Holocaust Survivor Memoirs
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(1)
A Childhood Unspoken
by Marie Doduck
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Mariette is only five years old when the Nazis invade her hometown of Brussels, Belgium, in 1940. Soon her family is torn apart, and Mariette and her siblings are scattered across the city and countryside, hiding with non-Jews and in convents and orphanages or working for the resistance. Seeing violence and death all around her, Mariette learns the skills she needs to survive, how to throw a knife, jump from a moving vehicle and, most importantly, stay silent. Mariette emerges from the war quick-thinking, fiercely independent and ready to start a new life in Canada. As she navigates a transition to a new identity as Marie an industrious and resourceful community member, mother and advocate for children's rights, Mariette, the silent child, begins to find her voice.
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Too Many Goodbyes: The Diaries of Susan Garfield
Memoirs of Holocaust Survivors from Hungary
by Susan Garfield
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
In 1944, as Budapest's Jews begin to suffer under German occupation, eleven-year-old Zsuzsi (Susie) takes to her diary to write about her friends and family as she copes with what it means to be persecuted. Precocious and charming, Susie records the mundane along with the poignant as she describes her daily life in Budapest against the backdrop of the war. After the war, uncertain whether she made the right decision to emigrate, Susie writes all her feelings down in a new diary, the only place where she feels she truly belongs.
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A Light in the Clouds
by Margalith Esterhuizen
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Margalith and her older sister, Dorica, grow up in a warm, close-knit family in Romania, but at a young age, the girls tragically lose their mother. Just as they are readjusting to a new family life, their childhood abruptly comes to a brutal end - Romania aligns itself with Nazi Germany and antisemitism boils over in their community. In 1941, Romanian soldiers force Margalith and her family from their home and send them on a devastating deportation march to the unknown. Crossing a river takes Margalith into Transnistria, a wretched land between borders, an expanse of thousands of kilometres containing more than a hundred ghettos and camps. This area, controlled by Romania, is where Jews like Margalith and her family are abandoned, left to die in desolation. A ghetto in the town of Murafa provides a bleak shelter where Margalith and her family struggle to keep starvation at bay until help arrives unexpectedly before war's end. Her journey to freedom and a new homeland provides both opportunity and heartache, and Margalith finds ‘A Light in the Clouds” as she endures the darkness of her past to search out the bright future ahead.
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In Search of Light
by Martha Salcudean
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Martha Salcudean is ten years old when her childhood comes to an abrupt end. The war has been raging around her for years, but in Northern Transylvania, now a part of Hungary, the atrocities intensify with the Nazi invasion in 1944. Suddenly, Martha and her family are imprisoned in ghettos and surrounded by incomprehensible cruelty. As she and her family are lined up in front of a cattle car train, a split-second decision her father makes changes their fate in an instant, instead of heading to almost certain death in Auschwitz, Martha and her family become destined to be saved by Rudolf Kasztner, a man riskily negotiating with the Nazis. After the war, Martha returns home, only to be caught in the grip of a new Communist dictatorship. Martha's journey “In Search of Light” takes her through the darkness of two oppressive regimes to the beginning of freedom in Canada, where she is finally able to choose her own path.
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Escape from the Edge
by Morris Schnitzer
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Narrow escapes and bold decisions define the life of teenager Morris Schnitzer. Fleeing from Nazi Germany before the onset of World War ii, Morris ends up in the Netherlands only to watch the country be invaded by the Nazis. With his father's warning to never set foot in a concentration camp echoing in his mind, Morris resolves to fight - and survive. As he assumes false identities and crosses endless borders in search of safety, Morris never acquiesces to the Nazi occupiers in Western Europe. In his epic journey to Escape from the Edge, Morris endures imprisonment and grueling work as a farmhand, joins the resistance in Belgium and ultimately enlists in the American army, vowing to take revenge for all that he has lost.
