Winner of the National Jewish Book Award · New York Times Bestseller "A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information--and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?" -- Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow A complex hero. A forgotten story. The first witness to reveal the full truth of the Holocaust . . . Award-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Jonathan Freedland tells the astonishing true story of Rudolf Vrba, the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world of a truth too few were willing to hear. In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became one of the very first Jews to escape from Auschwitz and make his way to freedom--among only a tiny handful who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world--and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. Against all odds, Vrba and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen--a forensically detailed report that eventually reached Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the Pope. And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba had risked everything to deliver. Though Vrba helped save two hundred thousand Jewish lives, he never stopped believing it could have been so many more. This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man--a gifted "escape artist" who, even as a teenager, understood that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death. Rudolf Vrba deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust.

Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed on 9 November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Over the next seven years, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on the Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country. Because he survived, Eddie made the vow to smile every day. He pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom and living his best possible life. He now believes he is the 'happiest man on earth'.

#1 New York Times Bestseller Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a slave labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman and went underground. With the help of a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich as Grete Denner. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite Edith's protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity a secret. In wrenching detail, Edith recalls a life of constant, almost paralyzing fear. She tells how German officials casually questioned the lineage of her parents; how during childbirth she refused all painkillers, afraid that in an altered state of mind she might reveal something of her past; and how, after her husband was captured by the Soviets, she was bombed out of her house and had to hide while drunken Russian soldiers raped women on the street. Despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith created a remarkable record of survival. She saved every document, as well as photographs she took inside labor camps. Now part of the permanent collection at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., these hundreds of documents, several of which are included in this volume, form the fabric of a gripping new chapter in the history of the Holocaust—complex, troubling, and ultimately triumphant.

“Don’t thank me for your survival, thank your valiant Stern and Pemper, who stared death in the face constantly.”—Oskar Schindler in a speech to his released Jewish workers in May 1945. Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List popularized the true story of a German businessman who manipulated his Nazi connections and spent his personal fortune to save some 1,200 Jewish prisoners from certain death during the Holocaust. But few know that those lists were made possible by a secret strategy designed by a young Polish Jew at the Płaszow concentration camp. Mietek Pemper’s compelling and moving memoir tells the true story of how Schindler’s list really came to pass. Pemper was born in 1920 into a lively and cultivated Jewish family for whom everything changed in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland. Evicted from their home, they were forced into the Krakow ghetto and, later, into the nearby camp of Płaszow where Pemper’s knowledge of the German language was put to use by the sadistic camp commandant Amon Goth. Forced to work as Goth’s personal stenographer from March 1943 to September 1944—an exceptional job for a Jewish prisoner—Pemper soon realized that he could use his position as the commandant’s private secretary to familiarize himself with the inner workings of the Nazi bureaucracy and exploit the system to his fellow detainees’ advantage. Once he gained access to classified documents, Pemper was able to pass on secret information for Schindler to compile his famous lists. After the war, Pemper was the key witness of the prosecution in the 1946 trial against Goth and several other SS officers. The Road to Rescue stands as a historically authentic testimony of one man’s unparalleled courage, wit, defiance, and bittersweet victory over the Nazi regime.

When the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944, they sent virtually the entire Jewish population to Auschwitz. A Jew and a medical doctor, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was spared from death for a grimmer fate: to perform “scientific research” on his fellow inmates under the supervision of the infamous “Angel of Death”: Dr. Josef Mengele. Nyiszli was named Mengele’s personal research pathologist. Miraculously, he survived to give this terrifying and sobering account.

Survival in Auschwitz: If This Is a Man is a book written by the Italian author, Primo Levi. It describes his arrest as a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp from February 1944 until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945. Levi, then a 25-year-old chemist, spent 10 months in Auschwitz before the camp was liberated by the Red Army. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his shipment, Levi was one of only twenty who left the camps alive. The average life expectancy of a new entrant was three months. This truly amazing story offers a revealing glimpse into the realities of the Holocaust and its effects on our world.

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.

