Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald. Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again.

"When the whole world is lying, someone must tell the truth. Berlin, 1943: A group of high society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer's afternoon. They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo. They form a circle of unlikely rebels, drawn from the German elite: two countesses, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, an ambassador's widow and a pioneering headmistress. What unites every one of them is a shared loathing of the Nazis, a refusal to bow to Hitler, and the courage to perform perilous acts of resistance: meeting in the shadows, rescuing Jews or plotting for a future Germany freed from the Führer's rule. Or so they believe. How did a group of brave, principled rebels, who had successfully defied Adolf Hitler for more than a decade, come to fall into such a lethal trap? Undone from within and pursued to near-destruction by one of the Reich's cruelest men, they showed a heroism in the face of the most vengeful regime in history that raises the question: what kind of person does it take to risk everything and stand up to tyranny?"-- Provided by publisher.

A New York Times Notable Book * Winner of the National Jewish Book Award * Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award * A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist "A gripping detective story, a stirring epic, a tale of ghosts and dark marvels, a thrilling display of scholarship, a meditation on the unfathomable mystery of good and evil, a testimony to the enduring power of the ancient archetypes that haunt one Jewish family and the greater human family, The Lost is as complex and rich with meaning and story as the past it seeks to illuminate. A beautiful book, beautifully written."--Michael Chabon In this rich and riveting narrative, a writer's search for the truth behind his family's tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic--part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work--that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history. The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust--an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates. That quest eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents and forces him to confront the wrenching discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him, finally, back to the small Ukrainian town where his family's story began, and where the solution to a decades-old mystery awaits him. Deftly moving between past and present, interweaving a world-wandering odyssey with childhood memories of a now-lost generation of immigrant Jews and provocative ruminations on biblical texts and Jewish history, The Lost transforms the story of one family into a profound, morally searching meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Deeply personal, grippingly suspenseful, and beautifully written, this literary tour de force illuminates all that is lost, and found, in the passage of time.

In the decades before the Second World War, thousands of young Jewish men and women left the antisemitism of Europe for British-controlled Palestine. By 1942, they then began receiving reports of unimaginable horrors- of the liquidation of the ghettos, of industrialised killing centres in Poland, of the plan to exterminate all of Europe's Jews. The Yishuv - the Jewish community in British Palestine - needed to act. Striking a deal with British Intelligence in 1943, they trained a cadre of volunteer Jewish emigres to parachute behind enemy lines on a dual mission- assisting thousands of downed Allied airmen to escape and to rescue as many Jewish citizens as possible from the death camps. At the centre of this story is the extraordinary Hannah Senesh, a legendary poet-soldier, and her courageous female colleagues, who, armed with only their intelligence and humanity, underwent training as commandos, radio operators and parachutists - then, in early 1944, courageously jumped behind enemy lines. Captured in her native Hungary, Senesh refused to give up any information even while suffering months of gruesome torture. Thrilling and inspiring, Crash of the Heavens is one of the great untold stories of the Second World War. 'What a story! This book is a magnificent masterwork, and you won't be able to put it down.' -Colonel Jack Jacobs, US Army (retired), Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, author of If Not Now, When? 'Hannah Senesh isn't just a hero. She's a reminder of what happens when Jews stop running and start fighting. Crash of the Heavens captures the essence of that moment - when young volunteers, men and women, parachuted into the heart of Nazi Europe not as victims but as warriors.' -Aaron Cohen, author of Brotherhood of Warriors Praise for No Surrender - 'A fascinating war story ... a you-are-there portrait of the horrors of war and the incredible effect one selfless person can have on hundreds.' - Kirkus Reviews

