Jewish Children in Nazi-occupied Poland


Book Description

Through an in-depth textual analysis of eyewitness testimonies, the author reconstructs various categories of child survivors and the ways in which they coped with social relations on the Aryan side in Nazi-occupied Poland, using concepts of "performance" pioneered by Goffman. These testimonies bring a new dimension to issues of betrayal and hostility as well as of sacrifice and dedication, creating a broader view of historical representation through pictures of individuals.




Life in a Jar


Book Description

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.







Hunt for the Jews


Book Description

A revealing account of Polish cooperation with Nazis in WWII—a “grim, compelling [and] significant scholarly study” (Kirkus Reviews). Between 1942 and 1943, thousands of Jews escaped the fate of German death camps in Poland. As they sought refuge in the Polish countryside, the Nazi death machine organized what they called Judenjagd, meaning hunt for the Jews. As a result of the Judenjagd, few of those who escaped the death camps would survive to see liberation. As Jan Grabowski’s penetrating microhistory reveals, the majority of the Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal by their Polish neighbors. Hunt for the Jews tells the story of the Judenjagd in Dabrowa, Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland. Drawing on materials from Polish, Jewish, and German sources created during and after the war, Grabowski documents the involvement of the local Polish population in the process of detecting and killing the Jews who sought their aid. Through detailed reconstruction of events, “Grabowski offers incredible insight into how Poles in rural Poland reacted to and, not infrequently, were complicit with, the German practice of genocide. Grabowski also, implicitly, challenges us to confront our own myths and to rethink how we narrate British (and American) history of responding to the Holocaust” (European History Quarterly).




The Last Eyewitnesses


Book Description

"The memoirs of Jews who were children during the Nazi occupation of Poland This book serves as a memorial to loved ones who do not even have a grave, as well as a tribute to those who risked their lives and families to save a Jewish child. A wide variety of experiences during the Nazi occupation of Poland are related with wrenching simplicity and candor, experiences that illustrate horrors and deprivation, but also present examples of courage and compassion."--Publisher's description.




Your Life is Worth Mine


Book Description

The story -- never told before -- of how Polish nuns in World War II saved hundreds of Jewish lives in German-occupied Poland. Forty-nine convents and orphanages were involved in protecting the children and the most authoritative estimates indicate 1200 Jewish young people survived the war in these shelters.




Jewish Childhood in Kraków


Book Description

Winner of the 2020 Ernst Fraenkel Prize from the Wiener Holocaust Library​ Jewish Childhood in Kraków is the first book to tell the history of Kraków in the second World War through the lens of Jewish children’s experiences. Here, children assume center stage as historical actors whose recollections and experiences deserve to be told, analyzed, and treated seriously. Sliwa scours archives to tell their story, gleaning evidence from the records of the German authorities, Polish neighbors, Jewish community and family, and the children themselves to explore the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland and in Kraków in particular. A microhistory of a place, a people, and daily life, this book plumbs the decisions and behaviors of ordinary people in extraordinary times. Offering a window onto human relations and ethnic tensions in times of rampant violence, Jewish Childhood in Kraków is an effort both to understand the past and to reflect on the position of young people during humanitarian crises.




Children of Terror


Book Description

This book is an "Honorable-Mention Awardee 2015" from Readers Favorite under Non-Fiction/Autobiography category. Two very young girls, one a Catholic from Poland, the other a Jew from Germany, are caught in a web of terror during World War II. These are their unforgettable true stories. "War does not spare the innocent. Two young girls, one a Catholic from Poland, the other a Jew from Germany, were witnesses to the horror of the Nazi occupation and Hitlers terror in Germany. As children they saw their homes and communities destroyed and loved ones killed. They survived deportation, labor camps, concentration camps, starvation, disease and isolation." This is a moving personal account of history. Urbanowicz and Auerbachers painful pasts and similar experiences should guide us to make correct decisions for the future." Aldona Wos, M.D. Ambassador of the United States of America, Retired, to the Republic of Estonia Daughter of Paul Wos, Flossenburg Concentration Camp, Prisoner Number 23504 Most Holocaust survivors are no longer with us, and that is why this volume is so important. It is a moving testimony by two courageous women, one Catholic and one Jewish, about their youthful ordeals at the hands of the Nazis. They succeed in ways even the most astute historian cannot they literally capture history and bring it to life. It is sure to touch all those who read it. William A. Donohue President, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights Such an original book, written jointly by both a Jewish survivor and a Polish-Christian survivor of the Holocaust, Children of Terror points the way toward fresh insight, hope and redemption. If Never again is to be more than a slogan, tomorrows adults must be nourished and informed by books such as this. A fabulous piece of work, perfect for the young people who are our future. Rabbi Dr. Hirsch Joseph Simckes, St. Johns University, Department of Theology The authors were born in the same year but into different worlds: one a Polish Catholic and the other a German Jew. Despite their dramatically different traditions and circumstances, they shared a common trauma the confusion and fear of being a child in wartime. Auerbacher and Urbanowicz vividly describe the saving power of family, place, and tradition. Young readers of Children of Terror will come away with a deeper understanding of the Second World War and a profound admiration for the books authors. David G. Marwell, Ph.D., Director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage A Living Memorial to the Holocaust




Hiding in Plain Sight


Book Description

An extraordinary story of strength, resilience, hope, and salvation, Betty Lauer's book chronicles Berta Weissberger's six-year terrifying odyssey in Nazi-occupied Poland. After dying her hair blonde and studying the catechism in hopes of passing as Christian Poles, Berta, her mother, and her sister live a life of constant vigilance and fear. It is only through her abiding faith in a higher power that she is enabled to survive while hiding in plain sight.




Did the Children Cry?


Book Description

An unprecedented aspect of Nazi genocide in World War II was the cold and deliberate decision not to spare the children. Jewish children, first driven into the ghettos, were marked for total destruction as part of the "Final Solution" once it was put into effect, in 1942. Gentile children were starved, killed, or Germanized in order to reduce the Polish nation to a small complement of semi-literate slaves tending the Herrenvolk in their thousand-year Reich. This record also includes accounts of how they fought back by working for the underground, smuggling food into the ghettos, attending secret classes to continue their forbidden education. Included are stories of villains like Mengele who selected children for execution during Jewish religious holidays; Rudolph Hoess, Auschwitz's commandant who admitted his own discomfort when he witnessed the gassing of prisoners with the excuse: "I was a soldier and an officer"; a heroic Dr. Janusz Korczak who was in charge of an orphanage in the ghetto, but refused to leave his orphans, and at the head of a contingent of 192 children and 8 staff members, erect, his eyes looking into the distance, held the hands of two children as he led them to the railroad platform where trains took them to certain death. Based on vast research in the United States, Great Britain, and Poland, many interviews, theses and other papers, documents and official histories, memoirs, autobiographies, articles, periodicals and newspapers, Did the Children Cry? stands as a monument to millions of children who were bombed, wounded, deported, raped, starved, maimed, subjected to "medical" experimentation, and killed in German-occupied Poland.