The Holocaust

The incredible story of Jewish female resistance fighters who fought the Nazis, a tale virtually unkown.

The inside story of 'the Cura ao visa' and one of the greatest rescue operations of the twentieth century. In May 1940, Jan Zwartendijk, the director of the Lithuanian branch of the Philips electrical-goods company, stepped into history when he accepted the honorary role of Dutch... consul. In Kaunas, the capital of Lithuania, desperate Jewish refugees faced annihilation in the Holocaust. That was when Zwartendijk, with the help of Chiune Sugihara, the consul for Japan, and the Dutch ambassador in Riga, Latvia - chose to break his country's diplomatic rules. He opened up a possible route to freedom through the ruse of issuing visas to the Dutch colony of Cura ao on the other side of the world. Thanks to these visas, and Sugihara's approval of onward passage, many Jews - up to 10,000 - were able to travel on the Trans-Siberian Express all through Soviet Russia to Vladivostok, further to Japan, and onwards to China. Most of the Jews whom Zwartendijk helped escape survived the war, and they and their descendants settled in America, Canada, Australia, and other countries. Zwartendijk and Sugihara were true heroes, and yet they were both shunned by their own countries after the war, and their courageous, unstinting actions have remained relatively unknown. In The Just, renowned Dutch author Jan Brokken wrests this heroic story from oblivion and traces the journeys of a number of the rescued Jews. This epic narrative shows how, even in life-threatening circumstances, some people make the right choice at the right time. It is a lesson in character and courage. 'If I had known Jan Zwartendijk's story before, I would have had filmed that.' -Steven Spielberg 'He Zwartendijk filled desperate lives with hope during a period of great darkness, and his actions will remain a beacon of decency and righteousness for generations to come.' -Bill Clinton 'Jan Brokken has built a monument to Jan Zwartendijk ... He makes time fan out not in length but in breadth, and does so cleverly, with
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This compelling book on Hitler and Stalin - the culmination of thirty years' work - examines the two tyrants during the Second World War, when Germany and the Soviet Union fought the biggest and bloodiest war in history. Yet despite the fact they were bitter opponents, Laurence R...ees shows that Hitler and Stalin were, to a large extent, different sides of the same coin. Hitler's charismatic leadership may contrast with Stalin's regimented rule by fear; and his intransigence later in the war may contrast with Stalin's change in behaviour in response to events. But at a macro level, both were prepared to create undreamt of suffering, destroy individual liberty and twist facts in order to build the Utopia they wanted, and while Hitler's creation of the Holocaust remains a singular crime, Rees shows why we must not forget that Stalin committed a series of atrocities at the same time. Using previously unpublished, startling eyewitness testimony from soldiers of the Red Army and Wehrmacht, civilians who suffered during the conflict, and those who knew both men personally, bestselling historian Laurence Rees - probably the only person alive who has met Germans who worked for Hitler and Russians who worked for Stalin - challenges long-held popular misconceptions about two of the most important figures in history. This is a masterwork from one of our finest historians.
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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 circuito...us 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 labourer 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. 'Menachem Kaiser is a young writer and storyteller of stunning talent, originality, and wisdom, and his debut book is gloriously impossible to categorise - by turns hilarious and profound, digressive and suspenseful, intimate and sweeping, it stands as an enviable accomplishment.' -Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of A Sense of Direction- pilgrimage for the restless and hopeful
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One of those rare and eternal stories that you don't want to end and that leave you forever changed' DESMOND TUTU, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate In 1944, sixteen-year-old Edith Eger was sent to Auschwitz. She explains how many of us live within a mind that has become a prison, and s...hows how freedom becomes possible once we confront our suffering.
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