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From Generation to Generation
by Agnes Tomasov
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Hiding from the Nazis in the forests of Slovakia's Low Tatra Mountains in the fall of 1944, in constant danger from the Germans occupying nearby villages, fourteen-year-old Agnes Grossmann and her family made the daring decision to escape high into the mountains and hike along treacherous ice-covered peaks to safety. Twenty-four years later, Agnes Tomasov - then married with two children - found herself on the run from post-war Czechoslovakia's Communist regime and defected to Canada with her family, carrying only what they could fit in two suitcases.
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(3)
A Cry in Unison
by Judy Cohen
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
In Debrecen, Hungary, Judy grows up in a warm and lively family, but when the Nazis invade in 1944, she is crowded into a ghetto, her life now shaped by fear and hopelessness. When the cattle cars take Judy and her family to Auschwitz-Birkenau, she truly leaves her precious childhood behind as she scrambles to survive in the shadow of the gas chambers, one brutal day at a time. Judy survives by clinging to her sisters, to friends, and to fleeting life-affirming moments, and once she creates a new life for herself in Canada, she makes it her mission to give a voice both to women who were murdered in the Holocaust and to those who survived.
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In Dreams Together
The Diary of Leslie Fazekas
by Leslie Fazekas
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Hungary, to Vienna, Austria, as forced laborers. Fate and fortune have intervened to save their lives, after the war, they discover that nearly half of their Jewish community was sent to Auschwitz. During the devastating circumstances of his captivity, Leslie records his experiences in a diary and in letters to his girlfriend, Judit, from whom he was separated in Vienna. For eight months, Leslie's words alternate between hope and uncertainty in love letters that are also a testimony of his survival during a perilous time. In Dreams Together features Leslie's diary alongside his postwar memoir, a reflection on his childhood, the war and the love that shaped his life.
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At Great Risk
Memoirs of Rescue during the Holocaust
by Eva Lang
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
In France, underground networks find refuge for eleven-year-old Eva Lang and her younger sisters, protecting them from internment camps. In an orphanage in Slovakia, a pastor shelters young David Korn and his older brother, saving them from deportation. In a village in Poland, a farmer hides nine-year-old Fishel Philip Goldig and his parents after they escape from a ghetto and certain death. When so many people stood by during the anti-Jewish atrocities of the Holocaust, others risked their lives to save their Jewish friends and neighbours, and often even strangers. The three feature memoirs in At Great Risk are accompanied by excerpted stories of rescue by thirteen previously published Azrieli Foundation authors, highlighting the diverse experiences of rescue during the Holocaust. Together, these stories emphasize not only the courage and moral strength of the rescuers but also the survivors' remembrances of and gratitude to their rescuers after the war.
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A Childhood Adrift
by René Goldman
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
René Goldman grows up entranced with the theatre, music, languages and geography. Enveloped by his parents' love and protection, he wanders the streets of Luxembourg and then Brussels, carefree and prone to mischief. But in 1942, his family flees to France and eight-year-old René is separated from his parents and shunted between children's homes and convents, where he must hide both his Jewish identity and his mounting anxiety. As René waits for his parents to return, even liberation day does not feel like freedom.
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(3)
Memories in Focus
by Pinchas Gutter
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Ten-year-old Pinchas is separated from his parents and twin sister when they are deported from the Warsaw ghetto to the killing site of Majdanek. As Pinchas is sent on to a series of concentration camps, he shuts himself off to the terrors surrounding him and tries his best not to be noticed, to become almost invisible. But after liberation, his photographic memory won't let his past fade away, and Pinchas struggles to deal with nightmares and flashbacks while raising a family and trying to heal his emotional scars. A poignant reflection on suffering, injustice and trauma, Memories in Focus also offers hope and faith in the future.
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Never Far Apart
by Kitty Salsberg
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Kati and her younger sister, Ilonka, arrived in Canada with painful memories from the Holocaust, which took both of their parents. Their harrowing time alone in the Budapest ghetto was fresh in their minds, as were their fragile hopes to be adopted. But their lives in Toronto were far from what they expected, and full of broken promises. As the sisters navigated their new surroundings, they each grew fiercely strong and independent, while holding onto the comfort that they would be Never Far Apart.
