A Doorway to Heroism


Book Description

The story of Richard Stern, whose photograph - showing a rare Jewish protest in Nazi Germany - hangs in multiple German museums. He was the author's Great Uncle.




Jacob's Courage


Book Description

This book shows the critical roles that love, determination, and steadfast belief play toward battling one's demons both physically and mentally. Jacob's Courage is ultimately a tribute to the triumphant human spirit. - The Jewish Book Council Jacob's Courage is a poignant and powerful tale of love and bravery set against the harrowing backdrop of Nazi-occupied Austria. Follow the journey of two young Jews, Jacob and Rachael, as they navigate a world where innocence is ruthlessly destroyed. From their comfortable lives in Salzburg to a decrepit ghetto, from a prison camp where they secretly marry to their escape through a tunnel and their joining of the local partisans to fight the Nazis, their journey is both heart-wrenching and inspiring. But their courage is truly tested as they face the horrors of Auschwitz, where faith, love, and courage are their only allies. With unforgettable moments of chaste beauty, Jacob's Courage is a moving coming-of-age story that examines the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable brutality and genocide.




Luba


Book Description

Barely twenty years old, Luba imagines a promising future in Kovna, Lithuania (present-day Kaunas). However, the year is 1939 and Luba is Jewish. Along with the whole Jewish community, her life changes inexplicably with the Nazi occupation. From her point of view, her “crime” is that she is Jewish and she will make her voice heard to her captors, knowing her chances of survival are slim. With candid urgency, she recounts the war years, her encounter with the commander of the camp where she is interned, and her miraculous survival against all odds.




Living among the Dead


Book Description

A treasure of individual strength, family love, community solidarity and Jewish History This is the story of one remarkable young woman's unimaginable journey through the rise of the Nazi regime, the Second World War, and the aftermath. Mania Lichtenstein’s dramatic story of survival is narrated by her granddaughter and her memories are interwoven with beautiful passages of poetry and personal reflection. Holocaust survivor Mania Lichtenstein used writing as a medium to deal with the traumatic effects of the war. Many Jews did not die in concentration camps, but were murdered in their lifelong communities, slaughtered by mass killing units, and then buried in pits. As a young girl, Mania witnessed the horrors while doing everything within her power to subsist. She lived in Włodzimierz, north of Lvov (Ukraine), was interned for three years in the labor camp nearby, managed to escape and hid in the forests until the end of the war. Although she was the sole survivor of her family, Mania went on to rebuild a new life in the United States, with a new language and new customs, always carrying with her the losses of her family and her memories. Seventy-five years after liberation, we are still witnessing acts of cruelty born out of hatred and discrimination. Living among the Dead reminds us of the beautiful communities that existed before WWII, the lives lost and those that lived on, and the importance to never forget these stories so that history does not repeat itself. READER'S FAVORITE GOLD MEDAL OF 2020 WINNER IN THE CATEGORY BIOGRAPHY




Single Handed


Book Description

From a World War II concentration camp to the Korean War to the White House, this is the story of Tibor “Teddy” Rubin, the only Holocaust survivor ever to receive a Medal of Honor... After being captured by Nazis and living through a year in the Mauthausen concentration camp, young Hungarian immigrant Tibor Rubin arrived in America, penniless and barely speaking English. In 1950, he volunteered for service in the Korean War. After numerous acts of heroism, including single-handedly defending a hill against enemy soldiers, rescuing a wounded comrade amid sniper fire, and commandeering a machine gun, he was captured and spent two and a half years in captivity. Still, it wasn’t until 2005, when Tibor was seventy-six, that he received the Medal of Honor from President George W. Bush—making the former Hungarian refugee the only Holocaust survivor to earn America’s highest military distinction. Drawing on eyewitness accounts and extensive interviews, Single-Handed is the inspiring account of the life of Tibor “Teddy” Rubin, a stirring portrait of a true American hero.




After the Deportation


Book Description

Examines the change in memory regime in postwar France, from one centered on the concentration camps to one centered on the Holocaust.




Eichmann in Jerusalem


Book Description

Hannah Arendts authoritative report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann includes further factual material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendts postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account.




The Plot Against America


Book Description

Philip Roth's bestselling alternate history—the chilling story of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist president—is soon to be an HBO limited series. In an extraordinary feat of narrative invention, Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism. For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America–and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother. "A terrific political novel . . . Sinister, vivid, dreamlike . . . creepily plausible. . . You turn the pages, astonished and frightened.” — The New York Times Book Review




The Shoemaker's Son


Book Description

When the Soviet Union invaded Iwje, Poland in September 1939, David Bakszt's life was thrown into turmoil. His father's business was shuttered, his family was impoverished overnight, and his tight-knit community was disbanded. Though David did not know it at the time, a similar fate had befallen many Eastern European Jews, including the Silberfarb family in Serniki, Poland. Then, the Nazis arrived. From crowded ghettos and frigid forests to the battlefields on the Eastern Front, The Shoemaker's Son tells the true story of the Bakszts' and Silberfarbs' fights for survival, their struggles to rebuild in the aftermath, and the lives that they saved and lost in the process. Written by a third-generation survivor, this book provides a sober but loving account of her refugee family's extraordinary resistance efforts against the Nazis, the survivors' remarkable ability to embrace life amid so much death, and the indelible impact left on them and future generations.




Beneath a Scarlet Sky


Book Description

A teenage boy in 1940s Italy becomes part of an underground railroad that helps Jews escape through the Alps, but when he is recruited to be the personal driver for a powerful Third Reich commander, he begins to spy for the Allies.