I became interested in the Holocaust and the Second World War during my senior year of high school. I took a literature class entitled “Man’s Inhumanity to Man,” which focused a great deal on the literature that emerged from the Holocaust. At the end of the year, I had the great honor to meet author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel who had actually read my essay (my teacher knew him, and gave it to him to read) and encouraged me to keep writing. I am fascinated by stories of survival and the quiet heroism that characterized women like Ida and Louise Cook.
I wrote
Overture of Hope: Two Sisters' Daring Plan that Saved Opera's Jewish Stars from the Third Reich
Historian Wendy Lower focuses on a single photograph taken in October 1941 that shows a group of soldiers shooting a woman who clutches the hand of a little boy just before they fall into a mass grave in Miropol, Ukraine.
This is a gripping and impeccably researched account of the killers, the victims, and the photographer who took the haunting image. Lower combs through public records and archives, and relies on interviews with local residents to reconstruct mass atrocities. Lower’s descriptions of her dogged determination to reconstruct the scene of the crime reads like a thriller.
A single photograph—an exceptionally rare “action shot” documenting the horrific final moment of the murder of a family—drives a riveting process of discovery for a gifted Holocaust scholar
In 2009, the acclaimed author of Hitler’s Furies was shown a photograph just brought to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The documentation of the Holocaust is vast, but there are virtually no images of a Jewish family at the actual moment of murder, in this case by German officials and Ukrainian collaborators. A Ukrainian shooter’s rifle is inches from a…
Phiippe Sands is a professor of international law at University College London, who has worked to shed light on human rights violations in Chile, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, among other places. He is also a brilliant storyteller.
In The Ratline he examines the life and mysterious death of Otto von Wächter, a high-ranking member of the SS who held governorships in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. Wanted by the Allies after the war, Von Wächter escapes to the Austrian Alps where he lives as a fugitive for three years before heading to Rome, aided by Vatican bishop Alois Hudal.
A few months into his Italian sojourn, Von Wächter suddenly takes ill and dies. His son Horst von Wächter believes his father was murdered. Sands sets off to find the truth in this gripping page-turner.
A tale of Nazi lives, mass murder, love, Cold War espionage, a mysterious death in the Vatican, and the Nazi escape route to Perón's Argentina,"the Ratline"—from the author of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning East West Street.
"Hypnotic, shocking, and unputdownable." —John le Carré, internationally renowned bestselling author
Baron Otto von Wächter, Austrian lawyer, husband, father, high Nazi official, senior SS officer, former governor of Galicia during the war, creator and overseer of the Krakow ghetto, indicted after as a war criminal for the mass murder of more than 100,000 Poles, hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the British, by Simon…
Fiercely opinionated and unapologetically peculiar, Marie Kuipers credits her New Jersey upbringing for her no-f*cks-given philosophy. As for why she spent most of her adult life underemployed, she points at her mom—who believes she knows better than God Himself—for that.
We’re All Mad Here dares to peer behind the curtain…
This is an extraordinary story of a brave German woman whose diplomat father and Italian aristocrat husband decide to resist the Nazis.
When German troops enter Italy, Fey von Hassell finds herself trapped with her young children in a 12th-century villa in northern Italy while her husband joins the anti-fascist underground in Rome and her father decides to join the group that plots to kill Adolf Hitler. Nazi stormtroopers take over the villa and later arrest Fey.
Using archival materials and family letters, Caroline Bailey reconstructs Fey’s harrowing journey—moved from prison to prison and concentration camp to concentration camp. Her two young boys are taken away from her, and sent to a Nazi orphanage. Fey’s single-minded mission to find her children reads like a good thriller.
"I was gripped by A Castle in Wartime--it contained more tension, more plot in fact--than any thriller."--Kate Atkinson, author of Big Sky and Case Histories
An enthralling story of one family's extraordinary courage and resistance amidst the horrors of war from the New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Rooms.
As war swept across Europe in 1940, the idyllic life of Fey von Hassell seemed a world away from the conflict. The daughter of Ulrich von Hassell, Hitler's Ambassador to Italy, her marriage to Italian aristocrat Detalmo Pirzio-Biroli brought with it a castle and an estate in the north…
Hermann Goering’s art dealer was a Nazi stormtrooper with a PhD in art history and an athletic build. And Bruno Lohse always made sure the champagne was on ice whenever Hermann Goering arrived at Paris’ Jeu de Paume museum in order to examine the latest in stolen masterpieces.
Although Lohse was arrested after the war for his ties to the Nazi party and spent several years in prison in Germany and France, he was never convicted for his role in stealing art, and went on to make a good living as an art dealer in Munich after the war. Jonathan Petropoulos, a history professor at Claremont McKenna College and expert on the Holocaust, interviewed Lohse several times for this fascinating book.
A charged biography of a notorious Nazi art plunderer and his career in the postwar art world
"[Petropoulos] brings Lohse into sharper focus, as a personality and axis point from which to explore a network of art dealers, collectors and museum curators connected to Nazi looting. . . . What emerges from Petropoulos's research is a portrait of a charismatic and nefarious figure who tainted everyone he touched."-Nina Siegal, New York Times
"Readers of art history and WWII biographies will appreciate this engrossing deep dive into one of the world's most prolific art looters."-Publishers Weekly
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
Berta Geissmar was the Jewish secretary and confidante to legendary German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler beginning in 1921.
In her memoir, published in 1944, Geissmar describes how the Nazi hierarchy interfered in the world of classical music, purging orchestras of Jewish musicians and banning works by Jewish composers. Although Furtwangler at first refused to do the bidding of the Nazis, he was eventually sidelined. And Geissmar soon became a Nazi target.
They blamed her for the bad publicity that the regime was getting in the classical music world, and seized her passport. Geissmar was eventually allowed to leave the country, and, ended up in London as the secretary of another legendary conductor—Sir Thomas Beecham.
Overture of Hope is the story of sisters Ida and Louise Cook, office clerks who used their fanatical love of opera to help bring Jewish musicians and scholars out of Nazi-controlled Germany and Austria before the beginning of the Second World War. Working with Austrian musician Clemens Krauss, Hitler’s favorite conductor, the sisters traveled to Austria and Germany on the weekends in the years before the Second World War under the pretext of attending opera performances. They interviewed their refugees, and smuggled out their assets, mainly jewelry, by plastering everything on their Marks & Spencer dresses when they crossed the border. Their quiet relief effort saved dozens of Jews from the Nazis.
Looking for clean romantic suspense with spiritual undertones?
Look no further than the Acts of Valor series by Rebecca Hartt. With thousands of reviews and 4.7-5.0 stars per book, this 6-book series is a must-read for readers searching for memorable, well-told stories by an award-winning author.
The Hunt for the Peggy C is best described as Casablanca meets Das Boot. It is about an American smuggler who struggles to rescue a Jewish family on his rusty cargo ship, outraging his mutinous crew of misfits and provoking a hair-raising chase by a brutal Nazi U-boat captain…