Both my parents were born in Leipzig, Germany and were survivors of the Holocaust. I grew up in Upstate New York with stories my mother recounted about her family’s dramatic escape and the many harrowing moments they endured. I was fortunate enough to interview her before her death and to acquire the memoirs of her two sisters. I've always wanted to publish their astonishing story, and I'm thrilled that my readership spans many countries.This book highlights the many individual, family, and village rescuers that saved the lives of my mother’s family. I have stayed connected to the descendants of many of these rescuers and am forever grateful for the risks these heroic people took to save the lives of the Kroch family.
I wrote
Three Sisters: A True Holocaust Story of Love, Luck, and Survival
This beautifully written and impeccably researched book is a spellbinding account of rescuers during the Holocaust. Coming from the perspective of a psychotherapist and social psychologist Dr. Fogelman explores the commonalities of rescuers and their motivations that compels them to risk their lives to save others. Dr. Fogelman paints in-depth accounts of some of the many rescuers she interviewed. One of them, Jean Kowalyk, is a Polish 19-year-old woman who hid and saved the lives of seven Jews. One of the men she hides in the attic of her small farmhouse later marries Jean and they move to America, where Dr. Fogelman continued to stay friends with both.
In this brilliantly researched and insightful book, psychologist Eva Fogelman presents compelling stories of rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust--and offers a revealing analysis of their motivations. Based on her extensive experience as a therapist treating Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and those who helped them, Fogelman delves into the psychology of altruism, illuminating why these rescuers chose to act while others simply stood by. While analyzing motivations, Conscience And Courage tells the stories of such little-known individuals as Stefnaia Podgorska Burzminska, a Polish teenager who hid thirteen Jews in her home; Alexander Roslan, a dealer in the black market…
This fascinating account offers an in-depth look into the hearts and minds of ten Dutch people who saved the lives of thousands of Jewish children during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Less than 1 percent, 55,000 Dutch citizens stood up to the Nazis with active resistance, shouldering the responsibility of saving 140,000 innocent people. As he interviews rescuers, Mr. Klepner, himself a child of a Holocaust survivor, comes to understand the circumstances that led rescuers to make the choices to risk their lives to save Jews.
"You can't let people be treated in an inhuman way around you....Otherwise you start to become inhuman." So declares rescuer Hetty Voûte in this updated edition of THE HEART HAS REASONS, an acclaimed historical account that offers an in-depth look into the hearts and minds of the Holocaust rescuers and explores the meaning that their lives and deeds have for us today. Individually or in small "humanitarian cells," the ten Dutch people profiled in this Kindle book saved the lives of thousands of Jewish children during the Nazi occupation of Holland. How did they do what they did—and why did…
This is the beautifully written, spellbinding retelling of a remarkable moment in history where true humanity triumphed. A small protestant town in Southern France, in full view of the Vichy government managed to save thousands of Jewish children and adults from certain death. Phillip Hallie has masterfully captured the personalities of the major rescuers and provides a detailed account of the events that led to this most unusual story of rescue. Photographs help to capture the excitement of this incredible, riveting story.
During the most terrible years of World War II, when inhumanity and political insanity held most of the world in their grip and the Nazi domination of Europe seemed irrevocable and unchallenged, a miraculous event took place in a small Protestant town in southern France called Le Chambon. There, quietly, peacefully, and in full view of the Vichy government and a nearby division of the Nazi SS, Le Chambon's villagers and their clergy organized to save thousands of Jewish children and adults from certain death.
The authors spent three years interviewing 105 rescuers from ten countries to compile this extraordinary portrait of individual rescuers. This large coffee table edition is beautifully illustrated with historical photographs, and color portraits. Each rescuer explains how he or she came to the decision to shift from being a bystander to being a rescuer. By reading their accounts, we are continuing to hold their actions in the front of our minds. We are witnesses to their heroic deeds. Irene Gut Opdyke is also interviewed.
A welcome addition to Holocaust literature, this work presents a series of 49 personal reminiscences of non-Jewish citizens in various European nations who risked their lives to hide resident Jews from the Nazi horror. Most of those interviewed felt their actions were done out of friendship and for people caught in a web of hatred and anti-Semitism. They did not feel that they were acting heroically but that they were doing what was right. Portraits by Block of each of the rescuers accompany the text. These 49 are representative of the 9,295 rescuers honoured at the Yad Vashem in Israel.…
This is the extraordinary memoir of Irene, a young Catholic woman from Poland who was forced to work for the Russians and the Nazis. Her compassion began as a young child when she rescued and healed injured wild animals. She later trained as a nurse. What began as small, very risky acts to smuggle food to Jews in the Polish ghetto, soon turned into much more perilous endeavors. She ultimately singlehandedly hid and fed 12 Jews in the basement of a Nazi Major’s home while she was caring for him. Irene served as a resistance fighter and a partisan who hid in the woods with other saboteurs. This is a gripping, beautifully written story of the bravery and brilliance of a 20-year-old rescuer, recounted in her own words.
IRENE GUT WAS just 17 in 1939, when the Germans and Russians devoured her native Poland. Just a girl, really. But a girl who saw evil and chose to defy it.
“No matter how many Holocaust stories one has read, this one is a must, for its impact is so powerful.”—School Library Journal, Starred
A Book Sense Top Ten Pick
A Publisher’s Weekly Choice of the Year’s Best Books
My mother Alexandra, and her two older sisters recount their four years evading capture by the Nazis. Their memoirs weave together as the story emerges of their survival. The girls vividly recount their daily existence before the war when they were wealthy and happy, and how each was affected by antisemitism as it crept increasingly into their lives.
Shortly after Kristallnacht, the three sisters, Eva (15), Judith (14), and Alexandra (11), are smuggled out of Germany to Belgium. They eventually reunite with their family in France where they hid until their escape to Switzerland. The sisters take turns describing their ordeals with humor, courage, and optimism. One rescuer, Felix Goldschmidt, is ultimately captured and tortured. His extraordinary escape from a train bound for Auschwitz is described in gut-wrenching detail.
I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.
No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…