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We Sang in Hushed Voices
by Helena Jockel
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
When the Nazis invaded Hungary on March 19, 1944, elementary school teacher Helena Jockel thought only about how to save "her" children as she accompanied them all the way to Auschwitz. Her account of living and surviving in the camp is clear-eyed and poignant, sometimes recording the too-brief moments of beauty and kindness that accompany the unremitting cruelty.
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Dangerous Measures
by Joseph Schwarzberg
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Fleeing Germany after the violence of the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, young Joseph and his family find safety in Belgium, but all too soon they have to escape again- this time to France - when the Germans occupy Belgium in 1940. When the Germans then conquer France and Joseph's family returns to Brussels, Joseph is forced to set out on his own, and at sixteen years old, he assumes a false identity and begins to live a dangerous double life. Joseph repeatedly eludes the Nazis' grasp, eventually finding his way to the French Resistance and bravely fighting with the under¬ground until France is liberated. But Joseph's years of fighting are not over, and when he arrives in pre-state Israel, he continues to do everything he can to secure his freedom.
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If Only It Were Fiction
by Elsa Thon
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Elsa Thon was a sixteen-year-old photographer's apprentice when the Nazis occupied her town of Pruszków, Poland. When her family was sent to the Warsaw ghetto, Elsa joined a community farm and was recruited by the Underground. Despite her deep belief in destiny, Elsa refused to bow to her fate as a Jew in war-torn Poland.
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The Vale of Tears
by Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
An epic journey across borders, The Vale of Tears chronicles close to two years in the life of Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung as he seeks an escape route from Nazi-occupied Europe. In this rare, near day-by-day account, Rabbi Hirschprung illuminates what life was like for an Orthodox rabbi fleeing persecution, finding inspiration and hope in Jewish scripture and psalms as he navigates the darkness of wartime to a safe harbor in Kobe, Japan.
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(5)
A Part of Me
by Bronia Jablon
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Bronia Jablon is separated from her family, and even her husband has escaped into the woods without her. It is 1942, the height of Nazi persecution in Poland, and Bronia and her three-year-old daughter, Lucy, wonder how they will survive each day. Should they hide in their hometown or should they search for their family in the nearby ghetto? Starving and exhausted, Bronia does not know who they can trust when all of their old friends and neighbours are either collaborating with the Nazis or too terrified for their own lives to offer assistance. When they finally find help, a cold, dark cellar becomes both their haven and prison.
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A Name Unbroken
by Michael Mason
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
When Germany occupied Hungary in 1944, fifteen-year-old Miklos Friedman drew on his wits to survive. Recruited into forced labour, sent to a ghetto and, ultimately, to the Nazi camps of Auschwitz and Mühldorf, Miklos never stopped fighting to change his fate. After the war, he risked everything in order to leave his past behind. Decades later, a chance meeting in Toronto led Miklos, now Michael Mason, to discover the power of his new name.
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Dignity Endures
by Judith Rubinstein
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
When the train from Hungary to Auschwitz brings Judith face-to-face with death, her mother's quick actions save her. At twenty-four years old, separated from her family, she struggles to stay alive in a system bent on humiliation and degradation, where surviving the daily violence is a matter of luck. Judith endures the destruction of her family, holding close the memories of those she loved. Feeling hopelessly alone after the war, she must figure out how to put her life back together and where to find home. Weaving together her story with those of cherished friends and family, Judith's poetic reminiscences show how Dignity Endures even through the worst of human tragedies.
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My Heart is At Ease
by Gerta Solan
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
In June 1942, when twelve-year-old Gerta is deported with her parents to the Theresienstadt ghetto — the Nazis' deceptive "model Jewish settlement" — her family helps her cope with the surrounding devastation. Later, alone in Auschwitz, Gerta is determined to survive the unbearable. Her intrepid spirit and keen observation guides her anew through post-war communism to freedom in Canada.
