31 results for "History"

Masquerade: the incredible true story of how George Soros' father outsmarted the Gestapo

Soros, Tivadar
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.
Arcade Pub 2011-03-15 275 pages

The great escape: nine Jews who fled Hitler and changed the world

Marton, Kati
The journey of nine extraordinary men from Budapest to the New World, wht they experienced along their dangerous route and how they changed America and the world. They are the scientists Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, and John von Neuman; Arthur Koestler author of Darkness at Noon; Robert Capa, the first photographer ashore on D-Day; Andre Kertesz, pioneer of modern photojournalism and iconic filmmakers Alexander Korda and Michael Curtiz.
Simon & Schuster 2008 271 pages

The great escape: nine Jews who fled Hitler and changed the world

Marton, Kati
The journey of nine extraordinary men from Budapest to the New World, wht they experienced along their dangerous route and how they changed America and the world. They are the scientists Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, and John von Neuman; Arthur Koestler author of Darkness at Noon; Robert Capa, the first photographer ashore on D-Day; Andre Kertesz, pioneer of modern photojournalism and iconic filmmakers Alexander Korda and Michael Curtiz.
Simon & Schuster 2006 271 pages

The boy who lost his birthday: a memoir of loss, survival, and triumph

Berkowits, Laszlo
The Boy Who Lost His Birthday is the uplifting story of one man's journey from boyhood in rural Hungary to triumph over oppression during the Holocaust and finally to a role as a spiritual leader in America. Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits' compelling memoir recounts his happy childhood memories in Derecske, Hungary where he was a member of a thriving Jewish community and aspired to become a cantor. Stricken with wartime poverty, Berkowits and his father left their home and family behind to seek work in Budapest. It was there that they were rounded up with other Budapest Jews and shipped by sealed train to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. Berkowits vividly narrates his treacherous experience as a sixteen year-old boy surviving in the notorious Nazi concentration camp until its liberation by American troops. After recovery in Sweden, Berkowits immigrated to America were he completed his education, joined the United States Army, and became a chaplain's assistant. After leaving the Army, he undertook graduate study at Hebrew Union College, married, and became the founding rabbi of the largest Jewish congregation in Virginia, Temple Rodef Shalom. Berkowits' story shows that he emerged victorious over deprivation, cruelty, and tragedy to become an exemplar of American success.
Hamilton Books 2008 81 pages

Last impressions

Kertes, Joseph
"Zoltan Beck is dying. His devoted but long-suffering sons, Ben and Frank, are trying to prepare themselves and their families for Zoltan's eventual departure...but they can't quite bring themselves to believe that the end is really at hand, and neither can Zoltan himself. The head of a family marked by war and tragedy for decades, he "can't stand to be in a room with a miserable person" and has done his best to keep the pain of his refugee past from his beloved children. But as he faces the end of his life, he discovers a heartbreaking secret from the War that will ultimately bring the family together - or irrevocably disrupt it. Set in both mid-20th century Hungary and contemporary Toronto, this is a deeply moving novel that revels in the energy of its extraordinary characters. It is the story of lost love and newfound connections, of a father and his sons desperately reaching out to bridge an ever-widening gap...even as their time together ebbs away."--Provided by publisher.
Penguin Canada 2020-03-03 299 pages

The lawful revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848-1849

Deák, István
Hungary's War of Independence was the bloodiest conflict of the European revolutionary era, exciting nationalist passions that burn hot till this day. The story of this dramatic time unfolds through the towering personality of Louis Kossuth--a principal actor in the dramatic events. He and his fellow noblemen sized the opportunity offered by the continent's upheavals to restore Hungary's sovereignty under the Habsburg Crown. They introduced many administrative, social, and economic reforms...only to run into the opposition of many of the country's most powerful forces. In 1949, Kossuth fled--never to return home again.
Columbia University Press 1979 415 pages

Searching for Wallenberg: a novel

Lelchuk, Alan
Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Budapest Jews in 1944-45, was arrested by the Soviets and taken to Moscow where he disappeared. Now, more than 70 years after these events, many mysteries about Wallenberg's life and fate persist. As both a literary detective story and historical investigation Alan Lelchuk uses a fictional investigation to explore what really happened.
Mandel Vilar Press 2015 269 pages

