Chil Rajchman, a Polish Jew, was arrested with his younger sister in 1942 and sent to Treblinka, a death camp where more than 750,000 were murdered before it was abandoned by German soldiers. His sister was sent to the gas chambers, but Rajchman escaped execution, working for ten months under incessant threats and beatings as a barber, a clothes-sorter, a corpse-carrier, a puller of teeth from those same bodies. In August 1943, there was an uprising at the camp, and Rajchman was among the ...

Fifteen-year-old Hanna Berkenski journeys from her family's tiny apartment in the Warsaw Ghetto through an awful night spent in a cattle-car with her mother and sister to the welcoming orchestra at Auschwitz where she was to be a violinist for three years.As the train arrives at Auschwitz, flowers, sunshine and music feel like warm welcomes to her. She's been told she'll be spending the next few weeks in a "work camp" until her family can be reunited and relocated. Even the snowfla...

When Charlotte escaped Vienna on the Kindertransport, she carried more than memories of Nazi persecution—she bore the wound of her mother's ultimate betrayal. Through twenty-five years of Friday lunches in Montreal, this remarkable Holocaust survivor finally reveals to author Leon Berger the devastating secret that shaped her entire existence. From Kristallnacht to the London Blitz to building a new life in Canada, Charlotte's story shows how trauma echoes across decades and continents. A ...

Based on the true story explored in the Academy Award–nominated film, In Darkness, this holocaust memoir is "a gripping account of survival and friendship" ( Booklist).In 1943, with Lvov's 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of Polish Jews daringly sought refuge in the city's sewer system. The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, shares one of the most intimate, harrowing a...

I Shall Live tells the gripping true story of a Jewish family in Germany and Russia as the Nazi party gains power in Germany. When Henry Orenstein and his siblings end up in a series of concentrations camps, Orenstein's bravery and quick thinking help him to save himself and his brothers from execution by playing a role in the greatest hoax ever pulled on the upper echelons of Nazi command.Orenstein's lucid prose recreates this horrific time in history and his constant stru...

The personal story of a young Jewish girl trapped in Nazi Germany. Separated from her younger sister, Edith and her mother witness the farce of the Red Cross visit to Terezin, escape the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and survive the labor camps of the Russian Front. This is a story of horror and miracles, and of triumph against all odds.

Remarkable first-person story of survival in Nazi occupied Poland. Narrowly escaping the Nazi sweep in Southern Poland, Jafa Wallach and her husband, Natan, a physician, were able to send their four-year-old daughter to safety (they prayed) while they themselves—along with two of Jafa's brothers—managed to dig a shallow hole in the ground beneaththe cellar of an heroic Polish mechanic's shop.

This true-life novel was written in the aftermath of the Second World War and the authors terrible experiences in a Nazi death camp. Judith, born in Prague was deported with her Jewish parents to the Lodz Ghetto in Poland when she was only 13. Within a year both her parents die and she is left alone to fend for herself. Her sanity is saved by the flowering of love with an extraordinary older man, Michael.

This true story of a revolt at a Nazi death camp, newly updated, is “a memorable and moving saga, full of anger and anguish, a reminder never to forget” (San Francisco Chronicle). On October 14, 1943, six hundred Jews imprisoned in Sobibor, a secret Nazi death camp in eastern Poland, revolted. They killed a dozen SS officers and guards, trampled the barbed wire fences, and raced across an open field filled with anti-tank mines. Against all odds, more than three hundred made it safely into ...

Told in short, gripping chapters, this is an unforgettable true story of survival. The author was featured in Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. At just 15, her mother, and brother were taken from their Romanian town to the Auschwitz-II/Birkenau concentration camp. When they arrived at Auschwitz, a soldier waved Elly to the right; her mother and brother to the left. She never saw her family alive again. Thanks to a series of miracles, Elly survived the Hol...

An extraordinary true story of survival against all odds - and a fascinating eyewitness account of one of the darkest periods in human history.'A huge 5 stars for a story that had to be told. There is simply far too much to say to do Sam, his book, or the nightmare of the war justice.' - READER REVIEW ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'This should be read and re-read for generations, just like The Diary of Anne Frank' - READER REVIEW ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'A ma...

A true story of shattered childhoods...Following her escape from Nazi Germany and the loss of her family Judith searches for unconditional love and acceptance. In a bleak boarding house she meets her future husband – another Jewish refugee who cares for her when she is ill.Tragically she associates illness with love and a pattern is set. Judith’s behaviour eventually spiral into anorexia – a disease little known or understood in 1950’s Britain. While she starves herself, Judith for...