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Spring's End
by John Freund
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
A young boy who loved soccer as much as he loved to write, John Freund found his joyful childhood shattered by the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. John's family suffered through the systematic erosion of their rights only to be deported to Theresienstadt — en route to the Auschwitz death camp.
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A Tapestry of Survival
by Leslie Mezei
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Twelve-year-old Leslie Mezei, a lively, curious boy, doesn't realize how precarious his life is as a Jew in German-occupied Hungary in 1944. His older sister Magda, aware of the growing danger from Nazis and Hungarian fascists, takes charge and bravely tries to direct the family's survival, while his sister Klari, tough and determined, faces a brutal ordeal of her own. Confronting deportation, concentration camps and the constant threat of capture, the Mezei siblings carefully navigate the treacherous landscape of wartime Hungary. After the war, the family reunites briefly before setting out in different directions to start new lives, and in Montreal, Leslie meets his wife, Annie, who has a survival story of her own. In A Tapestry of Survival the voices of Leslie, Magda, Klari and Annie are woven together to reveal a larger tale of courage, resilience and the search for healing.
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Stronger Together
by Andy Réti
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
In the fall of 1941, as the situation for Jews worsens across Europe, Ibolya (Ibi) Grossman learns she is pregnant. She is scared and confused — a baby during wartime? But her husband, Zolti, assures her, "We need this baby, you will see." When András (Andy) is born, Ibi realizes her husband was right. Andy gives her a reason to go on during the worst of times in the Budapest ghetto, and to persevere in their escape from Hungary after the war. In as much as Ibi's story is a tribute to her son, Andy's memoir, written through his own and his mother's memories, as well as her words and silences, is a tribute to her legacy.
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The Hidden Package
by Claire Baum
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Almost forty years after the end of the end of the war, Claire Baum opens a package from a stranger in Rotterdam, unleashing a flood of repressed memories from her childhood. As Claire delves into her past, she uncovers the personal sacrifice and bravery of her parents, the Dutch resistance and the families that selflessly gave shelter to her and her sister, Ollie.
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Alone in the Storm
by Leslie Vertes
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
In 1944, twenty-year-old Leslie Vertes escapes from a forced labour detail in Budapest and miraculously survives by assuming a false identity. About to taste freedom as the end of the war nears, his liberation is short-lived when he is caught by the new Soviet regime and sent for two years of back-breaking labour and captivity. Years later, when he and his family flee to Canada, Leslie finally finds true freedom.
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(5)
Bits and Pieces
by Henia Reinhartz
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Lodz, Poland, 1944. Teenaged Henia Rosenfarb sat with her family in a small, secret room, hiding from Nazi soldiers who were looking for them. Little could the fiery redhead have imagined that her path would take her from wartime Poland to faraway Canada.
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Unsung Heroes
by Tibor Benyovits
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
In 1944, after German forces invade Hungary, the Zionist youth organization that twelve-year-old Tibor belongs to goes underground to avoid detection. When Tibor is separated from his family, he must rely on the support of his network, a courageous group under immense pressure to save as many Jews as possible in Budapest. Inspired by these Unsung Heroes, Tibor joins the resistance effort and bravely acts as a courier for the group, delivering false identity documents and protective papers to Jews in danger. When the war ends and Tibor must face all that he has lost, his group remains his lifeline, giving him hope and helping him find freedom.
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Behind the Red Curtain
by May Rakitova
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Swept up in the Bolshevik revolution, Joseph Stalin's Communist Party purges and World War II, the Rakitova family faces innumerable obstacles to survival. But young Maya knows only that her father is gone and that she must hide her Jewish identity. With what Maya calls "uncommon courage," her mother fights to protect her, relying on the tenuous hope that Maya can keep her identity a secret.
