Saving Children


Book Description

In Saving Children, Jack Werber describes in detail what life in Buchenwald was like, painting a haunting picture of his daily struggle for survival. But Werber did more than survive; he made saving children his special mission. In what is one of the most amazing stories of the Holocaust, Jack Werber helped to save the lives of some seven hundred Jewish children who had arrived at Buchenwald in late 1944, including Nobel Prize-winner Elie Wiesel and Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel. At great personal risk, he arranged for the children to be hidden in various barracks with false working papers. He and his group actually started a school where the children studied Jewish history, music, and Hebrew. These activities gave the youngsters hope that they might survive and ultimately most of them did. Werber’s entire family—his wife, daughter, parents, and seven siblings—were all murdered by the Nazis. "There was no reason to go on," he had thought, but seeing the children transformed his outlook. He resolved to prevent them from meeting his daughter’s fate. Out of 3,200 Polish prisoners who entered the camp together with Werber, only eleven were alive by war’s end. Of those, he was the only Jew.




Boy from Buchenwald


Book Description

It was 1945 and Romek Wajsman had just been liberated from Buchenwald, a brutal concentration camp where more than 60,000 people were killed. He was starving, tortured, and had no idea where his family was-let alone if they were alive. Along with 472 other boys, including Elie Wiesel, these teens were dubbed “The Buchenwald Boys.” They were angry at the world for their abuse, and turned to violence: stealing, fighting, and struggling for power. Everything changed for Romek and the other boys when Albert Einstein and Rabbi Herschel Schacter brought them to a home for rehabilitation Romek Wajsman, now Robbie Waisman, humanitarian and Canadian governor general award recipient, shares his remarkable story of transforming pain into resiliency and overcoming incredible loss to find incredible joy. Finalist for the Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children's Non-Fiction Winner of the 2022 the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize




A Fighter Pilot in Buchenwald


Book Description

On August 13, 1944, during his 44th combat mission, Joe Moser's P-38 Lightning was shot down. Captured by Nazi forces, he and his fellow group of Allied fliers were scheduled for execution as terrorfliegers and shipped in overcrowded cattle cars to Buchenwaldthe infamous work camp where tens of thousands died of cruelty, medical experiments, and starvation. Once a simple farm boy focused on sports and his dream to fly the fastest, meanest fighter plane, Moser now faced some of the worst of Hitler s ghastly system. From the harrowing and sometimes hilarious experiences of flight training to the dehumanization at the hands of Hitler s SS, this is a story of quiet, steady courage sustained by faith, family, and the commitment to freedom and liberty in even the most desperate of circumstances."




Survivor of Buchenwald


Book Description

I was only seventeen years old when the knock on the door came late one night. The French police barged in, arresting me and my father as members of the French Resistance. After months of incarceration in French prisons, two thousand inmates were jammed into twenty rail cars. Our destination was Buchenwald, the most horrific camp in Nazi Germany, where we were viewed by our SS keepers as expendable sub-humans and forced to work as slave laborers. I was beaten and starved. I witnessed brutal tortures and senseless murders. But I survived.




Out of the Depths


Book Description

(Updated and revised by Dennis R. Hillman) The original and unvarnished account of one of Christianity's most dramatic conversions--the autobiography of John Newton, the author of "Amazing Grace." This is the ultimate, full-length hymn story, as spectacular and compelling today as when it was first written.




Out of the Depths


Book Description

In his astonishing memoir, the Holocaust survivor and Chief Rabbi of Israel shares his story of faith and perseverance through WWII and beyond. Israel Meir Lau, one of the youngest survivors of Buchenwald, was just eight years old when the camp was liberated in 1945. Descended from a 1,000-year unbroken chain of rabbis, he grew up to become Chief Rabbi of Israel—and like many of the great rabbis, Lau is a master storyteller. Out of the Depths is his harrowing and inspiring account of life in one of the Nazis deadliest concentration camps, and how he managed to survive against all possible odds. Lau, who lost most of his family in the Holocaust, also chronicles his life after the war, including his emigration to Mandate Palestine during a period that coincides with the development of the State of Israel. The story continues up through today, with that once-lost boy of eight now a brilliant, charismatic, and world-revered figure who has visited with Popes John Paul and Benedict; the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and countless global leaders including Ronald Reagan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Tony Blair.




The Children of Buchenwald


Book Description

Some of the 426 child survivors of Buchenwald tell their stories, from their lives in the camp, their liberation, and their struggle for normalcy and emotional well-being.