"In the post-war era Jews have been incomparably less numerous than before and often deeply assimilated. Still, their presence's felt as big. The book is scholarly and also deeply personal. Most of the events and processes described here have a strong connection to the author's life, particularly the post-1968 mini-renaissance of Jewish life, especially in its religious variety, and advances in the realm of Jewish-Christian relations and particularly of Jewish-Christian dialogue. In addition to an account of the history of Jews in Poland after 1945, Jewish-Christian dialogue in that period, including meeting with the Polish pope, the chapters treat the concept of de-assimilation used as a key to understand the most recent phase of the story, analyze how Jewish were Jewish Communists, ponder what were the assumptions behind the post-war section of the core exhibition in POLIN, and offer an original proposal why the Holocaust is widely considered as unique"--

This book explores one of the most notorious aspects of the German system of oppression in wartime Poland: the only purpose-built camp for children under the age of 16 years in German-occupied Europe. The camp at Przemysłowa street, or the Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt as the Germans called it, was a concentration camp for children. The camp at Przemysłowa existed for just over two years, from December 1942 until January 1945. During that time, an unknown number of children, mainly Polish nationals, were imprisoned there and subjected to extreme physical and emotional abuse. For almost all, the consequences of atrocities which they endured in the camp remained with them for the rest of their lives. This book focuses on the establishment of the camp, the experience of the child prisoners, and the post-war investigations and trials. It is based on contemporary German documents, post-war Polish trials and German investigations, as well as dozens of testimonies from camp survivors, guards, civilian camp staff and the camp leadership Katarzyna Person is a historian of the Holocaust working at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland. Johannes-Dieter Steinert is Professor of Modern European History and Migration Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK.

The life and politics of an American Jewish activist who preached radical and violent means to Jewish survival Meir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968, declaring that Jews must protect themselves by any means necessary. He immigrated to Israel in 1971, where he founded KACH, an ultranationalist and racist political party. He would die by assassination in 1990. Shaul Magid provides an in-depth look at this controversial figure, showing how the postwar American experience shaped his life and political thought. Magid sheds new light on Kahane’s radical political views, his critique of liberalism, and his use of the “grammar of race” as a tool to promote Jewish pride. He discusses Kahane’s theory of violence as a mechanism to assure Jewish safety, and traces how his Zionism evolved from a fervent support of Israel to a belief that the Zionist project had failed. Magid examines how tradition and classical Jewish texts profoundly influenced Kahane’s thought later in life, and argues that Kahane’s enduring legacy lies not in his Israeli career but in the challenge he posed to the liberalism and assimilatory project of the postwar American Jewish establishment. This incisive book shows how Kahane was a quintessentially American figure, one who adopted the radicalism of the militant Left as a tenet of Jewish survival.

A gripping history that plumbs the extraordinary stories of American relief and rescue workers during World War II.

A highly decorated Israeli military officer, leader, and former director of the internal security service, Shin Bet, sees the light on what his country must do to achieve a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In this deeply personal journey of discovery, Ami Ayalon seeks input and perspective from Palestinians and Israelis whose experiences differ from his own. As head of the Shin Bet security agency, he gained empathy for 'the enemy' and learned that when Israel carries out anti-terrorist operations in a political context of hopelessness, the Palestinian public will support violence, because they have nothing to lose. Researching and writing Friendly Fire , he came to understand that his patriotic life had blinded him to the self-defeating nature of policies that have undermined Israel's civil society while heaping humiliation upon its Palestinian neighbours. 'If Israel becomes an Orwellian dystopia,' Ayalon writes, 'it won't be thanks to a handful of theologians dragging us into the dark past. The secular majority will lead us there motivated by fear and propelled by silence.' Ayalon is a realist, not an idealist, and many who consider themselves Zionists will regard as radical his conclusions about what Israel must do to achieve relative peace and security and to sustain itself as a Jewish homeland and a liberal democracy. 'How can a staunch Zionist who was raised on one of Israel's earliest settlements and trained as a kill-or-be-killed elite commando spearhead a campaign for peace with his enemies? The answer, in Ami Ayalon's captivating narrative, is an eye-opener for Palestinians and Israelis alike.' -Sari Nusseibeh, author of Once Upon a Country- a Palestinian life , former president of the Al-Quds University, and former Palestinian National Authority representative in Jerusalem ' Ayalon's aims and accomplishments are ... undeniably impressive ... Hope finds a prominent presence in what so many think is a hopeless, endless conflict.' - Kirkus Reviews 'Ami Ayalon discusses how he came to see a two-state solution with the Palestinians as the best way to ensure Israel's security, not just through analysing numbers and statistics, but through a humanistic approach. He discusses ... how his humanist paradigm not only allowed him to see how the Palestinians' grievances and aspirations are intertwined with Israel's security, but also how he still acknowledges and sympathises with the narratives of those in Israel whom he may disagree with.' -Jonah Naghi, The Times of Israel

