Author: Nanette Blitz Konig
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789493056657
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
A monument to the indestructible nature of the human spirit.In these compelling, award-winning, Holocaust memoirs, Nanette Blitz Konig relates her amazing story of survival during the Second World War when she, together with her family and millions of other Jews were imprisoned by the Nazi's with a minimum chance of survival.Nanette (b. 1929), was a class mate of Anne Frank in the Jewish Lyceum of Amsterdam. They met again in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp shortly before Anne died. During these emotional encounters, Anne Frank revealed how the Frank family hid in the annex, their subsequent deportation, her experience in Auschwitz and her plans for her diary after the war.This honest WW2 story describes the hourly battle for survival under the brutal conditions in the camp imposed by the Nazi regime. It continues with her struggle to recover from the effects of starvation and tuberculosis after the war, and how she was gradually able to restart her life, marry and build a family.Nanette Blitz Konig, mother of three, grandmother of six and great grand mother of four, lives in São Paulo, Brazil. Her Holocaust memoirs were written to speak in the name of those millions who were silenced forever.In these compelling, award-winning, Holocaust memoirs, Nanette Blitz Konig (b. Amsterdam 1929) relates her amazing story of survival during the Second World War when she was imprisoned by the Nazi's in Bergen-Belsen with a minimum chance of survival. It was here that she last saw her classmate Anne Frank.
Holocaust Memoirs of a Bergen-Belsen Survivor & Classmate of Anne Frank
Author: Nanette Blitz Konig
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789493056657
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
A monument to the indestructible nature of the human spirit.In these compelling, award-winning, Holocaust memoirs, Nanette Blitz Konig relates her amazing story of survival during the Second World War when she, together with her family and millions of other Jews were imprisoned by the Nazi's with a minimum chance of survival.Nanette (b. 1929), was a class mate of Anne Frank in the Jewish Lyceum of Amsterdam. They met again in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp shortly before Anne died. During these emotional encounters, Anne Frank revealed how the Frank family hid in the annex, their subsequent deportation, her experience in Auschwitz and her plans for her diary after the war.This honest WW2 story describes the hourly battle for survival under the brutal conditions in the camp imposed by the Nazi regime. It continues with her struggle to recover from the effects of starvation and tuberculosis after the war, and how she was gradually able to restart her life, marry and build a family.Nanette Blitz Konig, mother of three, grandmother of six and great grand mother of four, lives in São Paulo, Brazil. Her Holocaust memoirs were written to speak in the name of those millions who were silenced forever.In these compelling, award-winning, Holocaust memoirs, Nanette Blitz Konig (b. Amsterdam 1929) relates her amazing story of survival during the Second World War when she was imprisoned by the Nazi's in Bergen-Belsen with a minimum chance of survival. It was here that she last saw her classmate Anne Frank.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789493056657
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
A monument to the indestructible nature of the human spirit.In these compelling, award-winning, Holocaust memoirs, Nanette Blitz Konig relates her amazing story of survival during the Second World War when she, together with her family and millions of other Jews were imprisoned by the Nazi's with a minimum chance of survival.Nanette (b. 1929), was a class mate of Anne Frank in the Jewish Lyceum of Amsterdam. They met again in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp shortly before Anne died. During these emotional encounters, Anne Frank revealed how the Frank family hid in the annex, their subsequent deportation, her experience in Auschwitz and her plans for her diary after the war.This honest WW2 story describes the hourly battle for survival under the brutal conditions in the camp imposed by the Nazi regime. It continues with her struggle to recover from the effects of starvation and tuberculosis after the war, and how she was gradually able to restart her life, marry and build a family.Nanette Blitz Konig, mother of three, grandmother of six and great grand mother of four, lives in São Paulo, Brazil. Her Holocaust memoirs were written to speak in the name of those millions who were silenced forever.In these compelling, award-winning, Holocaust memoirs, Nanette Blitz Konig (b. Amsterdam 1929) relates her amazing story of survival during the Second World War when she was imprisoned by the Nazi's in Bergen-Belsen with a minimum chance of survival. It was here that she last saw her classmate Anne Frank.
