Download or read book Irena Sendler written by Anna Mieszkowska and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2011 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first English translation of the compelling heroine story of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic who organized the rescue of more than 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. In the fall of 1999, four young girls from Kansas began research for a high school history project. The students were inspired by a magazine article about Irena Sendler, and after discovering that Sendler was still alive, they exchanged letters with her and eventually traveled to Poland to meet with her. The play the students wrote as a result of their research and multiple interviews spawned worldwide interest in the epic story of one person who managed to save the lives of 2,500 children in Poland under German occupation. This new translation brings the universally appealing story of Irena Sendler to an English-speaking audience for the first time. It contains moving accounts of courage and hope in the face of tremendous danger, cruelty, and terrifying uncertainty. It also portrays the unspeakable emotional distress suffered by the children's parents who chose to give them up, and communicates the decades of immense longing, loneliness, and guilt of the rescuees for having survived while their families did not. - Based on sound scholarship and research while also being easy to read and accessible to a wide readership - Provides a complete, chronological presentation of Sendler's life, from her childhood, education, and wartime humanitarian efforts to her postwar experiences, including her professional and personal life and her visit to Israel - Presents unique information from letters and interviews with the now-elderly children Sendler rescued over 60 years ago, illuminating the dramatic influence she had upon their lives - Contains several sections written in the voice of Irena Sendler, resulting in a lively, conversational first-person narrative that gives a reading experience akin to sitting with Sendler and hearing her story firsthand

Download or read book Children of the Holocaust written by Helen Epstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1988-10-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I set out to find a group of people who, like me, were possessed by a history they had never lived." The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Helen Epstein traveled from America to Europe to Israel, searching for one vital thin in common: their parent's persecution by the Nazis. She found: • Gabriela Korda, who was raised by her parents as a German Protestant in South America; • Albert Singerman, who fought in the jungles of Vietnam to prove that he, too, could survive a grueling ordeal; • Deborah Schwartz, a Southern beauty queen who—at the Miss America pageant, played the same Chopin piece that was played over Polish radio during Hitler's invasion. Epstein interviewed hundreds of men and women coping with an extraordinary legacy. In each, she found shades of herself.

Download or read book Mother of the Children of the Holocaust written by Anna Mieszkowska and published by . This book was released on with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Motherland written by Fern Schumer Chapman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-04-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A moving account of a mother and daughter who visit Germany to face the Holocaust tragedy that has caused their family decades of intergenerational trauma, from the author of Brothers, Sisters, Strangers Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award In 1938, when Edith Westerfeld was twelve, her parents sent her from Germany to America to escape the Nazis. Edith survived, but most of her family perished in the death camps. Unable to cope with the loss of her family and homeland, Edith closed the door on her past, refusing to discuss even the smallest details. Fifty-four years later, when the void of her childhood was consuming both her and her family, she returned to Stockstadt with her grown daughter Fern. For Edith the trip was a chance to reconnect and reconcile with her past; for Fern it was a chance to learn what lay behind her mother's silent grief. Together, they found a town that had dramatically changed on the surface, but which hid guilty secrets and lived in enduring denial. On their journey, Fern and her mother shared many extraordinary encounters with the townspeople and—more importantly—with one another, closing the divide that had long stood between them. Motherland is a story of learning to face the past, of remembering and honoring while looking forward and letting go. It is an account of the Holocaust’s lingering grip on its witnesses; it is also a loving story of mothers and daughters, roots, understanding, and, ultimately, healing.

Download or read book Sala s Gift written by Ann Kirschner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-11-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Do you know why I write so much? Because as long as you read, we are together." -- Raizel Garncarz (Sala's sister), April 24, 1941 Few family secrets have the power both to transform lives and to fill in crucial gaps in world history. But then, few families have a mother and a daughter quite like Sala and Ann Kirschner. For nearly fifty years, Sala kept a secret: She had survived five years as a slave in seven different Nazi work camps. Living in America after the war, she kept from her children any hint of her epic, inhuman odyssey. She held on to more than 350 letters, photographs, and a diary without ever mentioning them. Only in 1991, on the eve of heart surgery, did she suddenly present them to Ann and offer to answer any questions her daughter wished to ask. It was a life-changing moment for her scholar, writer, and entrepreneur daughter. We know surprisingly little about the vast network of Nazi labor camps, where imprisoned Jews built railroads and highways, churned out munitions and materiel, and otherwise supported the limitless needs of the Nazi war machine. This book gives us an insider's account: Conditions were brutal. Death rates were high. As the war dragged on and the Nazis retreated, inmates were force-marched across hundreds of miles, or packed into cattle cars for grim journeys from one camp to another. When Sala first reported to a camp in Geppersdorf, Poland, at the age of sixteen, she thought it would be for six weeks. Five years later, she was still at a labor camp and only she and two of her sisters remained alive of an extended family of fifty. In the first years of the conflict, Sala was aided by her close friend Ala Gertner, who would later lead an uprising at Auschwitz and be executed just weeks before the liberation of that camp. Sala was also helped by other key friends. Yet above all, she survived thanks to the slender threads of support expressed in the letters of her friends and family. She kept them at great personal risk, and it is astonishing that she was able to receive as many as she did. With their heartwrenching expressions of longing, love, and hope, they offer a testament to the human spirit, an indomitable impulse even in the face of monstrosity. Sala's Gift is a rare book, a gift from Ann to her mother, and a great gift from both women to the world.

