Silent Refuge
"News travels fast in the countryside, and when I started school many of the villagers knew that we were Jewish, although they really did not know what that meant."
"News travels fast in the countryside, and when I started school many of the villagers knew that we were Jewish, although they really did not know what that meant."
"How much longer could we last?" sixteen-year-old Amek Adler laments, after arriving at yet one more concentration camp in the spring of 1945.
An eloquent personal narrative detailed with historical research and commentary, A Childhood Adrift explores identity, closure, disillusionment and the anguish of silenced emotions.
This powerful collection, woven together by the common thread of resistance, features a wide variety of narrative styles, including prose, poetry and diary excerpts.
An epic journey across borders, The Vale of Tears chronicles close to two years in the life of Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung as he seeks an escape route from Nazi-occupied Europe.
A story of survival and victory over the dual terrors of the Stalinist and Nazi regimes, Behind the Red Curtain is Maya's testament to her mother’s love and strong will.
An idealist and a dreamer, orphaned Icchok Klein comes under the protective wing of those in charge of the Lodz ghetto, including the powerful Mordechai Rumkowski.
In the fall of 1941, as the situation for Jews worsens across Europe, Ibolya (Ibi) Grossman learns she is pregnant. She is scared and confused—a baby during wartime?
Born two hundred kilometres away from each other and two years apart, Zsuzsanna Fischer and Eva Steinberger are both thrown into chaos when Germany occupies Hungary and destroys their peaceful childhoods.
In wartime Budapest, Leslie Vertes escapes from the forced labour service. As he lives under false identity documents, each day he survives feels like a miracle.
Written in vignettes with child-like charm and innocence, Where Courage Lives provides rich insight into life in a small village against the backdrop of the war, paying tribute to both Muguette’s indomitable mother and the courage of the people of Champlost.
Nate Leipciger, a thoughtful, shy eleven-year-old boy, is plunged into an incomprehensible web of ghettos, concentration and death camps during the German occupation of Poland.
The name Transnistria did not exist on a map. Yet that is where ten-year-old Felicia Steigman and her parents arrive in 1941, after a cruel deportation and death march overseen by Romanian Nazi collaborators.
Miklos Friedman grows up learning to take risks and seize opportunities. In 1944, as Germany occupies Hungary, he must draw on his wits to survive
Kati and her younger sister, Ilonka, arrive in Canada with painful memories from the Holocaust, which has taken both of their parents.
David Newman’s gifts as a musician and a teacher carry him through years of brutality during the war.
“I kept asking myself, Was all my suffering worth it? Was it worth staying alive? Nobody was left—no family, no friends . . . Then I remembered that I had Josio and thanked God for that. We joined hands and started walking, ready to face the future."
“The pen is shaking in my paralyzed hand as I write: I AM ALIVE! I am alive and it is May again. The lilacs are in bloom and I smell their sweet fragrance again. There was springtime last year as well, but we had no eyes for beauty. Our lips forgot how to smile, our hearts were shattered! And now I’m alive again!”
In 1984, Claire Baum receives a letter from a stranger in Holland who has found a package from the war that belongs to Claire’s family.
What keeps 15-year-old Gerta Solan going in the Auschwitz children’s barracks is dreaming of the normal life that had been torn from her.
When 17-year-old Leslie Meisels insisted that his mother and two brothers join a transport going who knows where, all he knew was that they had to get out of the terrible holding facility in Debrecen, Hungary.
"'Don't move. Don't open the door.' My knees had turned to jelly and I was trembling uncontrollably. Sina grabbed her raincoat and declared, 'I'm leaving. They'll be back and I don't want to end up in a camp.'"