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From Loss to Liberation
by Joseph Tomasov
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
In the fall of 1944, the Slovak National Uprising both endangers and saves Joseph Tomasov's life. At twenty-two years old and Jewish, Joseph has been a constant target of the Nazis and their Slovak allies. Joining the resistance movement is his only way out, even though life on the run is steeped in peril. In 1945, Joseph finally experiences the relief of liberation, but his safety lasts only ten years - imprisoned by the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, he is separated from his new family and faces a potential twenty-five-year-sentence. Once he rebuilds his life, Joseph and his family face yet another threat and he must find his way to freedom. Joseph's journey From Loss to Liberation is the harrowing story of a young man who never gives up and who, ultimately, fulfills his hopes and dreams in Canada.
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A Promise of Sweet Tea
by Pinchas Eliyahu Blitt
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
In A Promise of Sweet Tea, a Jewish community comes alive in this vividly told story of a childhood interrupted by the Holocaust. In his wry and evocative prose, Pinchas Blitt conjures Kortelisy - a humble, vibrant village in the backwoods of western Ukraine. Young Pinchas lives in fear of Cossacks and wolves and the local antisemitic children, but he finds belonging in the rich texts and traditions of his ancestors. When the Soviets invade, Pinchas's life is infused with new meaning as he innocently devotes himself to the teachings of Comrade Stalin. Then the Nazis arrive, and Pinchas witnesses his beloved village being brutally attacked. As his family seeks safety in the marshes and forests, their precarious existence brings Pinchas face to face with his own mortality and faith, and with a sense of dislocation that will accompany him throughout his life.
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A Passport to Reprieve
by Sonia Caplan
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
As seventeen-year-old Sonia prepares to leave her childhood home in Tarnów, Poland, to study journalism in Paris, antisemitism is on the rise. It is the spring of 1939, and her father is leaving for Canada to set up a new life there for his family. Stranded in Canada when war breaks out in Europe, he is frantic to reunite with them. Sonia, caught in the grips of the Nazi regime, suddenly finds herself responsible not only for herself but for her mother and younger sister too. Sonia's father works feverishly from Canada to get them out to safety, even managing to become a citizen of neutral Nicaragua, sending false Nicaraguan passports to his family. In Tarnów, Sonia faces the Gestapo again and again, armed with these documents as anti-Jewish laws escalate and the daily violence intensifies. As Sonia bravely tries to shield her family from the atrocities in the Tarnów ghetto, she feels torn between temporary triumphs and an agonizing sense of futility. In the face of deportation, Sonia's wait for a reprieve turns ominous. Will her determination and deception be enough to save her and her family?
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Flights of Spirit
by Elly Gotz
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Sixteen-year-old Elly Gotz hides with his family in an underground bunker in the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania, prepared to die rather than be found by the Nazis. After surviving nearly three years in the ghetto, where thousands from the Jewish community have been murdered, Elly and his family refuse to be the Nazis' next victims. But there is no escape from the liquidation of the ghetto in the summer of 1944, and Elly and his family are taken to Kaufering, a brutal subcamp of the notorious Dachau concentration camp. After the war, as his family tries desperately to flee from Germany and their past, Elly is determined to regain his lost youth and education. Throughout his journey, Elly's motivation and enterprising spirit drive him to succeed and, ultimately, to find strength in flight.
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Survival Kit
by Zuzana Sermer
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
An only child, fifteen-year-old Zuzana Sermer did what she could to protect her father and ailing mother when the Nazis set up a fascist regime in her native Slovakia in 1939. Four years later, after fleeing to the supposed safety of Budapest, Zuzana and her fiancé, Arthur, instead navigated one treacherous situation after another. Survival Kit is both Sermer's thoughtful reflections on the miracles of her survival and a testament to the power of courage, love and determination.