I Want You to Know We're Still Here
Author: Esther Safran Foer
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0525576002
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS FINALIST • “Part personal quest, part testament, and all thoughtfully, compassionately written.”—The Washington Post “Esther Safran Foer is a force of nature: a leader of the Jewish people, the matriarch of America’s leading literary family, an eloquent defender of the proposition that memory matters. And now, a riveting memoirist.”—Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching. So when Esther’s mother casually mentions an astonishing revelation—that her father had a previous wife and daughter, both killed in the Holocaust—Esther resolves to find out who they were, and how her father survived. Armed with only a black-and-white photo and a hand-drawn map, she travels to Ukraine, determined to find the shtetl where her father hid during the war. What she finds reshapes her identity and gives her the opportunity to finally mourn. I Want You to Know We’re Still Here is the poignant and deeply moving story not only of Esther’s journey but of four generations living in the shadow of the Holocaust. They are four generations of survivors, storytellers, and memory keepers, determined not just to keep the past alive but to imbue the present with life and more life.
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0525576002
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS FINALIST • “Part personal quest, part testament, and all thoughtfully, compassionately written.”—The Washington Post “Esther Safran Foer is a force of nature: a leader of the Jewish people, the matriarch of America’s leading literary family, an eloquent defender of the proposition that memory matters. And now, a riveting memoirist.”—Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching. So when Esther’s mother casually mentions an astonishing revelation—that her father had a previous wife and daughter, both killed in the Holocaust—Esther resolves to find out who they were, and how her father survived. Armed with only a black-and-white photo and a hand-drawn map, she travels to Ukraine, determined to find the shtetl where her father hid during the war. What she finds reshapes her identity and gives her the opportunity to finally mourn. I Want You to Know We’re Still Here is the poignant and deeply moving story not only of Esther’s journey but of four generations living in the shadow of the Holocaust. They are four generations of survivors, storytellers, and memory keepers, determined not just to keep the past alive but to imbue the present with life and more life.
Holocaust Memoirs
Author: Bert Lewyn
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462825621
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 441
Book Description
In 1942, Gestapo agents knocked on the door of the Lewyn family. Bert Lewyn was a teenager, only 18 years old. Like thousands of other Jewish families, Bert, his mother and father were all arrested and taken away. His parents were deported to a concentration camp and Bert was conscripted as a slave laborer, forced to work in a weapons factory building machine guns for the German Wehrmacht. This is the story of Berts escape and subsequent struggle to survive on his own, living underground in Nazi Berlin.
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462825621
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 441
Book Description
In 1942, Gestapo agents knocked on the door of the Lewyn family. Bert Lewyn was a teenager, only 18 years old. Like thousands of other Jewish families, Bert, his mother and father were all arrested and taken away. His parents were deported to a concentration camp and Bert was conscripted as a slave laborer, forced to work in a weapons factory building machine guns for the German Wehrmacht. This is the story of Berts escape and subsequent struggle to survive on his own, living underground in Nazi Berlin.
