When Joseph Joffo was ten years old, his father gave him and his brother fifty francs and instructions to flee Nazi-occupied Paris and, somehow, get to the south where France was free. Previously out of print, this book is a captivating and memorable story; readers will instinctively find themselves rooting for these children caught in the whirlwind of World War II.

Intended for children, relates the Holocaust experiences of Froim Baum, born in Warsaw in April 1926. After his father died in 1932, his mother was left with seven children. Froim, the youngest, was placed in Janusz Korczak's orphanage. While in the ghetto, he was active in crossing to the Aryan side and smuggling food into the ghetto for his family and friends. When the orphanage was liquidated, Baum happened to be visiting his mother and was not taken away with the other children. The Baum family then escaped from the ghetto to Plonsk, but were arrested there and deported to Auschwitz and other camps. Froim was liberated in Dachau; only two of his brothers survived.

On the morning of November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year-old Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, walked into the German embassy in Paris and in an act of desperation assassinated Ernst vom Rath, a low-level Nazi diplomat. He did it, he said, out "of love for my parents and for my people." Two days later, vom Rath lay dead, and the Third Reich exploited his murder to inaugurate its long-planned campaign of terror against Germany's Jewish citizens, in the mass pogrom that became known as Kristallnacht. In a bizarre concatenation of events that would rapidly involve Ribbentrop, Goebbels, and Hitler himself, Grynszpan would become the centerpiece of a Nazi propaganda campaign that would later describe his actions as "the first shot of the Jewish War." Best-selling author Jonathan Kirsch brings to light this wrenching story, reexamining the historical details and moral dimensions of one of the most enigmatic cases of World War II. Was Grynszpan a crazed lone gunman, or was he an agent of the Gestapo, recruited to provide a convenient pretext for a major escalation of Nazi aggression? Was he motivated by a desire to strike a blow for the Jewish people as an early partisan fighter, or did his act of violence speak to an intimate connection between the assassin and his target, as Grynszpan later claimed?

Swept up as a child in the events of Nazi-era Europe, Ruth Kluger saw her family's comfortable Vienna existence systematically undermined and destroyed. By age eleven, she had been deported, along with her mother, to Theresienstadt, the first in a series of concentration camps which would become the setting for her precarious childhood. Kluger's story of her years in the camps and her struggle to establish a life after the war as a refugee survivor in New York, has emerged as one of the most powerful accounts of the Holocaust. Interwoven with blunt, unsparing observations of childhood and nuanced reflections of an adult who has spent a lifetime thinking about the Holocaust, Still Alive rejects all easy assumptions about history, both political and personal. Whether describing the abuse she met at her own mother's hand, the life-saving generosity of a woman SS aide in Auschwitz, the foibles and prejudices of Allied liberators, or the cold shoulder offered by her relatives when she and her mother arrived as refugees in New York, Kluger sees and names an unexpected reality which has little to do with conventional wisdom or morality tales. Still Alive is a memoir of the pursuit of selfhood against all odds, a fiercely bittersweet coming-of-age story in which the protagonist must learn never to rely on comforting assumptions, but always to seek her own truth.

"A bestselling author and rabbi's profoundly affecting exploration of the meaning and purpose of the soul, inspired by the famous correspondence between Albert Einstein and a grieving rabbi." --

On May 13, 1939, the luxury liner SS St. Louis sailed away from Hamburg, Germany, bound for Havana, Cuba. On board were more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany. After being denied landing rights in Havana, the refugees were turned away by the United States and Canada and forced to sail back to Europe, where the gathering storm of the Holocaust awaited them. Two of those refugees were Alex Goldschmidt, a sixty-year-old veteran of World War I, and his seventeen-year-old son Klaus Helmut Goldschmidt. After their trans-Atlantic voyage, they landed in France. They would spend the next three years in one French camp after another before being shipped to Auschwitz in 1942. Sixty-nine years later, Martin Goldsmith, Alex's grandson and Helmut's nephew, retraced their sad journey. The book offers a compelling history of the voyage of the St. Louis, including testimony from those on board, a tale of espionage, and the brave resolve of Captain Gustav Schroeder. It also offers a harrowing chronicle of the vast network of camps in France, many of which were organized by the French themselves with little or no encouragement from the Germans.

On May 13, 1939, the luxury liner SS St. Louis sailed away from Hamburg, Germany, bound for Havana, Cuba. On board were more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany. After being denied landing rights in Havana, the refugees were turned away by the United States and Canada and forced to sail back to Europe, where the gathering storm of the Holocaust awaited them. Two of those refugees were Alex Goldschmidt, a sixty-year-old veteran of World War I, and his seventeen-year-old son Klaus Helmut Goldschmidt. After their trans-Atlantic voyage, they landed in France. They would spend the next three years in one French camp after another before being shipped to Auschwitz in 1942. Sixty-nine years later, Martin Goldsmith, Alex's grandson and Helmut's nephew, retraced their sad journey. The book offers a compelling history of the voyage of the St. Louis, including testimony from those on board, a tale of espionage, and the brave resolve of Captain Gustav Schroeder. It also offers a harrowing chronicle of the vast network of camps in France, many of which were organized by the French themselves with little or no encouragement from the Germans.