In 1988, in what was probably one of the last trials of a Nazi war criminal and the first of such trials to take place in France, Klaus Barbie, the notorious "Butcher of Lyon", was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. Yet despite the memories stirred, despite the verdict, to Alain Finkielkraut the trial was a moral failure. In Remembering in Vain, Finkielkraut maintains that the Barbie trial attests to the failure of international society to take responsibility for criminals of state. Trying Barbie not only for actions against Jews but also for actions against the Resistance―actions heretofore considered war crimes, on which the statute of limitations had run out―blurred the definition of crimes against humanity. Finkielkraut finds most disturbing how seriously taken were the arguments of the defence. By manipulating the guilty conscience of the West, Barbie's Vietnamese-French, Congolese, and Algerian lawyers became accusers, disputing the special significance of the Holocaust and portraying nearly everyone as a Nazi―except the former Nazi himself. Finkielkraut points to the ultimate irony of this Third World defense of a Nazi.

At the age of five, Zoltan Zinn-Collis was torn from his home in Slovakia and cast into the deepest horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. In Bergen-Belsen concentration camp he survived the inhuman brutality of the Ss guards, the ravages of near starvation, disease, and squalor. All but one of his family died there, his mother losing her life on the very day the British finally marched into the camp. Discovered by a Red Cross nurse who described him as 'an enchanting scrap of humanity', Zoltan was brought to Ireland and adopted by one of the liberators, Dr Bob Collis, who raised him as his own son on Ireland's east coast. Now aged 65, Zoltan is ready to speak. His story is one of deepest pain and greatest joy. Zoltan tells how he lost one family and found another; of how, escaping from the ruins of a broken Europe, he was able to build himself a life – a life he may never have had.

Newsweek' s Jerusalem bureau chief Joshua Hammer arrived in the West Bank in October 2000 -- just after Ariel Sharon made his inflammatory visit to the Haram al-Sharif, otherwise known as the Temple Mount. Sharon's trip ignited the worst violence the Middle East had seen in decades. Overnight, the peace process gave way to an ever-worsening cycle of attack, revenge, and retaliation, destabilizing the entire region, killing thousands, and culminating in Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian towns in 2002. A Season in Bethlehem is the story of one West Bank town's two-year disintegration, as witnessed by a reporter who was there from the beginning. Woven together from Hammer's own firsthand reportage plus hundreds of interviews, it follows a dozen characters whose lives collided on the streets of this biblical city. They include a Bedouin tribesman who rose to become the commander of Bethlehem's most feared and brutal gang of gunmen; the beleaguered governor, an opponent of the al-Aqsa intifada, who believed he had a mandate to stop the violence, only to discover that Yasser Arafat was undermining him; a Christian businesman who watched helplessly as his community was squeezed between Muslim militants and the Israeli army; an eighteen-year-old female honors student turned suicide bomber; and an Israeli reservist, son of a leader of the Peace Now movement, who wrestled with his left-wing convictions as he rode to battle through the predawn streets. The narrative reaches a climax with a moment-by-moment recreation of the epochal drama that drew many of these characters together: the thirty-nine-day siege of the Church of the Nativity. A clear-eyed chronicle of deepening chaos and violence, in which Hammer lets the opposing sides speak for themselves, A Season in Bethlehem is both a timely and timeless look at how longstanding religious and political tensions finally boiled over in a place of profound resonance: the birthplace of Jesus.