The Dead Years
Author: Joseph Schupack
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781974523733
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
Poignant Holocaust Survivor Story, offering a unique perspective on the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations. Holocaust survivor stories need to be kept alive. Every year, survivors with unique testimonies are passing away. Soon, we will no longer be able to hear first-hand from the people who survived the Holocaust. Books and video testimonials will be the only ways to get to know their moving stories. Joseph Schupack has fulfilled a vow to those who did not survive: to write his Holocaust memoirs and offer a unique perspective on the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations. In The Dead Years, Joseph Schupack (1922 - 1989) describes his life in Radzyn-Podlaski, a typical Polish shtetl from where he was transported to the concentration camps of Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz, Dora / Nordhausen and Bergen-Belsen during the Second World War. We witness how he struggled to remain true to his own standards of decency and being human. Considering the premeditated and systematic humiliation and brutality, it is a miracle that he survived and came to terms with his memories. The Dead Years is different from most Holocaust survivor stories. Not only is it a testimony of the 1930s in Poland and life in the Nazi concentration camps - it also serves as a witness statement. This Holocaust book contains a wealth of information, including the names of people and places, for researchers and those interested in WW2, or coming from Radzyn-Podlaski and surroundings. The book takes us through Joseph Schupack's pre-war days, his work in the underground movement, and the murder of his parents, brothers, sister and friends. The Dead Years is deeply personal and moving. We witness how people in the depths of misery shared their last morsel of food, how they were prepared for any sacrifice. There are many examples of brotherly love that grew out of empathetic pain. Finally freed, Schupack encountered rampant anti-Semitism when he tried to reclaim his possessions in Poland after the end of the war. For the Poles in his home town, the best Jews were the ones who did not return. A new, strictly anti-Semitic organization had been founded and its primary goal was the liquidation of all Jews returning from hiding or concentration camps. Decades after WWII, the author, mentally scarred by his war experiences, confronted his demons. "Like a stranded man among the stranded, like a sufferer bound to all sufferers, I stood alone in front of the shambles of my life which had stopped when I was seventeen years old and from which nothing could be salvaged or repaired." We are grateful that Schupack confided his memories to paper, so we never forget.
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781974523733
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
Poignant Holocaust Survivor Story, offering a unique perspective on the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations. Holocaust survivor stories need to be kept alive. Every year, survivors with unique testimonies are passing away. Soon, we will no longer be able to hear first-hand from the people who survived the Holocaust. Books and video testimonials will be the only ways to get to know their moving stories. Joseph Schupack has fulfilled a vow to those who did not survive: to write his Holocaust memoirs and offer a unique perspective on the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations. In The Dead Years, Joseph Schupack (1922 - 1989) describes his life in Radzyn-Podlaski, a typical Polish shtetl from where he was transported to the concentration camps of Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz, Dora / Nordhausen and Bergen-Belsen during the Second World War. We witness how he struggled to remain true to his own standards of decency and being human. Considering the premeditated and systematic humiliation and brutality, it is a miracle that he survived and came to terms with his memories. The Dead Years is different from most Holocaust survivor stories. Not only is it a testimony of the 1930s in Poland and life in the Nazi concentration camps - it also serves as a witness statement. This Holocaust book contains a wealth of information, including the names of people and places, for researchers and those interested in WW2, or coming from Radzyn-Podlaski and surroundings. The book takes us through Joseph Schupack's pre-war days, his work in the underground movement, and the murder of his parents, brothers, sister and friends. The Dead Years is deeply personal and moving. We witness how people in the depths of misery shared their last morsel of food, how they were prepared for any sacrifice. There are many examples of brotherly love that grew out of empathetic pain. Finally freed, Schupack encountered rampant anti-Semitism when he tried to reclaim his possessions in Poland after the end of the war. For the Poles in his home town, the best Jews were the ones who did not return. A new, strictly anti-Semitic organization had been founded and its primary goal was the liquidation of all Jews returning from hiding or concentration camps. Decades after WWII, the author, mentally scarred by his war experiences, confronted his demons. "Like a stranded man among the stranded, like a sufferer bound to all sufferers, I stood alone in front of the shambles of my life which had stopped when I was seventeen years old and from which nothing could be salvaged or repaired." We are grateful that Schupack confided his memories to paper, so we never forget.
Plunder
Author: Menachem Kaiser
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1328506460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
A New York Times Critics’ Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biography From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family’s apartment building in Poland—and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as “The Killer.” A surprise discovery—that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance—material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1328506460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
A New York Times Critics’ Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biography From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family’s apartment building in Poland—and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as “The Killer.” A surprise discovery—that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance—material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
War in the Shadow of Auschwitz
Author: John Wiernicki
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815607229
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
1943: Polish underground fighter John Wiernicki is captured and beaten by the Gestapo, then shipped to Auschwitz. In this chilling memoir, Wiernicki, a Gentile, details "life" in the infamous death camp, and his battle to survive, physically and morally, in the face of utter evil. The author begins by remembering his aristocratic youth, an idyllic time shattered by German invasion. The ensuing dark days of occupation would fire the adolescent Wiernicki with a burning desire to serve Poland, a cause that led him to valiant action and eventual arrest. As a young non-Jew, Wiernicki was acutely sensitive to the depravity and injustice that engulfed him at Auschwitz. He bears witness to the harrowing selection and extermination of Jews doomed by birth to the gas chambers, to savage camp policies, brutal SS doctors, and rampant corruption with the system. He notes the difference in treatment between Jews and non-Jews. And he relives fearful unexpected encounters with two notorious "Angels of Death": Josef Mengele and Heinz Thilo. War in the Shadow of Auschwitz is an important historical and personal document. Its vivid portrait of prewar and wartime Poland, and of German concentration camps, provides a significant addition to the growing body of testimony by gentile survivors and a heartfelt contribution to fostering comprehension and understanding.