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Memories from the Abyss/But I Had a Happy Childhood
by William Tannenzapf
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
William Tannenzapf never wavered in his determination to survive and save his wife and baby girl from the evil that gripped his home town of Stanislawów. Blond, cherubic, Renate Krakauer was a "miracle baby" born as the world descended into war and soon surrounded by misery and death. Starved and enslaved, Tannenzapf entrusted his daughter to a Polish family so that little Renate could live in "childhood oblivion" — yet still under the eyes of her loving parents. Later reunited and thrown into the trials of refugee and immigrant life, Krakauer's thoughtful observations provide fascinating insight into the perceptions of a child survivor and offer a poignant counterpoint to Tannenzapf's adult reflections on the same events. This gripping volume offers the reader the rare opportunity to read survival stories from two members of the same family.
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The Shadows Behind Me
by Willie Sterner
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
For six desperate years, Willie Sterner's skill as a painter saved him from death at the hands of the Nazis. Faced with inhumane conditions in slave labour camps and grieving the loss of his close-knit family, Sterner relied on courage and ingenuity to hold onto his dignity. Through almost random luck, he came under the protection of the famed Oskar Schindler and became his personal art restorer. An unvarnished account of what he experienced and what he lost, The Shadows Behind Me, also follows the story of Willie and Eva — the woman he met on a death march — as they rebuilt their lives and regained hope in Canada. Gripping and moving, this is a tribute to one man's remarkable determination to survive.
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Album of My Life
by Ann Szedlecki
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Ann Szedlecki was a Hollywood-film-loving fourteen-year-old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and she fled to the Soviet Union with her older brother, hoping to return for the rest of her family later. Instead, she ended up spending most of the next six and a half years alone in the Soviet Union, enduring the harsh conditions of northern Siberia under Stalin's Communist regime. Szedlecki's beautifully written story, which lovingly reconstructs her pre-war childhood in Lodz, is also compelling for its candor about her experiences as a woman in the Soviet Union during World War II. As a very young woman without family, living largely by her wits, she was only too aware of her own vulnerability, and she met every challenge with a fierce determination to survive.
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As the Lilacs Bloomed
by Anna Molnár Hegedűs
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
In the spring of 1944, as Germany occupied her native Hungary, Anna Hegedűs barely had time to notice the flowers blooming around her. One year later, as the lilacs blossomed once again, she returned to her hometown of Szatmár and set her memories, raw and vivid, to paper. Her unflinching words convey the bitter details of the Szatmár ghetto, Auschwitz, the Schlesiersee forced labour camp and a perilous death march. At forty-eight years old, Anna had survived a lifetime of trauma, and as she wrote, she waited, desperately hoping her family would return.
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Knocking on Every Door
by Anka Voticky
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
As Hitler's army swept into Czechoslovakia in 1939, Anka Voticky, a twenty-five-year-old mother of two, her husband, Arnold, and her family fled halfway around the world to an unlikely refuge – the Chinese port of Shanghai. Estranged from all that was familiar, their security was threatened yet again when the Japanese occupying the city forced the Jewish refugees into a ghetto. After the war, the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia sent the Votickys on another harrowing journey out of Europe, this time to safety in Canada. Global in scope, Anka Voticky's memoir provides a "rare glimpse of the far-reaching impact of World War II."
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Hope's Reprise
by David Newman
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
David Newman's gifts as a musician and a teacher carried him through years of brutality during the war. Torn from his family in Poland and deported for forced labour at Skarżysko- Kamienna, David battled desperation and the mounting death toll by writing songs, poems and satires about life in the camp. Later, in the infamous Buchenwald camp, the resistance recruited him for a clandestine initiative to protect the Jewish children there. With his soulful songs and his lessons for the children, David was able to rouse a chorus of hope, both in himself and those around him.
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Inside the Walls
by Eddie Klein
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
An idealist and a dreamer, young Icchok Klein writes poetry in the Lodz ghetto, a talent that leads to him to be rescued by a tight inner circle, where he comes under the protective wing of the chairman of the Council of Elders, Mordechai Rumkowski. In a flash, Icchok's life takes a decidedly different path, giving him a birds-eye view of a house of privilege and a polarizing, controversial figure. But in August 1944, Icchok's fate spirals when he is among those transported from the ghetto and he is forced to face, alone, each precarious moment.
