Six Unforgettable Books on the Holocaust |
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Those Who Save Us
By Jenna Blum
For fifty years Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter Trudy was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph, a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuher of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy now a professor of German history begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life. Combining a passion, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war and a poignant mother daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
By Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb. As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society born as a spur of the moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
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The Book Thief
By Markus Zusak
A story about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. This story is narrated in the all knowing matter of fact voice of Death, witnessing the story of the citizens of Himmel Street. It is a tale of the cruel twists of fate and the coincidences on which all our lives hinge.
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The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story
By Diane Ackerman
The true story of how the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundred of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw and the cit's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead zoo keepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages.
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All But My Life
By Gerda Weissmann
"All But My Life" is the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein's six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty. From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops--including the man who was to become her husband--in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey.
Gerda's serene and idyllic childhood is shattered when Nazis march into Poland on September 3, 1939. Although the Weissmanns were permitted to live for a while in the basement of their home, they were eventually separated and sent to German labor camps. Over the next few years Gerda experienced the slow, inexorable stripping away of "all but her life." By the end of the war she had lost her parents, brother, home, possessions, and community; even the dear friends she made in the labor camps, with whom she had shared so many hardships, were dead.
Despite her horrifying experiences, Klein conveys great strength of spirit and faith in humanity. In the darkness of the camps, Gerda and her young friends manage to create a community of friendship and love. Although stripped of the essence of life, they were able to survive the barbarity of their captors. Gerda's beautifully written story gives an invaluable message to everyone. It introduces them to last century's terrible history of devastation and prejudice, yet offers them hope that the effects of hatred can be overcome.
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Sarah's Key
By Tatiana de Rosnay
Paris July 1942 Sarah a ten year old girl,is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel dHiv roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the familys apartment Paris, May 2002 On Vel d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in Frances past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life. Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.
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