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815607229
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
1943: Polish underground fighter John Wiernicki is captured and beaten by the Gestapo, then shipped to Auschwitz. In this chilling memoir, Wiernicki, a Gentile, details "life" in the infamous death camp, and his battle to survive, physically and morally, in the face of utter evil. The author begins by remembering his aristocratic youth, an idyllic time shattered by German invasion. The ensuing dark days of occupation would fire the adolescent Wiernicki with a burning desire to serve Poland, a cause that led him to valiant action and eventual arrest. As a young non-Jew, Wiernicki was acutely sensitive to the depravity and injustice that engulfed him at Auschwitz. He bears witness to the harrowing selection and extermination of Jews doomed by birth to the gas chambers, to savage camp policies, brutal SS doctors, and rampant corruption with the system. He notes the difference in treatment between Jews and non-Jews. And he relives fearful unexpected encounters with two notorious "Angels of Death": Josef Mengele and Heinz Thilo. War in the Shadow of Auschwitz is an important historical and personal document. Its vivid portrait of prewar and wartime Poland, and of German concentration camps, provides a significant addition to the growing body of testimony by gentile survivors and a heartfelt contribution to fostering comprehension and understanding.
Outcry - Holocaust Memoirs
Author: Manny Steinberg
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781539069829
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
Outcry - Holocaust Memoirs, a profoundly moving autobiography Manny Steinberg spent his teens in Nazi camps in Germany and Poland, miraculously surviving while millions perished. This is his story. Born in 1925 in the Jewish ghetto in Radom (Poland), Manny Steinberg soon realized that people of Jewish faith were increasingly being regarded as outsiders. When the Nazis invaded in September 1939 the nightmare started. The city's Jewish population had no chance of escaping and was faced with starvation, torture, sexual abuse and ultimately deportation. Outcry is the candid account of a teenager who survived four Nazi camps: Dachau, Auschwitz, Vaihingen and Neckagerach. While being subjected to torture and degradation, he agonized over two haunting questions: "Why the Jews?" and "How can the world let this happen?" These questions remain hard to answer. Manny's brother Stanley had jumped off the cattle wagon on the way to the extermination camp where his mother and younger brother were to perish. Desperately lonely and hungry, Stanley stood outside the compound hoping to catch a glimpse of Manny and their father. Once he discovered that they were among the prisoners, he turned himself in. The days were marked by hunger, cold, hard labor, and fear. Knowing that other members of the family were in the same camp kept them alive. Since acknowledging each other would have meant death, they pretended to be complete strangers. The author relates how he was served human flesh and was forced to shave the heads of female corpses and pull out their teeth. Cherishing a picture of his beloved mother in his wooden shoe, he miraculously survived the terror of the German concentration camps together with his father and brother. When the Americans arrived in April 1945, Manny was little more than a living skeleton, with several broken ribs and suffering from a serious lung condition, wearing only a dirty, ragged blanket. This autobiography was written to fulfill a promise Manny Steinberg made to himself during his first days of freedom. By publishing these Holocaust memoirs, the author wants to ensure that the world never forgets what happened during WWII. The narrative is personal, unencumbered and direct. Outcry touches the reader with its directness and simplicity. The story is told through the eyes of an old man forcing himself to relive years of intense suffering. It is an account of human cruelty, but also a testimony to the power of love and hope. Memoirs worthy of being adapted for the big screen. "I read this book with a very heavy heart and tears running down my face. For Manny's endurance and his brother Stanley to be so tested is truly a testament to life!" "Very well written as it goes straight to the reader's heart!" "Manny Steinberg shares his extraordinary teenage story of surviving four concentration camps in an account noteworthy for its straightforward, unencumbered narrative. His is a story almost everyone can imagine happening to themselves - no less harrowing than more dramatic renditions of Holocaust survival, but somehow more compelling, and universal, for the unembellished simplicity of his style." "Manny's story is told so well and his perseverance is so strong that you are uplifted and reminded of the strength of the human spirit."
