Almost forty years after the end of the war, Claire Baum opens a package from a stranger in Rotterdam, unleashing a flood of repressed memories from her childhood. As Claire delves into her past, she uncovers the personal sacrifice and bravery of her parents, the Dutch resistance and the families that selflessly gave shelter to her and her sister, Ollie. The Hidden Package portrays Claire’s years spent in hiding and pays tribute to all those who played a part in saving her life an...

Almost forty years after the end of the war, Claire Baum opens a package from a stranger in Rotterdam, unleashing a flood of repressed memories from her childhood. As Claire delves into her past, she uncovers the personal sacrifice and bravery of her parents, the Dutch resistance and the families that selflessly gave shelter to her and her sister, Ollie. The Hidden Package portrays Claire’s years spent in hiding and pays tribute to all those who played a part in saving her life an...

Two Jewish girls born six months apart — Judy Abrams in Hungary and Eva Felsenburg Marx in Czechoslovakia — are only children when they are thrown into the turmoil and terror of World War II. At seven, Judy’s mother leaves her at a convent where she must adopt a new Christian identity. Eva is first sent away at two, then again at six, in disguise and tearful. Separated from their parents, forced to “pass” as Christian children, coping with dangers they barely understand, these evocative an...

In the spring of 1944, as Germany occupied her native Hungary, Anna Hegedűs barely had time to notice the flowers blooming around her. One year later, as the lilacs blossomed once again, she returned to her hometown of Szatmár and set her memories, raw and vivid, to paper. Her unflinching words convey the bitter details of the Szatmár ghetto, Auschwitz, the Schlesiersee forced labour camp and a perilous death march. At forty-eight years old, Anna had survived a lifetime of trauma, and a...

When the Nazis invaded Hungary on March 19, 1944, elementary school teacher Helena Jockel thought only about how to save “her” children as she accompanied them all the way to Auschwitz. Her account of living and surviving in the camp is clear-eyed and poignant, sometimes recording the too-brief moments of beauty and kindness that accompany the unremitting cruelty.

Nearly buried alive, ten-year-old Michael Kutz narrowly escaped the Nazi death squad that killed 4,000 Jews, including his own family, in his hometown of Nieśwież. Guided by his mother’s last words and determined to survive, he became the youngest member of a partisan resistance group in the dense Belorussian forest, and took part in daring operations against the Nazis and their collaborators. After the war, Michael embarks on an odyssey through Czechoslovakia, Austria, Italy, and, final...

A month before George Stern’s thirteenth birthday, Germany invaded his native Hungary, anti-Jewish edicts were passed and a ghetto was established. A rebel even then, George refused to wear the Jewish star. “Passing” as a Christian boy, he survived the siege of Budapest as the Soviet Red Army pressed closer, strafing the city while the fascist Arrow Cross continued to hunt for Jews.

Ten-year-old Steve Rotschild learns to hide, to be silent, to be still – and to wait. He knows the sound of the Nazis’ army boots and knows to hold his breath until their footsteps recede. Rotschild takes us on a captivating journey through his wartime childhood in Vilna, eloquently juxtaposing his past, furtive walks outside the ghetto with his long, liberating walks through Toronto fifty years after the war. Vividly evoking his experiences, this story of survival and a mother’s tenacious...

For six desperate years, Willie Sterner’s skill as a painter saved him from death at the hands of the Nazis. Faced with inhumane conditions in slave labour camps and grieving the loss of his close-knit family, Sterner relied on courage and ingenuity to hold onto his dignity. Through almost random luck, he came under the protection of the famed Oskar Schindler and became his personal art restorer. An unvarnished account of what he experienced and what he lost, The Shadows Behind Me...

When the Nazis invaded her small town of Zduńska Wola, Poland, in 1939, sixteen-year-old Basia Kohn (later Betty Rich) escaped into Soviet-occupied Poland. Over the next five years, her journey took her thousands of kilometres from a forced labour camp in the far north of the USSR to the subtropical Soviet Georgian region and back to Poland. After the war, Betty and her husband fled from the Polish Communist regime and eventually immigrated to Toronto. Rich’s poetic memoir, Little Gir...

Strong-willed and ambitious, sixteen-year-old Elsa Thon is working as a photographer’s apprentice when the Nazis occupy her town of Pruszków, Poland in 1939. Every ounce of her will and ingenuity is called into play as she moves from ghetto to ghetto, throws in her lot with a Zionist youth group and is recruited by the Jewish underground. Despite her deep belief that destiny is determining her fate, Elsa faces every fraught situation with self-possession and maturity. A vivid and beautiful...

THE CLASSIC GOTHIC ROMANCE AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME!!This epic, gripping romance-thriller from Thomas Peckett Prest, the creator of Sweeney Todd is available in a beautifully formatted e-book for the very first time.'Zindorff' was wildly popular in the 1850s, outselling works by Dickens and Thackeray, but has now largely been forgotten. All the tropes of the early 'penny dreadful' are here: a quintessential Gothic romance, replete with incidents of physical and psycholo...