Download or read book My Mother s Voice written by Adrienne Kertzer and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2001-12-11 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do children's books represent the Holocaust? How do such books negotiate the tension between the desire to protect children, and the commitment to tell children the truth about the world? If Holocaust representations in children's books respect the narrative conventions of hope and happy endings, how do they differ, if at all, from popular representations intended for adult audiences? And where does innocence lie, if the children's fable of Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful is marketed for adults, and far more troubling survivor memoirs such as Anita Lobel's No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War are marketed for children? How should Holocaust Studies integrate discourse about children's literature into its discussions? In approaching these and other questions, Kertzer uses the lens of children's literature to problematize the ways in which various adult discourses represent the Holocaust, and continually challenges the conventional belief that children's literature is the place for easy answers and optimistic lessons.

Download or read book Motherland written by Rita Goldberg and published by Halban. This book was released on 2014-01-27 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like Anne Frank, Hilde Jacobsthal was born in Germany and brought up in Amsterdam, where the two families became close. Unlike Anne Frank, she survived the war, and Otto Frank was to become godfather to Rita, her first daughter. "I am the child of a woman who survived the Holocaust not by the skin of her teeth but heroically. This book tells the story of my mother's dramatic life before, during and after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. "I wrote Motherland because I wanted to understand a story which had become a kind of family myth. My mother's life could be seen as a narrative of the twentieth century; along with my father she was present and active at many of its significant moments." Rita Goldberg Hilde Jacobsthal was fifteen when the Nazis invaded Holland. After the arrest of her parents in 1943 she fled to Belgium, where she went into hiding and worked with the Resistance at night. She was liberated by the American army in 1944. In April 1945 she volunteered with a British Red Cross Unit to go to the relief of Bergen-Belsen, which had itself been liberated one week before her arrival. The horror and devastation were overwhelming, but despite her shock and grief she stayed at the camp for two years, helping with the enormous task of recovery. Sorrow and exuberance went hand in hand as the young people at Belsen found renewed life and each other. Hilde got to know Hanns Alexander (subject of the recently published Hanns and Rudolf), who was on the British War Crimes Commission, and, eventually, a Swiss doctor called Max Goldberg. Motherland is the culmination of a lifetime of reflection and a decade of research. Rita Goldberg enlarges the story she heard from her mother with historical background. She has talked with her about the minutest details of her life and pored over her papers, exploring not only her mother's life but her own. Complicated feelings are explored lightly as Rita takes the story beyond Bergen-Belsen, where paradoxically her parents met and fell in love; beyond Israel's War of Independence where they both volunteered, and on to the next chapter of their lives in the US. A deeply moving story, Motherland will become an essential text about World War II, the Holocaust and the survival of the spirit.

Download or read book Thanks to My Mother written by Schoschana Rabinovici and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Susie Weksler was only eight when Hitler's forces invaded her Lithuanian city of Vilnius. Over the next few years, she endured starvation, brutality, and forced labor in three concentration camps. With courage and ingenuity, Susie's mother helped her to survive--by disguising her as an adult to fool the camp guards, finding food to add to their scarce rations, and giving her the will to endure. This harrowing memoir portrays the best and worst of humanity in heartbreaking scenes you will never forget. Winner of the Mildred L. Batchelder Award An ALA Notable Book An NCSS-CBC Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies

Download or read book My Mother s Secret written by J.L. Witterick and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by a true story, My Mother’s Secret is a captivating and ultimately uplifting tale intertwining the lives of two Jewish families in hiding from the Nazis, a fleeing German soldier, and the mother and daughter who save them all. Franciszka and her daughter, Helena, are simple, ordinary people...until 1939, when the Nazis invade their homeland. Providing shelter to Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland is a death sentence, but Franciszka and Helena do exactly that. In their tiny home in Sokal, they hide a Jewish family in a loft above their pigsty, a Jewish doctor with his wife and son in a makeshift cellar under the kitchen, and a defecting German soldier in the attic—each party completely unknown to the others. For everyone to survive, Franciszka will have to outsmart her neighbors and the German commander. Told simply and succinctly from four different perspectives—all under one roof—My Mother’s Secret is a testament to the kindness, courage, and generosity of ordinary people who chose to be extraordinary.

