Staying Human Through the Holocaust In June 1944, Teréz and Erzsi were sent to the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in German-occupied Poland, where they would fight for their survival in a traumatic ordeal of unimaginable horror. Liberation in February 1945 should have meant the end of their nightmare, yet their homecoming would be delayed by the widespread confusion as the Russians swept through Eastern Europe crushing the Nazi regime. After internment in numerous Russian camps and an uncertain future, Teréz and Ezri finally returned to their shattered hometown of Oradea in August 1945. Told in a direct and riveting style that will haunt the reader long after the story is over, this memoir is a glimpse of the darkest and most uplifting aspects of our humanity from both an individual and historical point of view. Terez Mozes 9781552381397 b&w photos 125x190mm 386 pages University of Calgary Press £13.99 pb Suicide and the Holocaust The purpose of this important book is to explore the phenomena of the low suicide rate in the concentration camps during the Holocaust, and why its survivors seem to become increasingly susceptible to suicide, as they grow older. This unique book explores this heretofore unexplored area of history by the case study method utilising the detailed biographies of famous survivors. People kill themselves usually because they are in deep despair, with no hope for the future. Surely the people in the concentration camps, especially those that were clearly extermination camps, would have been in deep despair with no hope for the future. But since they supposedly did not commit suicide at a high rate, they must not have been in such state. This puzzle of human behaviour is examined under the microscope of a well-known world expert on suicide. David Lester and Richard Stockton 9781594544279 Hardback Nova Science £55.99 Surviving Auschwitz : Children of the Shoah Tells the moving and inspirational story of three young girls who survived Auschwitz, Adolph Hitler's most notorious death camp. With dramatic photographs, Tova Friedman, Frieda Tenebaum, and Rachel Hyams document the story in their own words.   Milton J Nieuwsma 9781596870727 b/w photos 190x260mm 162 pages Brick Tower Press £9.99 pb Talking with Angels, 4th Edition The true story of four young Hungarians in search of inner meaning at a time of outer upheaval - the holocaust - who encountered luminous forces that helped them find new direction and hope in their shattered lives. These forces, which came to be known as angels, accompanied them for seventeen perilous months, until three of them met their deaths in Nazi concentration camps. Only Gitta Mallasz survived to bring their story and these remarkable dialogues to the world. Gitta Mallasz & Lela Fischli 9783856307042 b/w illustrations 140x210mm 474 pages Daimon Verlag £19.50 pb Three Tragic Heroes of the Vilnius Ghetto : Witenberg, Sheinbaum, Gens Vilnius (Vilna, Wilno), the capital of Lithuania, has been one of the main centres of Jewish cultural, religious, social and political activity of the Diaspora since the middle ages. At one time, one half of the city inhabitants were Jewish. Everything changed during the Holocaust. The Jewish community was destroyed by the Nazis and their collaborators. But there were those who refused to surrender without a fight. Witenberg and Sheinbaum were the leaders of the Jewish underground resistance organisations in the Vilnius ghetto. Gens was the Jewish Head of the ghetto, appointed to this position by the German authorities. Each person had the same objective -- personal and communal survival. All three perished during the destruction of the Jewish ghetto. These three figures constitute the 'Three Tragic Heroes of the Vilnius Ghetto'. This book compares the different approaches to the issues of resistance and survival and illuminates the specific problems of Jewish resistance and also the larger dilemma of survival during the Nazi era.   N N Shneidman 9780889627857 b/w illustrations 155x230mm 174 pages Mosaic Press £12.99 pb Tricks of Fate : Escape, Survival & Rescue, 1939-1945 One aspect of Holocaust experience and literature has been largely undocumented -- up to now. The value and importance of "Tricks of Fate" is that it fills in this apparent void in Holocaust literature. Morris Gruda’s flight through Nazi occupied Poland and into the Soviet Union, his struggles for survival and his return to Poland at the end of the war is a unique story, but one which he shared with many other Jews. Indeed, it is estimated that 300,000 Jews were caught in or escaped into Russian-occupied Poland shortly after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. Many of these Jews later participated in the Russian war against Germany after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Morris Gruda was one of them. Morris Gruda has powerfully re-created the traumas, the disasters, the minor triumphs, the hunger and disease, the endless vagaries of pure chance that allowed him to survive. He has not only filled a void in the literature, but he emerges as an immensely sensitive, humane individual struggling to survive and to reunite his family. Morris Gruda emigrated to Canada after the war and has become a successful businessman, philanthropist, noted