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781539069829
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
Outcry - Holocaust Memoirs, a profoundly moving autobiography Manny Steinberg spent his teens in Nazi camps in Germany and Poland, miraculously surviving while millions perished. This is his story. Born in 1925 in the Jewish ghetto in Radom (Poland), Manny Steinberg soon realized that people of Jewish faith were increasingly being regarded as outsiders. When the Nazis invaded in September 1939 the nightmare started. The city's Jewish population had no chance of escaping and was faced with starvation, torture, sexual abuse and ultimately deportation. Outcry is the candid account of a teenager who survived four Nazi camps: Dachau, Auschwitz, Vaihingen and Neckagerach. While being subjected to torture and degradation, he agonized over two haunting questions: "Why the Jews?" and "How can the world let this happen?" These questions remain hard to answer. Manny's brother Stanley had jumped off the cattle wagon on the way to the extermination camp where his mother and younger brother were to perish. Desperately lonely and hungry, Stanley stood outside the compound hoping to catch a glimpse of Manny and their father. Once he discovered that they were among the prisoners, he turned himself in. The days were marked by hunger, cold, hard labor, and fear. Knowing that other members of the family were in the same camp kept them alive. Since acknowledging each other would have meant death, they pretended to be complete strangers. The author relates how he was served human flesh and was forced to shave the heads of female corpses and pull out their teeth. Cherishing a picture of his beloved mother in his wooden shoe, he miraculously survived the terror of the German concentration camps together with his father and brother. When the Americans arrived in April 1945, Manny was little more than a living skeleton, with several broken ribs and suffering from a serious lung condition, wearing only a dirty, ragged blanket. This autobiography was written to fulfill a promise Manny Steinberg made to himself during his first days of freedom. By publishing these Holocaust memoirs, the author wants to ensure that the world never forgets what happened during WWII. The narrative is personal, unencumbered and direct. Outcry touches the reader with its directness and simplicity. The story is told through the eyes of an old man forcing himself to relive years of intense suffering. It is an account of human cruelty, but also a testimony to the power of love and hope. Memoirs worthy of being adapted for the big screen. "I read this book with a very heavy heart and tears running down my face. For Manny's endurance and his brother Stanley to be so tested is truly a testament to life!" "Very well written as it goes straight to the reader's heart!" "Manny Steinberg shares his extraordinary teenage story of surviving four concentration camps in an account noteworthy for its straightforward, unencumbered narrative. His is a story almost everyone can imagine happening to themselves - no less harrowing than more dramatic renditions of Holocaust survival, but somehow more compelling, and universal, for the unembellished simplicity of his style." "Manny's story is told so well and his perseverance is so strong that you are uplifted and reminded of the strength of the human spirit."
Language of the Third Reich
Author: Victor Klemperer
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826491308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
Victor Klemperer was Professor of French Literature at Dresden University. As a Jew, he was removed from his post in 1935, only surviving thanks to his marriage to an Aryan. Presenting a study of language and its engagement with history, this book draws form Klemperer's conviction that the language of the Third Reich helped to create its culture.
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826491308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
Victor Klemperer was Professor of French Literature at Dresden University. As a Jew, he was removed from his post in 1935, only surviving thanks to his marriage to an Aryan. Presenting a study of language and its engagement with history, this book draws form Klemperer's conviction that the language of the Third Reich helped to create its culture.