The complete letters and diaries of Etty Hillesum are now available in this comprehensive English edition, allowing readers all over the world to fully appreciate the life of this remarkable woman. In the midst of the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, Etty's writings reveal a young Jewish woman who celebrated life and remained an undaunted example of courage, sympathy, and compassion. Etty began her diary in 1941, nine months after Hitler invaded her home country of the Netherlands. The record she kept for the next two years contains arresting personal reflections and chronicles her intellectual and spiritual development. Letters that she wrote to friends during her internment at the Westerbork transit camp poignantly describe the day-to-day horrors that the Jewish prisoners faced. Etty's courage and determination remained strong, however, allowing her to rise above the hate around her and express her undying faith in humanity. As she wrote in her last letter, thrown from the train that took her to her death at Auschwitz, "We left the camp singing." Through this splendid translation by Arnold J. Pomerans, commissioned by the Etty Hillesum Foundation, readers everywhere will resonate with the spirit of this amazing young woman.

"An eminent historian recounts the Nazi rise to power from his unique perspective as a young Jewish boy in Munich, living with Adolf Hitler as his neighbor. Watching events unfold from his window, Edgar bore witness to the Night of the Long Knives, the Anschluss, and Kristallnacht. Jews were arrested; his father was imprisoned at Dachau. In 1939 Edgar was sent on his own to England, where he would make a new life, a career, have a family, and strive to forget the nightmare of his past--a past that came rushing back when he decided, at the age of eighty-eight, to tell the story of his buried childhood and his infamous neighbor"--Provided by publisher.

"A New York Times bestselling author traces her father's life from turn-of-the-century Warsaw to bustling New York City in an intimate memoir about family, memory, and the stories we tell. Long before she was the acclaimed author of a groundbreaking book about women and men, and praised by Oliver Sacks as having "a novelist's ear for the way people speak," Deborah Tannen was a little girl who adored her father. Though he was often absent during her childhood, Deborah was profoundly influenced by his love of language and gift for writing and storytelling. As she grew up and he grew old, she spent untold hours with her father, recording their conversations and taking notes. He handed her a journal he kept when he was young--and showed her another he said she could have after his death, all for the account of his life she promised him she'd write. In this memoir, Deborah fulfills her promise to her father, embarking on the poignant, yet perilous, quest to piece together the puzzle of her father's life. Beginning with his astonishingly vivid memories of the Hasidic community in Warsaw that he was born into in 1908, she traces his journey: arriving in New York City in 1920, he quit high school at fourteen to become sole support of his mother and sister, yet attended law school at night and eventually established the largest workmen's compensation practice in New York. In the intervening years, he became active in the Communist Party, then New York's Liberal Party, running for Congress on its ticket. As Deborah comes to better understand her father's--and her own--relationship to Judaism, she also uncovers aspects of her father's life she would never have imagined. When she discovers letters from another woman he might have married, she is forced to rethink her assumptions about her parents' marriage. Finding My Father is a memoir of Eli Tannen's life and the ways it reflects the near century that he lived. But even more than that, it's about a daughter's struggle to see her father clearly, to know him more deeply, and to tell a more truthful story about her family and herself."--

"In 1977, after serving as a leading activist for the democratic dissident movement in the Soviet Union, Natan Sharansky was arrested. He spent nine years as a political prisoner convicted of treason against the state. In fact Sharanksy was fighting for individual freedom in the face of overt tyranny, a struggle that would come to define the rest of his life. Written with frankness, affection, and humor, the book offers us profound insights from a man who embraced the essential human struggle: to find his own voice, his own faith, and the people to whom he could belong."--back cover

From Abraham to Saul Bellow, from Moses Maimonides to Woody Allen, from the Baal Shem Tov to Albert Einstein, this comprehensive dictionary of Jewish biographies provides a first point of entry into the fascinating richness of the Jewish heritage. Modelled on the highly acclaimed Dictionary of Christian Biography (Continuum 2001) and with the advice of leading Jewish scholars, the Dictionary of Jewish Biography provides a rapid reference to those Jewish men and women who have, over the last four thousand years, contributed to the life of the Jewish people and the history of the Jewish religion. This dictionary will prove essential for general readers interested in the evolution of Judaism from ancient times to the present day, a perfect study aid for students and teachers.