Footnote to history

Laszlo, Andrew
Memoirs of a Jew who was born in 1926 in the village of Bikoly and grew up in the town of Pápa, west of Budapest. Pp. 99-221 deal with the Holocaust period. At first, Hungary's anti-Jewish policies did not affect the family much, but the situation changed drastically with the German occupation in March 1944. A ghetto was established in Pápa, and in June 1944 Laszlo was drafted into a military labor service unit. While he was working at Kőszeg, his parents were deported. After his labor unit was destroyed by the Soviets in Jibou, northwestern Romania, Laszlo fled to Budapest, then under the control of the Arrow Cross. In October 1944 Laszlo was deported to Bergen-Belsen, and then to Theresienstadt. There he met his father, who died shortly after the liberation; the rest of his family had perished earlier. After the war he settled in the USA.
University Press of America 2002 334 pages

Liquidation

Kertész, Imre
Ten years have passed since the fall of Communism. B., a writer of great repute -whose birth and survival in Auschwitz defied all probability -has taken his own life. His friend Kingbitter discovers among his papers a play entitled Liquidation, in which he reads an erie foretelling of the personal and political crises that he and B.'s other friends now face. Having survived the Holocaust and the years of Communist rule, having experienced the surge of hope that rose up from the rubble of the Wall, they are left with little other than a sense of chaos and an utter loss of identity.Kingbitter's find precipitates a frantic search for the novel that B. may or may not have left behind. That B. was having an affair with Sarah, one of Kingbitter's companions, while Kingbitter himself was having an affair with B.'s ex-wife Judit, serves only to complicate matters further.An intricately layered story of history and humanity -powerful, disturbing, lyrical, achingly suspenseful and brilliantly told.
Vintage 2007 129 pages

The Union Jack

Kertész, Imre
"It was...unnecessary for me to fret about who the murderer was: Everybody was." A haunting, never-before-translated, autobiographical novella by the 2002 Nobel Prize winner. An unnamed narrator recounts a simple anecdote, his sighting of the Union Jack—the British Flag—during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, in the few days preceding the uprising's brutal repression by the Soviet army. In the telling, partly a digressive meditation on "the absurd order of chance," he recalls his youthful self, and the epiphanies of his intellectual and spiritual awakening—an awakening to a kind of radical subjectivity. In his Nobel address Kertesz remembered: "I, on a lovely spring day in 1955, suddenly came to the realization that there exists only one reality, and that is me, my own life, this fragile gift bestowed for an uncertain time, which had been seized, expropriated by alien forces, and circumscribed, marked up, branded—and which I had to take back from 'History', this dreadful Moloch, because it was mine and mine alone..." The Contemporary Art of the Novella series is designed to highlight work by major authors from around the world. In most instances, as with Imre Kertész, it showcases work never before published; in others, books are reprised that should never have gone out of print. It is intended that the series feature many well-known authors and some exciting new discoveries. And as with the original series, The Art of the Novella, each book is a beautifully packaged and inexpensive volume meant to celebrate the form and its practitioners.
Melville House 2009 76 pages

Revolution in Hungary: the 1956 Budapest uprising

Lessing, Erich
Erich Lessing's landmark photographs of the Hungarian Revolution, published to mark the 50th anniversary of the uprising. On October 23, 1956, what began as a mass rally in Budapest quickly evolved into the Hungarian Revolution. Within days, millions of Hungarians were supporting the revolt. It lasted until November 4th when it was crushed by Hungarian Security Police and Soviet tanks and artillery. Between 25,000 and 50,000 Hungarian rebels and 7,000 Soviets were killed, thousands were injured, and nearly a quarter of a million people left the country as refugees. Erich Lessing was the first photographer to arrive in Hungary, and he documented the short-lived uprising and its aftermath in a series of world-famous photographs, reproduced here in stunning duotone. They bring to life once more the hope and euphoria of the first days of the revolt, so soon to be followed by the pain and punishment of its brutal suppression. 230 duotone illustrations.
Thames & Hudson 2006-10-17 249 pages

Confessions of an original sinner

Lukacs, John
In this eloquent and thought-provoking "autohistory," John Lukacs, distinguished historian and writer, describes the history of his own convictions and beliefs. The journey takes us from the Hungary of the 1930s and the ravaged Budapest of World War II to Lukacs’s discovery of the New World, his forays into the intellectual life of New York City, and finally his settling in Philadelphia. Along the way, Lukacs examines many of the major currents of our period, including fascism, communism, democracy, anti-Semitism, and the Christian realism from which springs the book’s title. What emerges is a mind that brings to bear on the conflicts of the twentieth century the erudition of the European heritage and the independence of the American. In prose as elegant as it is supple, Confessions of an Original Sinner is at once the vivid account of one man’s voyage and an important contribution to that small library that brings into sharp focus the major intellectual developments of our time.
St. Augustine's Press 2000 328 pages