We Are Here
Author: Ellen Cassedy
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803240228
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Ellen Cassedy’s longing to recover the Yiddish she’d lost with her mother’s death eventually led her to Lithuania, once the “Jerusalem of the North.” As she prepared for her journey, her uncle, sixty years after he’d left Lithuania in a boxcar, made a shocking disclosure about his wartime experience, and an elderly man from her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. How does a nation—how do successor generations, moral beings—overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in We Are Here, one woman’s exploration of Lithuania’s Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own family’s place in it. Digging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her; interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to “speak to a Jew” before he dies; discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation—Cassedy finds that it’s not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them.
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803240228
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Ellen Cassedy’s longing to recover the Yiddish she’d lost with her mother’s death eventually led her to Lithuania, once the “Jerusalem of the North.” As she prepared for her journey, her uncle, sixty years after he’d left Lithuania in a boxcar, made a shocking disclosure about his wartime experience, and an elderly man from her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. How does a nation—how do successor generations, moral beings—overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in We Are Here, one woman’s exploration of Lithuania’s Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own family’s place in it. Digging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her; interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to “speak to a Jew” before he dies; discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation—Cassedy finds that it’s not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them.
A Mortuary of Books
Author: Elisabeth Gallas
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 147980987X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 544
Book Description
Winner, 2020 JDC-Herbert Katzki Award for Writing Based on Archival Material, given by the Jewish Book Council The astonishing story of the efforts of scholars and activists to rescue Jewish cultural treasures after the Holocaust In March 1946 the American Military Government for Germany established the Offenbach Archival Depot near Frankfurt to store, identify, and restore the huge quantities of Nazi-looted books, archival material, and ritual objects that Army members had found hidden in German caches. These items bore testimony to the cultural genocide that accompanied the Nazis’ systematic acts of mass murder. The depot built a short-lived lieu de memoire—a “mortuary of books,” as the later renowned historian Lucy Dawidowicz called it—with over three million books of Jewish origin coming from nineteen different European countries awaiting restitution. A Mortuary of Books tells the miraculous story of the many Jewish organizations and individuals who, after the war, sought to recover this looted cultural property and return the millions of treasured objects to their rightful owners. Some of the most outstanding Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century, including Dawidowicz, Hannah Arendt, Salo W. Baron, and Gershom Scholem, were involved in this herculean effort. This led to the creation of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Inc., an international body that acted as the Jewish trustee for heirless property in the American Zone and transferred hundreds of thousands of objects from the Depot to the new centers of Jewish life after the Holocaust. The commitment of these individuals to the restitution of cultural property revealed the importance of cultural objects as symbols of the enduring legacy of those who could not be saved. It also fostered Jewish culture and scholarly life in the postwar world.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 147980987X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 544
Book Description
Winner, 2020 JDC-Herbert Katzki Award for Writing Based on Archival Material, given by the Jewish Book Council The astonishing story of the efforts of scholars and activists to rescue Jewish cultural treasures after the Holocaust In March 1946 the American Military Government for Germany established the Offenbach Archival Depot near Frankfurt to store, identify, and restore the huge quantities of Nazi-looted books, archival material, and ritual objects that Army members had found hidden in German caches. These items bore testimony to the cultural genocide that accompanied the Nazis’ systematic acts of mass murder. The depot built a short-lived lieu de memoire—a “mortuary of books,” as the later renowned historian Lucy Dawidowicz called it—with over three million books of Jewish origin coming from nineteen different European countries awaiting restitution. A Mortuary of Books tells the miraculous story of the many Jewish organizations and individuals who, after the war, sought to recover this looted cultural property and return the millions of treasured objects to their rightful owners. Some of the most outstanding Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century, including Dawidowicz, Hannah Arendt, Salo W. Baron, and Gershom Scholem, were involved in this herculean effort. This led to the creation of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Inc., an international body that acted as the Jewish trustee for heirless property in the American Zone and transferred hundreds of thousands of objects from the Depot to the new centers of Jewish life after the Holocaust. The commitment of these individuals to the restitution of cultural property revealed the importance of cultural objects as symbols of the enduring legacy of those who could not be saved. It also fostered Jewish culture and scholarly life in the postwar world.