Biography of the Russian dissident whose campaigns in the Soviet Union on behalf of his fellow Jews resulted in his arrest and imprisonment in 1978. Reconstructing Shcharansky's nine-year ordeal against the Soviet system, the story illuminates his faith and determination as well as the unflagging efforts of his family and friends to secure his release and bring the plight of Russian Jews to world attention.

Memoirs of a Jew from Warsaw (1911-2000). He studied music in Berlin, and from 1933 worked as a pianist for the Polish radio. Describes the Nazi occupation of Warsaw and the anti-Jewish laws. In the early period of the ghetto, Szpilman worked as a pianist in one of the ghetto's cafés. In summer 1942, during the mass deportation, he was saved by a member of the Jewish police. After the abortive ghetto uprising in January 1943, he went over to the "Aryan side" and was helped by Poles, mainly prewar acquaintances. During the Warsaw uprising in summer-fall 1944, he was rescued by a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld. Pp. 191-208 contain excerpts from Hosenfeld's diary, in which he describes the genocide of Jews in Warsaw. Pp. 209-222 contain an epilogue by Wolf Biermann, relating the story of Hosenfeld - he had saved a number of Poles and Jews even before he met Szpilman; he died in Soviet captivity.

Vivian Gornick's relationship with her mother is difficult. At the age of forty-five, she regularly meets her mother for strolls along the streets of Manhattan. Occasionally they'll hit a pleasant stride, fondly recalling a shared nostalgia or chuckling over a mutual disgust, but most often their walks are tinged with contempt, irritation, and rages so white hot her mother will stop strangers on the street and say, "This is my daughter. She hates me". Weaving between their tempestuous present-day jaunts and the author's memories of the past, Gornick traces her lifelong struggle for independence.

The Nazis came late to Hungary because, until early 1944, Germany and Hungary were allies. But when they did arrive, their orders were to put the "Final Solution" into effect with deliberate speed. Soros, a Jewish lawyer in Budapest, secured fake Christian identities for himself, his wife, and his two sons following the German invasion of Hungary on March 19, 1944. In a narrative reminiscent of the great Primo Levi, Soros recounts his experiences with a beguiling humor, deep humanity, and a wisdom that is humbling. Superbly translated by Humphrey Tonkin, Masquerade is.

This encyclopedia provides the first standard reference work on the lives, history and activities of Jewish women in the United States. Covering a period which extends from the arrival of the first Jewish women in North America in 1654 to the present, this two-volume set presents the most comprehensive and detailed portrait of American Jewish women ever published, and brings together for the first time the wealth of recent scholarship on this subject. Includes: * Biographical entries on over 800 individual women. * 128 topical articles on organizations such as Hadassah, the National Council of Jewish Women, Mizrachi, and the Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. * Major essays on Jewish women's participation in the movement for women's suffrage, social reform, civil rights, and the recent women's movement. * The activities of Jewish women in politics, business, education, the arts, and religion. * A readable, inviting format with over 500 large photographs. * Bibliographies at the end of each entry which include overviews of major scholarship in the field, complete citations of more general works and citations of additional bibliographical and reference sources. * The comprehensive index includes citations to every substantive discussion in the entries as well as all proper names appearing in the text, such as organizations, book, song and film titles, schools, and individuals. The "Encyclopedia" provides information on American Jewish women in all fields of endeavor, and pays special attention to the work of women in the arts, academics, law, the labor movement, education, science, medicine, journalism and publishing, and on the lives of ordinary Jewish women during all time periods and in all regions of the United States.

A memoir from the beloved, colorful criminal defense attorney and three-term mayor of Las Vegas.

A POWERFUL, DEEPLY MOVING NARRATIVE OF HOPE REBORN IN THE SHADOW OF DESPAIR Fifty years after it was bombed to rubble, Berlin is once again a city in which Jews gather for the Passover seder. Paris and Antwerp have recently emerged as important new centers of Jewish culture. Small but proud Jewish communities are revitalizing the ancient centers of Budapest, Prague, and Amsterdam. These brave, determined Jewish men and women have chosen to settle–or remain–in Europe after the devastation of the Holocaust, but they have paid a price. Among the unexpected dangers, they have had to cope with an alarming resurgence of Nazism in Europe, the spread of Arab terrorism, and the impact of the Jewish state on European life. Delving into the intimate stories of European Jews from all walks of life, Kurlansky weaves together a vivid tapestry of individuals sustaining their traditions, and flourishing, in the shadow of history. An inspiring story of a tenacious people who have rebuilt their lives in the face of incomprehensible horror, A Chosen Few is a testament to cultural survival and a celebration of the deep bonds that endure between Jews and European civilization. “Consistently absorbing . . . A Chosen Few investigates the relatively uncharted territory of an encouraging phenomenon.” –Los Angeles Times “I can think of no book that portrays with such intelligence, historical understanding, and journalistic flair what life has been like for Jews determined to build lives in Europe.” –SUSAN MIRON Forward