March 1963 his name and picture remained undisclosed. Only in 1965, when he was appointed special adviser on intelligence and security to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, were his name and picture revealed. But most of his past feats were still kept secret, even when stories about underground activities, the capture of a spy, or a mission abroad were disclosed. Alan Dulles, head of the CIA, declared at the time, “the Israeli services are the best in the world”. For what operations did the Israeli services deserve such credit? What was their modus operandi? How had they been established and developed? How did they conceive rules of ethics and morality? These questions and many more are answered in this book, which reveals the life story and operations of Isser Harel, whom David Ben-Gurion called “the guardian of Israel’s secrets and honor”.

Download or read book The Abandonment of the Jews America and the Holocaust 1941 1945 written by David S. Wyman and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this landmark study, a sequel to Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1939-1941, his study of America’s restrictive pre-World War II immigration policies, David S. Wyman documents how FDR’s administration, especially the State Department, refused to undertake serious efforts to rescue European Jews from the Holocaust, and argues that a commitment to rescue by the United States could have saved several hundred thousand victims from the Nazis. The definitive work on its subject, this book won the National Jewish Book Award, theAnisfield-Wolf Award, the Present Tense Literary Award, the Stuart Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Theodore Saloutos Award of the Immigration History Society, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. “[Wyman’s] earlier work on prewar American attitudes to refugees from Hitler’s expanding Reich, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938-1941, has admirably equipped him to pursue the shameful story into the war years, when the incredulity of those in a position to know, the deliberate obstructionism of xenophobic and anti-Semitic officials and extravagant bureaucratic infighting within the Jewish community no less than in Government meant not merely agonizing delay but death for thousands who could have been rescued. His research in widely scattered sources meticulously reconstructs a complex story from which very few individuals emerge with credit, and some, notably President Franklin D. Roosevelt, stand clearly indicted for a cold indifference in practice utterly at variance with lofty humanitarian sentiments publicly proclaimed for political advantage... Mr. Wyman’s analysis, exemplary in its clarity and thoroughness... [adopts a] judicious tone and preference for marshaling evidence rather than apportioning blame. That evidence is... cumulatively devastating, implicating both passive bystanders and perpetrators in the vast crime that Mr. Wyman, himself a non-Jew, reminds us was a tragedy not only for the Jewish people but for all human beings.” — A. J. Sherman, The New York Times “[Wyman] subjects the American record during the Holocaust to the closest scrutiny it has yet received... It is the meticulously documented detail that makes the impact of his book shocking, disturbing and unforgettable... The documents that Mr. Wyman quotes in grim abundance — cold-blooded private memoranda, pettifogging evasions, flagrant lies — establish beyond any possible doubt that neither the relevant State Department officers nor their opposite numbers in the British Foreign Office had the slightest intention of allowing more than a token handful of Jews to be rescued.” — John Gross, The New York Times “A monumental volume: sweeping in its scope, stunning in its insight, and enduring in its importance... A damning indictment.” — Wall Street Journal “One of the most powerful books I have ever read.” — Senator Paul Simon “Impressively researched, balanced in its judgments, devastating in its discussion of untaken opportunities, and informed by an essentially moral purpose, The Abandonment of the Jews makes a clear, largely persuasive argument.” — Richard S. Levy, Commentary Magazine “Never before has the evidence been marshaled so painstakingly, with such meticulous scholarship and to such effect.” — Washington Post Book World “A telling account of one of the sorriest episodes in world history... we will not see a better book on this subject in our lifetime.” — Leonard Dinnerstein, The Journal of American History “[A] landmark study... Objective and dispassionate, the book is a model of historical writing.” — Irving Abella, The American Historical Review “Authoritative, scholarly, and fascinating.” — Yehuda Bauer

Download or read book The Murderers Among Us The Simon Wiesenthal Memoirs written by Simon Wiesenthal and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2023-08-30 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Simon Wiesenthal since the end of World War II has had one major aim in life — to track down as many as possible of the SS men who took part in the administration of the concentration and extermination camps run by the Third Reich... The writing of this book was actually done by the well-known journalist Joseph Wechsberg to whom Wiesenthal told his stories and who contributes a series of profiles of the narrator. It is a dramatic and knowledgeable account... [Wiesenthal’s is] a remarkable career, which is movingly... reported in these pages.” — Eugene Davidson, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science