Yiddish writer and poet, a father of two children and the grandfather of twelve. Morris Gruda 9780889628625 b/w photos 155x230mm 265 pages Mosaic Press (co-publication with the Holocaust Centre of Toronto, UJA Federation) £9.99 pb Untold Until Now, World War II Stories : Daddy & Other Heroes A generation of men who fought for our freedom looks back at their lives; some with melancholy, some with unforgotten energy, and other with reluctance. World War II means something different to each man who served, yet a common and tightly woven thread binds their attitudes and senses of patriotism. This moving book captures the long-lost era when men were men -- when going to war meant actually engaging the enemy rather than raining bombs on them from above and never actually seeing them. Those stories have something to tell us about lives; the lives of the men interviewed, our own lives and the lives of the millions of people who did not live through another of mankind's follies. Karen Brantley 9781560727156 b/w photos 155x235mm 222 pages Nova Science Publishers £19.50 hb   War Crimes of the Deutsche Bank & the Dresdner Bank : Office of Military Government (US) Reports In November 1946, US Government financial experts inside former Nazi Germany concluded that Germany's most powerful banks must be liquidated if lasting peace was to be achieved. The giant Deutsche and Dredener Banks had completely intertwined themselves with the Nazi regime and were directly responsible for the systematic theft of Jewish property, slave labour, and financing the construction of SS concentration camps. As the Americans in the Finance Division of the Office of Military Government (US) - OMGUS - saw things at the time, the bank leaders should be tried as war criminals and barred from ever holding any positions of importance in German political or economic life. However, these recommendations were never implemented. In fact, many of the officials of the Deutsche Bank went on to be some of the most important figures in German economic development in the postwar period. The Deutsche Bank secretly retained almost a ton of gold taken from the dead at concentration camps; the Dresdener Bank re-emerged as a multinational financial giant. Meanwhile, the US Government buried the 500+ page report of its financial experts in classified files, where they gathered dust for decades. Today, the Deutsche Bank is the largest financial institution in the world and the Dresdener Bank is not far behind. Christopher Simpson (ed) 9780841914070 183x260mm 417 pages Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc £35.00 hb Where Was God? : The Lives & Thoughts of Holocaust & World War II Survivors A valuable and important addition to the literature of Holocaust and Survivors of World War 2. Professor Kooistra was Chaplain at the University of Waterloo in Ontario after he emigrated to Canada from Holland. During his tenure at Waterloo, he created a Study Group which made oral histories of Holocaust victims and Survivors. From this vast wealth of material, he has now prepared this book. The book has a definite Dutch focus. It provides important new information about the persecution and deportation of Dutch Jews as well as how many Dutch Jews were hidden and saved in Holland. Written for both Jews and non-Jews. The most amazing stories are tales of survival by non-Jews in concentration camps. Many of the stories are astonishing and painful. Heroism -- yes, but also chance, confusion, the unexpected. An important contribution both to history and to literature. Remkes Kooistra (ed) 9780889627574 155x235mm 204 pages Mosaic Press £12.99 pb Who Loves You Like This, 2nd Edition This is an account of one woman's Holocaust survival and painful postwar years spent forging an adult identity out of the splinters of a girlhood destroyed. Edith Bruck 9780966491371 140x210mm 120 pages Paul Dry Books £10.99 pb Witness : Images of Auschwitz Inside these pages are some of the most famous drawings to emerge from a survivor of Nazi extermination camps. David Olère & Alexandre Oler 9780941037693 colour & b/w photos 280x225mm 112 pages D & F Scott Publishing Inc £31.50 hb Writing & the Holocaust In this extraordinary collection of essays, historians, novelists and philosophers ponder the imponderable: Was the effort to exterminate the Jewish people a unique historic event or does it fit into a larger context? Is there justification for creating Holocaust fiction? Is humour an appropriate tool in Holocaust literature? Must a work about the Holocaust have redemptive value? With some exceptions, the essays were presented as papers at a 1987 conference at SUNY Albany. Among the participants were Saul Friedlander, Raul Hilberg and Aharon Appelfeld. Although a few contributions are oppressively intellectual, many brilliantly interweave anecdotes and issues to arrive at insights into the awesome task of writing about the Holocaust. Appelfeld, for example, vividly recollects pitiful child survivors who performed snatches of Jewish songs for coins before concluding, "The problem... has been to remove the Holocaust from its enormous, inhuman dimensions and bring it close to human beings." Berel Lang (ed) 9780841911857 152x228mm 293 pages Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc £13.95 pb