2019 Reprint of 1961 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. Reprint of the First Edition published in 1961. The Destruction of the European Jews is widely considered the landmark study of the Holocaust. First published in 1961, Raul Hilberg's comprehensive account of how Germany annihilated the Jewish community of Europe spurred discussion, galvanized further research, and shaped the entire field of Holocaust studies. Spanning the twelve-year period of anti-Jewish actions from 1933 to 1945, Hilberg's study encompasses Germany and all the territories under German rule or influence. Its principal focus is on the large number of perpetrators―civil servants, military personnel, Nazi party functionaries, SS men, and representatives of private enterprises―in the machinery of death. Contents: Dismissals -- Aryanizations -- Property taxes -- Blocked money -- Forced labor and wage regulations -- Income taxes -- Starvation measures -- The reich-protektorat area -- Ghetto formation -- Confiscations -- Labor exploitation -- Food controls -- preparations -- The first sweep -- The killing of the prisoners of war -- The intermediary stage -- The second sweep -- The reich-protektorat area -- Poland -- The semicircular arc -- Origins of the killing centers -- Organization, personnel, and maintenance -- Labor utilization -- Medical experiments -- Confiscations -- Killing operations -- Liquidation of the killing centers and the end of the destruction process.

Visiting Israel in 1972, Gilbert discussed Winston Churchill’s influence on the evolution of the Zionist ideal with the Israeli leader, David Ben-Gurion, at whose last meeting with Churchill in 1960, Churchill declared: “You are a wise leader of a brave people.” Born into a British class and society that was far from well-disposed towards Jews, Churchill rejected anti-Semitic attitudes. In the early 1920s, as a senior member of the British government, Churchill took a lead in securing for the Jews a National Home in Palestine that would be open to Jewish immigration from all over the world. In 1948, Churchill urged immediate recognition of the State of Israel, and, in 1951, strongly supported Israel’s right — denied by Egypt — of free passage through the Suez Canal. The book also details acts of rescue initiated by Churchill on behalf of European Jewry during the Second World War. When Churchill was asked to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz, his response was immediate: “Get anything out of the air force you can.” Gilbert follows this story to its unexpected conclusion, and the saving of more than 100,000 Jewish lives. Many times during fifty years of public life, Churchill was called upon by the Jews of Britain to intervene on their behalf both nationally and internationally. His responses made it clear to them that he was, as he once expressed it, “their friend.”

** Wall Street Journal , Publishers Weekly , and USA Today Bestseller!** In the lead-up to the Bolshevik Revolution, one young revolutionary is condemned to exile in Siberia; a hundred years later, his ancestors discover his story and learn just how much history has repeated itself. In the midst of running a long-shot political campaign, Democratic political consultant John Simon discovers a 100-year-old manuscript written by his grandfather Joseph—a brilliant young revolutionary whose exile to Siberia by the last czar of Russia is just the beginning of an extraordinary tale of survival, romance, and revolution. Return From Siberia chronicles not only the Simon family's relationship to each other and the past, but also the remarkable story of a young man who sacrificed everything for his political ideals. As Joseph's manuscript is translated, chapter-by-chapter, the Simon family is pulled deep into their ancestor’s story— in particular, the bitter rivalry between two brothers, whose competing visions of the American Dream are played out on the campaign trail and in their lives. Return from Siberia is a timely appraisal of modern politics and society juxtaposed with an inside look into the machinations of a young political mind 100 years ago. The true story documents an extraordinary time of political upheaval in Russia and Europe just prior to World War I while also drawing parallels to current day American politics and the current philosophical and ideological debates about immigration, Democratic Socialism, and Capitalism. Beyond the deep social, political, and philosophical themes, there is romance, adventure, betrayal, suspense, and the struggles of families today and in yesteryear. Return from Siberia illustrates how one modern family's connection to the past helps them resolve their future.

An award-winning, internationally bestselling Holocaust memoir in the tradition of Elie Wiesel's Night and Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz In the spring of 1944, gendarmes forcibly removed Tibor "Max" Eisen and his family from their home, brought them to a brickyard and eventually loaded them onto crowded cattle cars bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau. At fifteen years of age, Eisen survived the selection process and was inducted into the camp as a slave laborer. More than seventy years after the Nazi camps were liberated by the Allies, By Chance Alone details Eisen's story of survival: the backbreaking slave labor in Auschwitz I, the infamous death march in January 1945, the painful aftermath of liberation and Eisen's journey of physical and psychological healing. Ultimately, the book offers a message of hope as the author finds his way to a new life.