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Across the Rivers of Memory
by Felicia Carmelly
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Transnistria, Romania, did not exist on a map. Yet that is where ten-year-old Felicia Steigman and her parents arrived in 1941, after a cruel deportation and death march overseen by Romanian Nazi collaborators. After surviving three years amid squalor, devastation and death, they finally returned to their pre-war idyllic hometown, Vatra Dornei, only to find their suffering being silenced. Decades later, Felicia was determined to commemorate the forgotten cemetery of Transnistria in a way that could not be ignored.
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The Violin/A Child's Testimony
by Rachel Shtibel
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Rachel Milbauer, a vivacious and outgoing music lover, hid silently in an underground bunker in Nazi-occupied Poland for nearly two years. After the war, a recovered violin, case and photos hidden away by Rachel's beloved Uncle Velvel became cherished symbols of survival and continuity. Saved by inner fortitude, luck and the courage and caring of friends and strangers, Rachel and Adam met and fell in love, and set about building a new life together. Half a century later, a chance remark inspired Rachel to explore her memories. Always at her side, Adam chose to break his long self-imposed silence in the only way he could.
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E96: Fate Undecided
by Paul-Henri Rips
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
The son of an Antwerp diamond merchant, Paul-Henri Rips was ten when the Nazis invaded Belgium and ended his "golden childhood" forever. Guided by his father's admonition to "Sei a mensch" (Be a decent person), Rips managed to hold onto his humanity in the face of unfathomable inhumanity.
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If Home is Not Here
by Max Bornstein
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Not quite two when he immigrated to Canada, Max Bornstein returned to Europe in 1933, the year that Adolf Hitler came to power. Barely surviving as a stateless refugee in 1930s Paris, he escaped France when it fell to the Nazis only to be interned in a Spanish concentration camp.
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Traces of What Was
by Steve Rotschild
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Ten-year-old Steve Rotschild learns to hide, to be silent, to be still — and to wait. He knows the sound of the Nazis' army boots and knows to hold his breath until their footsteps recede. Rotschild takes us on a captivating journey through his wartime childhood in Vilna, eloquently juxtaposing his past, furtive walks outside the ghetto with his long, liberating walks through Toronto fifty years after the war. Vividly evoking his experiences, this story of survival and a mother's tenacious love leaves the reader indelibly marked by Traces of What Was.
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A Drastic Turn of Destiny
by Fred Mann
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Under the Yellow & Red Stars is a remarkable story of survival, coming of age and homecoming after years as a stranger in a strange land. Alex Levin was only ten years old when he ran deep into the forest after the Germans invaded his hometown of Rokitno and only twelve when he emerged from hiding to find that he had neither parents nor a community to return to. A harrowing tale of escape, endurance and exceptional emotional resilience, Levin's story also draws us into his later life as an officer and eventual outcast in the USSR, and as an immigrant who successfully built a new life in Canada. This poetically written memoir is imbued with loss and pain, but also with the optimistic spirit of a boy determined to survive.
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If, By Miracle
by Michael Kutz
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Nearly buried alive, ten-year-old Michael Kutz narrowly escaped the Nazi death squad that killed 4,000 Jews, including his own family, in his hometown of Nieśwież. Guided by his mother's last words and determined to survive, he became the youngest member of a partisan resistance group in the dense Belorussian forest, and took part in daring operations against the Nazis and their collaborators
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Fleeing from the Hunter
by Marian Domanski
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
On the run in Nazi-occupied Poland, thirteen-year-old orphan Marian Finkelman - later Domanski - was forced to grow up much too early. When he finally escaped the ghetto in his hometown, Marian's perfect Polish and fair complexion helped him narrowly escape death as he travelled through the Polish countryside.