Trains to Treblinka


Book Description

Treblinka, Poland--1942. Daily, thousands of passengers including Bronka and Tchechia arrive at a destination they believe is a resettlement work camp, only to be immediately separated from their families and told to remove their clothing. Within moments, the masses disappear into a long, fenced passageway down the center of the camp called the tube, except for those indiscriminately chosen out of the lines by the SS. While ordered to carefully organize the discarded valuables of the passengers, the young men and women begin to unravel the mysterious truth about Treblinka, yet they are not allowed to ask questions. Only later, when the workers search for their loved ones to no avail do the Nazi’s menacing grins tell them all they need to know--that they must keep working or they will also end up entering the tube. As the sobering truth about Treblinka sinks deeply into the workers’ hearts, a few of the men and women begin to plan a revolt. Based on a magnificent true story, Trains to Treblinka deftly interweaves the lives of several revolt organizers who pledge everything for the chance to burn down the camp and escape into the woods. When the day comes for the uprising, the young workers are barely able to contain their excitement and they risk betraying their own motives under the watchful eyes of the continually distrusting Nazis. This well-researched, inspiring historical book is an authentic look at Treblinka written as a suspense novel. From Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize review, “It may be difficult and heart-wrenching to read the in-depth details about the atrocities that occurred at the Treblinka concentration camp, but this book is hard to put down. Causey presents a powerful linear approach to the arrival of the victims, the losses, the physical and emotional tortures, and the escape attempts. This profoundly memorable story about Treblinka serves as a reminder that every individual victim's name is worth remembering.” Learn about the beauty of hope, the tragedy of war, and the enduring power of the human heart, all in Trains to Treblinka.




Ghost Train of Treblinka


Book Description

In the winter of 1943, a train from Warsaw bound for the Treblinka death camp went missing. Now, in modern day Poland, the train still haunts the countryside, luring people to leave their homes and step aboard. A group of American travelers with a penchant for ghost hunting decide to look into the disappearances, only to discover a plot that could change the world, and that the Ghost Train's origins reach much further back than the holocaust . . .




A Year in Treblinka


Book Description




The Operation Reinhard Death Camps


Book Description

Under the code name Operation Reinhard, more than one and a half million Jews were murdered between 1942 and 1943 in the concentration camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, located in Nazi-occupied Poland. Unlike more well-known camps, which were used both for slave labor and extermination, these camps existed purely to murder Jews. Few victims survived to tell their stories, and the camps were largely forgotten after they were dismantled in 1943. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps bears eloquent witness to this horrific tragedy. This newly revised and expanded edition includes new material on the history of the Jews under German occupation in Poland; the execution and timing of Operation Reinhard; information about the ghettos in Lublin, Warsaw, Krakow, Radom, and Galicia; and updated numbers of the victims who were murdered during deportations. In addition to documenting the horror of the camps, Yitzhak Arad recounts the stories of those courageous enough to struggle against the Nazis and their "final solution." Arad's work retrieves the experiences of Operation Reinhard's victims and survivors from obscurity and exposes a terrible chapter in humanity's history.




Treblinka Survivor


Book Description

More than 800,000 people entered Treblinka, and fewer than seventy came out. Hershl Sperling was one of them. He escaped. Why then, fifty years later, did he jump to his death from a bridge in Scotland? The answer lies in a long-forgotten, published account of the Treblinka death camp, written by Hershl Sperling himself in the months after liberation and discovered in his briefcase after his suicide. It is reproduced here for the first time. In Treblinka Survivor, Mark S. Smith traces the life of a man who survived five concentration camps, and what he had to do to achieve this. Hershl's story, which takes the reader through his childhood in a small Polish town to the bridge in faraway Scotland, is testament to the lasting torment of those very few who survived the Nazis' most efficient and gruesome death factory. The author personally follows in his subject's footsteps from Klobuck, to Treblinka, to Glasgow.