FROM THE BOOK :"The pit I was ordered to dig had the precise dimensions of a casket. The NKVD officer carefully designed it. He measured my size with a stick, made lines on the forest floor, and told me to dig. He wanted to make sure I'd fit well inside." In 1941 Janusz Bardach's death sentence was commuted to ten years' hard labor and he was sent to Kolyma—the harshest, coldest, and most deadly prison in Joseph Stalin's labor camp system—the Siberia of Siberias. The only English-language memoir since the fall of communism to chronicle the atrocities committed during the Stalinist regime, Bardach's gripping testimony explores the darkest corners of the human condition at the same time that it documents the tyranny of Stalin's reign, equal only to that of Hitler. With breathtaking immediacy, a riveting eye for detail, and a humanity that permeates the events and landscapes he describes, Bardach recounts the extraordinary story of this nearly inconceivable world. The story begins with the Nazi occupation when Bardach, a young Polish Jew inspired by Soviet Communism, crosses the border of Poland to join the ranks of the Red Army. His ideals are quickly shattered when he is arrested, court-martialed, and sentenced to death. How Bardach survives an endless barrage of brutality—from a near-fatal beating to the harsh conditions and slow starvation of the gulag existence—is a testament to human endurance under the most oppressive circumstances. Besides being of great historical significance, Bardach's narrative is a celebration of life and a vital affirmation of what it means to be human.

'Among the most moving documents I have read in years ... You will not forget it' Elie Wiesel From her small, sunny hometown between the beautiful Carpathian Mountains and the blue Danube River, Elli Friedmann was taken - at a time when most girls are growing up, having boyfriends and embarking upon the adventure of life - and thrown into the murderous hell of Hitler's Final Solution. When Elli emerged from Auschwitz and Dachau just over a year later, she was fourteen. She looked like a sixty year old. This account of horrifyingly brutal inhumanity - and dogged survival - is Elli's true story.

These are pages that one reads with almost physical pain ... all the way to its stoic conclusion.

Memoir of a Hungarian woman who was imprisoned for several years in the German concentration camp Auschwitz. This is the true, documented chronicle of a beautiful woman who survived the nightmare horror of the worst death camp of them all. Olga Lengyel tells, frankly and without compromise, one of the most horrifying stories of all time. This book is a necessary reminder of one of the ugliest chapters in the history of human civilization. ""You have done a real service by letting the ones who are now silent and most forgotten speak.""-Albert Einstein "This book is a horrifying, but necessary, reminder of one of the ugliest chapters in the history of human civilization."-New York Herald-Tribune "It is a picture of utter hell."-Saturday Review of Literature

In the second of two volumes of this magnificently illustrated cultural history--the tie-in to the PBS and BBC series The Story of the Jews--Simon Schama details the story of the Jewish people, spanning from their expulsion from Spain in the Inquisition across six hundred years to the present day. It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in the face of oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds. It spans the centuries and the continents--from the Iberian Peninsula and the collapse of "the golden age" to the shtetls of Russia to the dusty streets of infant Hollywood. Its voices ring loud and clear, from the philosophical musings of Spinoza to the poetry written on slips of paper in concentraion camps. Within these pages, the Enlightenment unfolds, a great diaspora transforms a country, a Viennese psychaiatrist forever changes the conception of the human mind. And a great story unfolds. Not--as often imagined--of a culture apart, but of a Jewish world immersed in and imprinted by the peoples among whom they have dwelled, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, from the Arabs to the Christians, from the Soviets to America. Which makes the story of the Jews everyone's story, too.