Abe's Story


Book Description

Abe Korn was only 16 when the Nazis invaded his hometown of Lipno, Poland, on the first day of World War II. He survived the entire war as a Jewish prisoner, enduring two Nazi ghettos, eight concentration camps, and a 45-day Death March from Auschwitz. Astonishingly, Abe kept his sense of human dignity- with gangrenous feet he struggled to stay on the healthy workers list; with scan supplies he bargained for food and coal and helped others survive. Abe never gave up hope. He always believed he could live one more day, and on April 11, 1945, when Buchenwald was liberated, Abe was finally free. After Liberation, Abe focused on going to school and earning a living. Eventually, as a man earnest to forgive past sins and take individuals at face value, he married a German Lutheran, who later converted to Judaism. They moved to the United States, where Abe had a remarkably successful business. Abram Korn died in 1972. Abe left the rough draft of a manuscript of his story. Twenty years after his death, Abe's son, Joey began completing his father's story and the First Edition of Abe's Story was published by Longstreet Press on April 11th, 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of Abe's liberation. The current edition is published by Sugarcreek Press. To the family he raised proudly in the Jewish tradition, Abe left a legacy of powerful inspiration. For modern-day readers seeking the best in Holocaust literature and riveting drama, Abe's Story is an incredible story of hope, of the human potential to do good in the face of horrible evil. Abe's Story is about hope, not despair. It's about life, not death. It's a powerful source of inspiration for a all who read it. "Important testimony." ¬- Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Price Laureate and author of Night. "Powerful. Unforgettable. Abe's Story is an inspiration to all who read it." - Pat Conroy, author of Prince of Tides and Beach Music. "An extraordinary memoir by an Auschwitz survivor, whose son rescued the manuscript from oblivion." - John Stoessinger, Trinity University, author of Might of Nations and Why Nations Go to War.'




Political Survivors


Book Description

In 1949, as Cold War tensions in Europe mounted, French intellectual and former Buchenwald inmate David Rousset called upon fellow concentration camp survivors to denounce the Soviet Gulag as a "hallucinatory repetition" of Nazi Germany's most terrible crime. In Political Survivors, Emma Kuby tells the riveting story of what followed his appeal, as prominent members of the wartime Resistance from throughout Western Europe united to campaign against the continued existence of inhumane internment systems around the world. The International Commission against the Concentration Camp Regime brought together those originally deported for acts of anti-Nazi political activity who believed that their unlikely survival incurred a duty to bear witness for other victims. Over the course of the next decade, these pioneering activists crusaded to expose political imprisonment, forced labor, and other crimes against humanity in Franco's Spain, Maoist China, French Algeria, and beyond. Until now, the CIA's secret funding of Rousset's movement has remained in the shadows. Kuby reveals this clandestine arrangement between European camp survivors and American intelligence agents. She also brings to light how Jewish Holocaust victims were systematically excluded from Commission membership – a choice that fueled the group's rise, but also helped lead to its premature downfall. The history that she unearths provides a striking new vision of how wartime memory shaped European intellectual life and ideological struggle after 1945, showing that the key lessons Western Europeans drew from the war centered on "the camp," imagined first and foremost as a site of political repression rather than ethnic genocide. Political Survivors argues that Cold War dogma and acrimony, tied to a distorted understanding of WWII's chief atrocities, overshadowed the humanitarian possibilities of the nascent anti-concentration camp movement as Europe confronted the violent decolonizing struggles of the 1950s.




Kibbutz Buchenwald


Book Description

Kibbutz Buchenwald is the story of a nightmare that became a dream and a dream that became a reality. Emerging from the depths of the liberated concentration camp Buchenwald in the spring of 1945, a group of sixteen gaunt and battered young men organized and formed Kibbutz Buchenwald, the first agricultural collective in postwar Germany designed to prepare Jews for emigation to Palestine. What caused a handful of survivors to take their fate into their own hands within days of their liberation, at a time when most survivors were passively awaiting orders from the occupying forces? From what wellsprings did they draw the physical and emotional strength to begin life anew as Zionist pioneers in a world which had turned upside down? Judith Baumel's moving account of this courageous group is divided into two parts. Part One, entitled "The Dream," examines the kibbutz from its creation in Germany until the departure of the founding group for Palestine in the summer of 1945. Part Two, "The Reality," follows the members of Kibbutz Buchenwald into Palestine, where they eventually established their own independent settlement in 1948. This settlement exists as Kibbutz Netzer Sereni today. Drawing from the diaries of the kibbutz's founding members, Baumel provides a detailed account of an incredible story and places the central narrative in the larger contexts of communal living, European politics after the war, and the link between European Jewry and Israeli postwar nationhood. An afterword, "Where Are They Now," briefly describes the later life of each of the original kibbutz members.