Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad

Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad PDF Author: Daniel Finkelstein
Publisher: William Collins
ISBN: 9780008483890
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad

Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad PDF Author: Daniel Finkelstein
Publisher: William Collins
ISBN: 9780008483890
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Two Roads Home

Two Roads Home PDF Author: Daniel Finkelstein
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
ISBN: 0385675577
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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An epic and beautifully written World War II family history that spans Europe, telling of two happy families uprooted by war, their incredible suffering in Hitler's and Stalin's camps, and the near-miraculous survival, rescue and meeting of the author's parents. Daniel Finkelstein's grandfather Alfred Wiener was a German Jewish intellectual leader who tolled an early warning of the impending Holocaust and became anarchivist of Nazi crimes. He relocated his family to safety in Amsterdam, where they became close with Anne Frank's family. But they were eventually separated, and Daniel's mother Mirjam was sent to Bergen-Belsen with her mother and sisters while Alfred worked feverishly to free them. Finkelstein's father, Ludwik, grew up in a prosperous Jewish family in Poland where his father was a patriotic hero of the Great War. But when Stalin took control, Finkelstein's grandfather was deported to Siberia, while Ludwik and his mother were sent to face freezing winters and harrowing forced labourm conditions in Kazahkstan. Love and Murder is a page-turning account of ingenuity, bravery and the incredible coincidences that brought Daniel's parents together as refugees in Britain. The story features secret archives, forgery and theft, and sweeps across Europe to show the expanse of the war. Moving, engrossing and inspiring, Love and Murder will profoundly touch all who read.

Hitler, Stalin & I

Hitler, Stalin & I PDF Author: Heda Margolius Kovaly
Publisher: Doppelhouse Press
ISBN: 9780997818475
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The oral history of a renowned Czech writer, whose optimism and faith in people survived grueling experiences under authoritarian regimes.

A Childhood Under Hitler and Stalin

A Childhood Under Hitler and Stalin PDF Author: Michael Wieck
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299185442
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
A bestseller in Germany, Michael Wieck's account of his childhood in Königsberg recalls a German city obliterated by fire-bombing during the Second World War. As the child of a Jewish mother and Gentile father, Wieck was persecuted first as a "certified Jew" by the Nazis, then as a German by the Russian occupiers, including horrific internment in the Rothenstein concentration camp. His emigration to the West in 1948 marked the end of the 408-year history of the Jewish community in Königsberg. From the earliest delights of a childhood filled with music, family, and the smell of pines and the sea, Wieck retraces his life. He tells of his school days and their sudden end, the shock of Kristallnacht, his Aunt Fanny being sent by train to a destination unknown, the chemical factory where Jewish workers gradually disappeared, the bombs falling on Königsberg. The Russian occupation was anything but the expected delivery from the horrors of the war. In the midst of privation, savagery, and death, there were moments of absurdity, and Wieck powerfully depicts them in this unforgettable memoir.

A Family Memoir

A Family Memoir PDF Author: Renate Pore
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1504948785
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
This is the story of Lydia Marx Henricksen. Lydia was born in 1925 in Giessen, Germany, and came of age in the 1930s and 1940s. These were turbulent times in Germany as the nation suffered through revolution, hyperinflation, depression, political violence, and the catastrophe of World War II. While the family fortunes suffered, Lydia herself grew up secure and sheltered in a tight-knit traditional German family. She recalls her childhood and teenage years as full of fun. She was a strong, bright, happy-go-lucky girl with a thirst for learning and ambition to move beyond the secure confines of the family and the traditional role of a German woman as that of Kinder, Kueche, Kirche. Lydias comfortable life was changed when Germany began to mobilize for war. All teenagers had to spend a year in service. The family assets were seized. Fathers, uncles, and brothers were inducted into the military to serve in France, Russia, Africa, and other faraway places. Women and children had to rely upon themselves. At age fourteen, as the oldest child in the family, Lydia became the familys main breadwinner. By age eighteen, she was a single mother, and by age nineteen, she and her family began to experience the full force of the war as the battle was taken to the civilian population. Intense aerial bombings by the British and the Americans destroyed many of Germanys beautiful old cities, including Giessen, and brought Germany to its knees. Ever resilient, Lydia adapted to the new circumstances and found her way through tragedy and loss. Like so many other German women, Lydia became a war bride and, at age twenty-eight, began a new phase of her life in America. It was a difficult transition, but in America, Lydia found opportunities that would have been denied to her in Germany. She raised four children and had an exciting and successful career as a hospital administrator. At age ninety, she lives comfortably in her own home in Pacific Grove, California, a peaceful and quiet place on the beautiful central California coast

Guarded by Angels

Guarded by Angels PDF Author: Alan Elsner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780976073918
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Relates the story of Elsner's father, Eugene, born in Odessa in 1918, and his uncle, Mark, born in Nowy Sącz in 1923. They grew up in Nowy Sącz and fled to Soviet-occupied Lvov when the Germans invaded. They and their cousin, Henek, were sent to a gulag in the north and then evacuated to Soviet Central Asia. When Stalin made a pact with the Polish government-in-exile and Polish prisoners in the USSR were amnestied, the brothers were about to joined Anders' army, but encountered antisemitism among the recruits. They found temporary refuge in Nezlobnaya in the Caucasus until the Germans arrived. After adopting the Slavic family name Olesiuk, Gene became a translator for the Germans but also helped the resistance. The brothers then joined another "Polish" army, the Soviet Kosciusko Division. While fighting against German forces, the brothers were temporarily separated, then reunited 30 miles from the German border. Gene had been severely wounded and presumed dead. He encountered Polish antisemitism again, among POWs, just before the end of the war. Their younger brother had been killed in the Nowy Sącz ghetto and their parents in Bełżec. The author visited this site with his father and, disturbed at the lack of a monument there, worked to remedy the situation.