Download or read book The Indescribable and the Undiscussable written by Dan Bar-On and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Serious difficulties arise when people try to make sense of their feelings, behavior, and discourse in everyday life and, especially, after traumatic experiences. Two groups of impediments are identified: the "indescribable" is demonstrated by a group of pathfinders working through their different maps of mind and nature; by individuals trying to understand and integrate a first heart attack into their previous life experiences. The "undiscussable" is highlighted in the intergenerational transmission of traumatic experiences in the families of Holocaust survivors and Nazi perpetrators. By providing a unique way of looking at life experiences, embedded in a variety of social contexts, this book suggests a new psychosocial theoretical framework which can be used by both laymen and professionals when confronted by troublesome issues that require acknowledgement.

Download or read book A Daughter of Many Mothers written by Rena Quint and published by . This book was released on 2017-09 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Daughter of Many Mothers" is the story of Rena Quint, a Holocaust survivor who continues to give testimony in Israel, the United States, and South Africa. This book explores not only her personal Holocaust experience, but addresses the social and psychological effects on many of the remaining survivors of those horrific years.

Download or read book Never Forget Your Name written by Alwin Meyer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The children of Auschwitz: this is the darkest spot in the ocean of suffering that was the Holocaust. They were deported to the concentration camp with their families, with most being murdered in the gas chambers upon their arrival, or were born there under unimaginable circumstances. While 232,000 children and juveniles were deported to Auschwitz, only 750 were liberated in the death camp at the end of January 1945. Most of them were under 15 years of age. Alwin Meyer's masterwork is the culmination of decades of research and interviews with the children and their descendants, sensitively reconstructing their stories before, during and after Auschwitz. The camp would remain with them throughout their lives: on their forearms, as a tattooed number, and in their minds, in the memory of heart-rending separation from parents and siblings, medical experiments, abject confusion, ceaseless hunger and a perpetual longing for home and security. Once the purported liberation came, there was no blueprint for piecing together personal biographies after the unthinkable had happened. Many of the children, often orphaned, had forgotten their names or ages, and had only fragmented understandings of where they came from. While some struggled to reconnect to the parents from whom they had been separated, others had known nothing other than the camp. Some children grew up without the ability to trust and to play. Survival is not yet life – it is an in-between stage which requires individuals to learn how to live. The liberated children had to learn how to be young again in order to grow into adults like others did. This remarkable book tells the stories of the most vulnerable victims of the Nazis’ systematic attempt to extinguish innocent lives, and rescues their voices from historical oblivion. It is a unique testimony to the horrific suffering endured by millions in humanity’s darkest hour.

Download or read book Life in a Jar written by H. Jack Mayer and published by Long Trail Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells story of Irena Sendler who organized the rescue of 2,500 Jewish children during World War II, and the teenagers who started the investigation into Irena's heroism.

Download or read book Child of the Holocaust written by Jack Kuper and published by Robson Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jack Kuper was only nine years old when he came home to find everyone in his family gone. The night before, Germans had come to his village in rural Poland and taken away all the Jews. Now alone in the world, he has to change his name, forget his language and abandon his religion in order to survive.

Download or read book Tutti s Promise written by K. Heidi Fishman and published by . This book was released on 2017-03 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A promise kept is like the twinkling stars in the night sky: a constant reminder of something important that makes you who you are. Can nine-year-old Tutti keep a promise-and a secret? Her family's life may depend on it. In the early 1930s, life for the Jews is on the brink of ruin: Hitler has come to power, and the golden memories of happy times are fading fast. One young couple, Margret and Heinz Lichtenstern, decide to flee Germany with their parents and daughter, Tutti. They move to Amsterdam, where Heinz is able to continue his work and where there seems to be hope for the future. Two years later, Tutti's brother is born, and the family is prospering. But then Germany invades the Netherlands. And in the pre-dawn hours of May 10, 1940, the Lichtensterns suddenly learn that they have not moved far enough. This is the true story of what the Lichtensterns endured under the Nazis. Told by Tutti's daughter, Heidi, and filled with historical documents and photos, it vividly recreates how one family conquered fear and heartbreak to survive. Theirs is a tale of both unimaginable devastation and lucky surprises-raids, sabotage, helpful friends and strangers, and a very special gift. One family. One remarkable story. And in the end, a promise kept.

Download or read book Legacies Lies and Lullabies written by Esther Levy and published by First Edition Design Pub.. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legacies, Lies and Lullabies: The World of a Second Generation Holocaust Survivor is a smorgasbord of history, memoirs, interviews, poems, recipes and cultural tidbits. It explores the rise of Hitler, the perils of life in Terezin, the soap opera of Eastern European relatives, and the invisible baggage of the second generation. A riveting must-read for anyone who hungers for a slice of humanity.

Download or read book Lifesaving Letters written by Milena Roth and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ch. 3 (pp. 26-98), "The Letters, " contains letters written by the author's mother, Anna Roth, between September 1930-July 1942. After the German invasion of Czechoslovakia Anna and Emil Roth, who lived in Prague, decided to send their six-year-old daughter on a Kindertransport to friends in England, hoping to follow. Anna's letters describe, inter alia, their futile attempts to emigrate. In July 1943 they were sent to Theresienstadt; in September 1943 they were sent to Auschwitz, where they perished. Further information on their fate is dispersed throughout the remainder of the book.