Train


Book Description

Over ten days in 1943 Berlin, six teenagers witness and try to escape the Nazi round-ups. This young adult thriller is based on real events and inspired by hidden stories of Nazi genocide. Giving voice to the unheard victims of Nazism — the Roma, the disabled, intermarried Jews, homosexuals, political enemies of the regime — this thriller will change how we think about Holocaust history. Suitable for age 13 and up, TRAIN is an edge-of-your-seat page-turner that will inspire and surprise students and adults alike. "A stunning achievement... From the start, TRAIN's historically grounded depiction of Hitler's young victims creates unrelenting compassion and suspense."— Dr. Phyllis Lassner, Holocaust scholar "TRAIN not only fills a gap in Holocaust literature; it is also powerful, moving, and hard to put down."— Alexis Storch, The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education "TRAIN will change the way we think about Holocaust history."— Ellen Rago, Social Studies Teacher "TRAIN is an essential read for Holocaust and Genocide educators, students, and anyone who believes in the profound power of brilliant storytelling, the resilience of the human spirit, and the need to shed light on and bring a voice to the often shadowed narratives of the Holocaust."— Kelley Szany, Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center Marko screwed up. But he's good at swallowing his fear. By now, the 17-year-old 'Gypsy' should be far from Nazi Germany. By now, he should be with Alex. That's how they planned it. But while Marko has managed to escape the Gestapo, Alex has been arrested in the final round-ups of Berlin's Jews. Even worse, Marko's little cousin Kizzy is missing. And Marko knows he's to blame. Yet the tides of war are turning. With hundreds of Christian women gathered in the streets to protest the round-ups, the Nazis have suspended the trains to the camps. But for how long? Marko must act now. Against time, and with British warplanes bombing Berlin, Marko hatches a dangerous plan to rescue Alex and find Kizzy. There are three people who can help: Marko's sister with her connections to the Resistance, Alex's Catholic stepsister, and a mysterious Nazi girl with a deadly secret. But will Marko own up to how Kizzy disappeared? And then there's the truth about Alex — they just wouldn't understand.




Trap with a Green Fence


Book Description

Trap with a Green Fence is Richard Glazar's memoir of deportation, escape, and survival. In economical prose, Glazar weaves a description of Treblinka and its operations into his evocation of himself and his fellow prisoners as denizens of an underworld. Glazar gives us compelling images of these horrors in a tone that remains thoughtful but sober, affecting but simple.




Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka


Book Description

" . . . Mr. Arad reports as a controlled and effective witness for the prosecution. . . . Mr. Arad's book, with its abundance of horrifying detail, reminds us of how far we have to go."—New York Times Book Review " . . . some of the most gripping chapters I have ever read. . . . the authentic, exhaustive, definitive account of the least known death camps of the Nazi era." —Raul Hilberg Arad, historian and principal prosecution witness at the Israeli trial of John Demjanjuk (accused of being Treblinka's infamous "Ivan the Terrible"), uses primary materials to reveal the complete story of these Nazi death camps.




The Train Journey


Book Description

Deportations by train were critical in the Nazis’ genocidal vision of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Historians have estimated that between 1941 and 1944 up to three million Jews were transported to their deaths in concentration and extermination camps. In his writings on the “Final Solution,” Raul Hilberg pondered the role of trains: “How can railways be regarded as anything more than physical equipment that was used, when the time came, to transport the Jews from various cities to shooting grounds and gas chambers in Eastern Europe?” This book explores the question by analyzing the victims’ experiences at each stage of forced relocation: the round-ups and departures from the ghettos, the captivity in trains, and finally, the arrival at the camps. Utilizing a variety of published memoirs and unpublished testimonies, the book argues that victims experienced the train journeys as mobile chambers, comparable in importance to the more studied, fixed locations of persecution, such as ghettos and camps.




Prisoner B-3087


Book Description

From Alan Gratz, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Refugee, comes this wrenching novel about one boy's struggle to survive ten concentration camps during the Holocaust. Based on the inspiring true life story of Jack Gruener. 10 concentration camps. 10 different places where you are starved, tortured, and worked mercilessly. It's something no one could imagine surviving. But it is what Yanek Gruener has to face. As a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland, Yanek is at the mercy of the Nazis who have taken over. Everything he has, and everyone he loves, have been snatched brutally from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner -- his arm tattooed with the words PRISONER B-3087. He is forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another, as World War II rages all around him. He encounters evil he could have never imagined, but also sees surprising glimpses of hope amid the horror. He just barely escapes death, only to confront it again seconds later. Can Yanek make it through the terror without losing his hope, his will -- and, most of all, his sense of who he really is inside? Based on an astonishing true story.