This book enables readers to learn about upstanders, partisans, and survivors from first-hand perspectives that reveal the many forms of resistance-some bold and defiant, some subtle-to the Nazis during the Holocaust. What did those who resisted the Nazis during the 1930s through 1945-known now as "the Righteous"-do when confronted with the Holocaust? How did those who resorted to physical acts of resistance to fight the Nazis in the ghettos, the concentration camps, and the forests summon the courage to form underground groups and organize their efforts? This book presents a comprehensive examination of more than 150 remarkable people who said "no" to the Nazis when confronted by the Holocaust of the Jews. They range from people who undertook armed resistance to individuals who risked-and sometimes lost-their lives in trying to rescue Jews or spirit them away to safety. In many cases, the very act of survival in the face of extreme circumstances was a form of resistance. This important book explores the many facets of resistance to the Holocaust that took place less than 100 years ago, providing valuable insights to any reader seeking evidence of how individuals can remain committed to the maintenance of humanitarian traditions in the darkest of times.

This book provides the first dedicated study of the Evian Conference of July 1938, an international initiative called by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While on the surface the conference appeared as an attempt to alleviate the distress faced by Jews being forced out of Germany and Austria, in reality it only served to demonstrate that the nations of the world were not willing to accept Jews as refugees. Since the Holocaust, a generally-held assumption has been that the Evian Conference represented a lost opportunity to save Germany’s Jews, and that the conference failed to rescue the Jews of Europe. In this study, Paul Bartrop argues that in fact it did not fail when measured against the original reasons for which it was called. Exposing many of the myths surrounding the meeting, this work addresses a glaring lacuna in the literature of the Holocaust, and places the so-called 'failure' of the Evian Conference into its proper context.

"Josephus" by Norman Bentwich is a biography that provides a comprehensive and insightful account of the life and works of Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian and scholar from the first century AD. Bentwich delves into Josephus' early years, his experiences during the Jewish-Roman War, and his subsequent collaboration with the Roman Empire. The book explores Josephus' significant contributions to Jewish historiography, particularly his works "The Jewish War" and "Jewish Antiquities," which document the events and culture of ancient Judea. Bentwich analyzes Josephus' writings in the context of his political circumstances, shedding light on his motivations and the challenges he faced as a Jewish leader collaborating with the Romans. Through meticulous research and engaging storytelling, Bentwich paints a vivid picture of Josephus' life, offering readers valuable insights into the political, social, and religious dynamics of ancient Judea. The biography also explores Josephus' controversial reputation among Jews and Christians, his impact on historiography, and his enduring influence on the understanding of Jewish history.

This is a biography of a young man who is not really sure what to do with his life, who gets thrown into the whirlwind of World War II and only then learns about life, about courage, and about honor. A boy, who grows up in poisonous, anti-Sematic surroundings in Poland, he travels to Palestine and unexpectedly finds a purpose in life. then everything changes for Abram with the outbreak of World War II. He joins the British Army as a private and a sequence of incredible events follow- he serves in the suicide comando and is court-martialed for hitting a British Sargeant Major. After the war ends, Abram, now a major in the British Army, organizes the transport of tens of thousands of concentration camp survivors to Palestine. he does this right under the noses of British intelligence, and is later detained for months while being investigated. Finally, the story moves on to the War of Independence in Palestine, where Abram plays a critical part in establishing a secret road to supply the surrounded Jerusalem Jews- saving them from the Arabs. Abram tells of his fight with Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and its consequences. The incredible saga of Abram plays out against the stark reality of World War II and its aftermath. It will no doubt leave an indelible impression on the reader.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.