Jacob's Rescue


Book Description

Based on a true story, and from the co-author of Rescuers, the courageous and vividly told story of one boy and the courageous family who risks everything to save him. Once Jacob Gutgeld lived with his family in a beautiful house in Warsaw, Poland. He went to school and played hide-and-seek in the woods with his friends. But everything changed the day the Nazi soldiers invaded in 1939. Suddenly it wasn't safe to be Jewish anymore.




Rescue


Book Description

From New York Times bestselling author Jennifer A. Nielsen comes a thrilling World War II story of espionage and intrigue, as one girl races to crack a coded message to save her father and the French resistance. Six hundred and fifty-seven days ago, Meg Kenyon's father left their home in France to fight for the Allies in World War II, and that was the last time Meg saw him. Recently, she heard he was being held prisoner by the Nazis, a terrible sentence from which Meg fears he'll never return. All she has left of him are the codes he placed in a jar for her to decipher, an affectionate game the two of them shared. But the codes are running low, and soon there'll be nothing left of Papa for Meg to hold on to at all. Suddenly, an impossible chance to save her father falls into Meg's lap. After following a trail of blood in the snow, Meggie finds an injured British spy hiding in her grandmother's barn. Captain Stewart tells her that a family of German refugees must be guided across Nazi-occupied France to neutral Spain, whereupon one of them has promised to free Meg's father. Captain Stewart was meant to take that family on their journey, but too injured to complete the task himself, he offers it to Meg, along with a final code from Papa to help complete the mission -- perhaps the most important, and most difficult, riddle she's received yet. As the Nazis flood Meg's village in fierce pursuit, she accepts the duty and begins the trek across France. Leading strangers through treacherous territory, Meg faces danger and uncertainty at every turn, all the while struggling to crack her father's code. The message, as she unravels it, reveals secrets costly enough to risk the mission and even her own life. Can Meg solve the puzzle, rescue the family, and save her father?




Rescue


Book Description

Between the years 1933 and 1945, Adolf Hitler organized the Murder of six million Jews while the world looked on silently. But not all people stood back in fear. In every Nazioccupied Country, at every level of society, there were non-Jews who had the courage to resist. From the king of Denmark, refusing to force Jewish Danes to wear yellow stars, to the Dutch student, registering Jewish babies as Gentiles and hiding children in her home, a small number of people had the strength to reject the inhumanity they were ordered to support. Here are their stories: thrilling, terrifying, and most of all, inspiring. For in the horror that was the Holocaust, some human decency could still shine through. "There are no Rambo-style heroics here, just short accounts of quiet bravery. It is an inspiring testimonial." --The San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle ‘A companion to Never to Forget, this is the story of those gentiles who sought to rescue their Jewish neighbors from annihilation during World War II. Succeeding chapters describe the efforts of Germans, Poles, Danes, and others to save Jewish friends and strangers from the Nazis. A story that needs telling." 'SLJ. Notable Children's Books of 1988 (ALA) 1988 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA) Best Books of 1988 (SLJ) Best of the '80s (BL) 1988 Children's Editors' Choices (BL) Young Adult Choices for 1988 (IRA) 1989 Teachers' Choices (IRA) 1989 Jane Addams Children's Book Award Honor Book Children's Books of 1988 (Library of Congress) 1989 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library) 100 Books for Reading and Sharing 1988 (NY Public Library)




Jacob Riis's Camera


Book Description

This revealing biography of a pioneering photojournalist and social reformer Jacob Riis shows how he brought to light one of the worst social justice issues plaguing New York City in the late 1800s--the tenement housing crisis--using newly invented flash photography. Jacob Riis was familiar with poverty. He did his best to combat it in his hometown of Ribe, Denmark, and he experienced it when he immigrated to the United States in 1870. Jobs for immigrants were hard to get and keep, and Jacob often found himself penniless, sleeping on the streets or in filthy homeless shelters. When he became a journalist, Jacob couldn't stop seeing the poverty in the city around him. He began to photograph overcrowded tenement buildings and their impoverished residents, using newly developed flash powder to illuminate the constantly dark rooms to expose the unacceptable conditions. His photographs inspired the people of New York to take action. Gary Kelley's detailed illustrations perfectly accompany Alexis O'Neill's engaging text in this STEAM title for young readers.