National bestseller: This "harrowing" true story of two Jewish families who survived hiding in the heart of the Nazi capital "honors the human spirit" (Andrea Dworkin). In January 1943, unable to flee Germany, the four members of the Arndt family went underground to avoid deportation to Auschwitz. Ellen Lewinsky and her mother, Charlotte, joined them; a year later, Bruno Gumpel arrived. Hiding in a small factory near Hitler's bunker, without identification cards or food-ration stamps, they were dependent on German strangers for survival. When Russian soldiers finally rescued the group in April 1945, the families were near death from starvation. But their will to live triumphed and two months later, four of the survivors--Erich Arndt and Ellen Lewinsky, and Ruth Arndt and Bruno Gumpel--reunited in a double wedding ceremony. Survival in the Shadows chronicles the previously untold story of the largest group of German Jews to have survived hiding in Berlin through the final and most deadly years of the Holocaust. Relayed to Barbara Lovenheim by three survivors from the group, the riveting story is a touching portrayal of the bravery of these seven Jews, and a heartfelt acknowledgment of the fortitude and humanity of the compassionate Germans who kept them alive.

Surviving Auschwitz, 18-year old Elli leaves behind painful memories to start fresh in America in 1951. She faces challenges of creating a new life in hectic New York City. A powerful glimpse of immigrant America through the eyes of this teenager.

Eleven million people were killed in the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jewish - Hitler's most recognized victims. But, five million were not Jewish. Who were these other victims? The author, a Jewish convert of Polish Catholic descent, whose uncle was murdered by the Nazis, discovered that there are many non-Jewish survivors and children of survivors, who have been searching for a voice and an opportunity to finally be counted. This book sheds light on some of the non-Jewish victims with interviews and individual stories. Foreword by Danusha V. Goska, PhD

NOW AN ACCLAIMED DOCUMENTARY, Winter Journey Set amid the growing tyranny of Germany's Third Reich, here is the riveting and emotional tale of Günther Goldschmidt and Rosemarie Gumpert, two courageous Jewish musicians who struggled to perform under unimaginable circumstances--and found themselves falling in love in a country bent on destroying them. In the spring of 1933, as the full weight of Germany's National Socialism was brought to bear against Germany's Jews, more than 8,000 Jewish musicians, actors, and other artists found themselves expelled from their positions with German orchestras, opera companies, and theater groups, and Jews were forbidden even to attend "Aryan" theaters. Later that year, the Jüdische Kulturbund, or Jewish Culture Association, was created under the auspices of Joseph Goebbels's Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Providing for Jewish artists to perform for Jewish audiences, the Kulturbund, which included an orchestra, an opera company, and an acting troupe, became an unlikely haven for Jewish artists and offered much-needed spiritual enrichment for a besieged people--while at the same time providing the Nazis with a powerful propaganda tool for showing the rest of the world how well Jews were ostensibly being treated under the Third Reich. It was during this period that twenty-two-year-old flutist Günther Goldschmidt was expelled from music school because of his Jewish roots. While preparing to flee the ever-tightening grip of Nazi Germany for Sweden, Günther was invited to fill in for an ailing flutist with the Frankfurt Kulturbund Orchestra. It was there, during rehearsals, that he met the dazzling nineteen-year-old violist Rosemarie Gumpert--a woman who would change the course of his life. Despite their strong attraction, Günther eventually embarked for the safety of Sweden as planned, only to risk his life six months later returning to the woman he could not forget--and to the perilous country where hatred and brutality had begun to flourish. Here is Günther and Rosemarie's story, a deeply moving tale of love and the remarkable resilience of the human spirit in the face of terror and persecution. Beautifully and simply told by their son, National Public Radio commentator Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony takes us from the cafés of Frankfurt, where Rosemarie and Günther fell in love, to the concert halls that offered solace and hope for the beleaguered Jews, to the United States, where the two made a new life for themselves that would nevertheless remain shadowed by the fate of their families. Along with the fate of Günther and Rosemarie's families, this rare memoir also illuminates the Kulturbund and the lives of other fascinating figures associated with it, including Kubu director Kurt Singer--a man so committed to the organization that he objected to his artists' plans for flight, fearing that his productions would suffer. The Kubu, which included some of the most prominent artists of the day and young performers who would gain international fame after the war, became the sole source of culture and entertainment for Germany's Jews. A poignant testament to the enduring vitality of music and love even in the harshest times, The Inextinguishable Symphony gives us a compelling look at an important piece of Holocaust history that has heretofore gone largely untold.