Disaster Citizenship


Book Description

A century ago, governments buoyed by Progressive Era–beliefs began to assume greater responsibility for protecting and rescuing citizens. Yet the aftermath of two disasters in the United States–Canada borderlands--the Salem Fire of 1914 and the Halifax Explosion of 1917--saw working class survivors instead turn to friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family members for succor and aid. Both official and unofficial responses, meanwhile, showed how the United States and Canada were linked by experts, workers, and money. In Disaster Citizenship, Jacob A. C. Remes draws on histories of the Salem and Halifax events to explore the institutions--both formal and informal--that ordinary people relied upon in times of crisis. He explores patterns and traditions of self-help, informal order, and solidarity and details how people adapted these traditions when necessary. Yet, as he shows, these methods--though often quick and effective--remained illegible to reformers. Indeed, soldiers, social workers, and reformers wielding extraordinary emergency powers challenged these grassroots practices to impose progressive "solutions" on what they wrongly imagined to be a fractured social landscape.




Lives Reclaimed


Book Description

From the celebrated historian of Nazi Germany, the story of a remarkable but completely unsung group that risked everything to help the most vulnerable In the early 1920s amidst the upheaval of Weimar Germany, a small group of peaceable idealists began to meet, practicing a quiet, communal life focused on self-improvement. For the most part, they had come to know each other while attending adult education classes in the city of Essen. But “the Bund,” as they called their group, had lofty aspirations—under the direction of their leader Artur Jacobs, its members hoped to forge an ideal community that would serve as a model for society at large. But with the ascent of the Nazis, the Bund was forced to reevaluate its mission, focusing instead on offering assistance to the persecuted, despite the great risk. Their activities ranged from visiting devastated Jewish families after Kristallnacht, to sending illicit letters and parcels of food and clothes to deportees in concentration camps, to sheltering political dissidents and Jews on the run. What became of this group? And how should its deeds—often small, seemingly insignificant acts of kindness and assistance—be evaluated in the broader history of life under the Nazis? Drawing on a striking set of previously unpublished letters, diaries, Gestapo reports, other documents, and his own interviews with survivors, historian Mark Roseman shows how and why the Bund undertook its dangerous work. It is an extraordinary story in its own right, but Roseman takes us deeper, encouraging us to rethink the concepts of resistance and rescue under the Nazis, ideas too often hijacked by popular notions of individual heroism or political idealism. Above all, the Bund’s story is one that sheds new light on what it meant to offer a helping hand in this dark time.




The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet


Book Description

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply “a genius.” Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to The Guardian’s claim that “each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it.” The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a stunning departure for this brilliant, restless, and wildly ambitious author, a giant leap forward by even his own high standards. A bold and epic novel of a rarely visited point in history, it is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable. The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland. But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?” A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author. Praise for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet “A page-turner . . . [David] Mitchell’s masterpiece; and also, I am convinced, a masterpiece of our time.”—Richard Eder, The Boston Globe “An achingly romantic story of forbidden love . . . Mitchell’s incredible prose is on stunning display. . . . A novel of ideas, of longing, of good and evil and those who fall somewhere in between [that] confirms Mitchell as one of the more fascinating and fearless writers alive.”—Dave Eggers, The New York Times Book Review “The novelist who’s been showing us the future of fiction has published a classic, old-fashioned tale . . . an epic of sacrificial love, clashing civilizations and enemies who won’t rest until whole family lines have been snuffed out.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post “By any standards, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a formidable marvel.”—James Wood, The New Yorker “A beautiful novel, full of life and authenticity, atmosphere and characters that breathe.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR




Jacob's Folly


Book Description

Jacob is a Jewish peddler living in eighteenth-century France; Leslie and Deirdre Senzatimore are a settled American couple; and Masha is an alluring, young, ultra-Orthodox Jew who is gravely ill. In Jacob’s Folly, these four individuals will find their fates intertwined and the courses of their lives irrevocably altered when Jacob is reincarnated as a housefly in contemporary Long Island. Through the unique lens of Jacob’s consciousness, Miller explores transformation in all its different guises—personal, spiritual and literal. As she considers the hold of the past on the present, the power of private hopes and dreams, and the collision of fate and free will, Miller’s world—which is our own, transfigured by her startlingly clear gaze and by her sharp, surprising wit—comes to vibrant life. Leslie’s desire to act as hero and rescuer; Jacob’s disastrous marriage to the childlike Hodle, and his intense obsession with Masha—Miller sketches her characters’ interior lives with compassion, subtlety and an exceptionally light touch. Jacob’s Folly is wildly inventive, and ultimately moving; it will leave the reader, no less than its characters, transformed.




Rescue, Relief, and Resistance


Book Description

Rescue, Relief, and Resistance: The Jewish Labor Committee's Anti-Nazi Operations, 1934-1945 is the English translation of Catherine Collomp's award-winning book on the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC). Formed in New York City in 1934 by the leaders of the Jewish Labor Movement, the JLC came to the forefront of American labor's reaction to Nazism and Anti-Semitism. Situated at the crossroads of several fields of inquiry--Jewish history, immigration and exile studies, American and international labor history, World War II in France and in Poland--the history of the JLC is by nature transnational. It brings to the fore the strength of ties between the Yiddish-speaking Jewish worlds across the globe. Rescue, Relief, and Resistance contains six chapters. Chapter 1 describes the political origin of the JLC, whose founders had been Bundist militants in the Russian empire before their emigration to the United States, and asserts its roots in the American Jewish Labor movement of the 1930s. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss how the JLC established formal links with the European non-communist labor movement, especially through the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions. Chapter 4 focuses on the approximately 1,500 European labor and socialist leaders and left-wing intellectuals, including their families, rescued from certain arrest and deportation by the Gestapo. Chapter 5 deals with the special relationship the JLC established with currents in the Resistance in France, partly financing its underground labor and socialist networks and operations. Chapter 6 is devoted to the JLC's support of Jews in Poland during the war: humanitarian relief for those in the occupied territory under Soviet domination and political and financial support of the combatants of the Warsaw ghetto in their last stand against annihilation by the Wermacht. The JLC has never commemorated its rescue operations and other political activities on behalf of opponents of Fascism and Nazism, nor its contributions to the reconstruction of Jewish life after the Holocaust. Historians to this day have not traced its history in a substantial way. Students and scholars of Holocaust and American studies will find this text vital to their continued studies.




Rescue Board


Book Description

Featured historian in the Ken Burns documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust on PBS • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD • In this remarkable work of historical reclamation, Holocaust historian Rebecca Erbelding pieces together years of research and newly uncovered archival materials to tell the dramatic story of America’s little-known efforts to save the Jews of Europe. “An invaluable addition to the literature of the Holocaust.” —Andrew Nagorski, author of The Nazi Hunters and Hitlerland “Brilliantly brings to life the gripping, little-known story of [a] transformative moment in American history and the crusading young government lawyers who made it happen.” —Lynne Olson, New York Times bestselling author of Last Hope Island For more than a decade, a harsh Congressional immigration policy kept most Jewish refugees out of America, even as Hitler and the Nazis closed in. In 1944, the United States finally acted. That year, Franklin D. Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, and put a young Treasury lawyer named John Pehle in charge. Over the next twenty months, Pehle pulled together a team of D.C. pencil pushers, international relief workers, smugglers, diplomats, millionaires, and rabble-rousers to run operations across four continents and a dozen countries. Together, they tricked the Nazis, forged identity papers, maneuvered food and medicine into concentration camps, recruited spies, leaked news stories, laundered money, negotiated ransoms, and funneled millions of dollars into Europe. They bought weapons for the French Resistance and sliced red tape to allow Jewish refugees to escape to Palestine. “A landmark achievement, Rescue Board is the first history of the War Refugee Board. Meticulously researched and poignantly narrated, Rescue Board analyzes policies and practices while never losing sight of the human beings involved: the officials who sought to help and the victims in desperate need. Top-notch history: original and riveting.” —Debórah Dwork, founding director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University, and coauthor of Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933–1946