The war between humans and toys has come to an end.The toys won. Teddy bears, dollies, and little green soldiers-they've all had enough of you. They're sick of being treated like playthings for spoiled little brats. They have no rights, no property, no hope for a future of any kind. You've left them with no other option-in order to be free, they must exterminate the human race. Julie is a human girl undergoing reconstructive surgery in order to become a stuffed animal. Her plan: to infiltrate enemy lines in order to save her family from the toy death camps. But when an army of plushy soldiers invade the underground bunker where she has taken refuge, Julie will be forced to move forward with her plan despite her transformation being not entirely complete. Like a crazy cult movie in book form, Cuddly Holocaust is yet another tale that proves why Wonderland Book Award-winning author Carlton Mellick III is considered a master of the weird.

The Arab-Israeli conflict goes far beyond the wars waged on Middle East battlefields. There is also a war of narratives revolving around the two defining traumas of the conflict: the Holocaust and the Nakba. One side is charged with Holocaust denial, the other with exploiting a tragedy while denying the tragedies of others. In this path-breaking book, political scientist Gilbert Achcar explores these conflicting narratives and considers their role in today's Middle East dispute. He analyzes the various Arab responses to the Holocaust, from the earliest intimations of the genocide, through the creation of Israel and the occupation of Palestine, and up to our own time, critically assessing the political and historical context for these responses. Achcar offers a unique ideological mapping of the Arab world, in the process defusing an international propaganda war that has become a major stumbling block in the path of Arab–Western understanding. 'A magisterial study of...

The armies of hell are loosed upon paradise and nothing can stand in their path.WINNER: Pinnacle Book Achievement Award - Best Science Fiction"...a chilling community horror adventure like no other, and one which leaves you with a lump in your throat throughout. ...one of the most interesting and original virus-style thriller novels I've read in a long while." ~ Readers' Favorite Book Reviews, K.C. Finn (5 STARS)"This is a well-crafted horror story with memorable characters and an unusual plot. The Holocaust Engine is a fun and quick read, thanks to the beauty of language and the authors' gift for storytelling and plot." ~ Readers' Favorite Book Reviews, Jose Cornelio (5 STARS)It begins with disease.A brain-rotting virus, which leaves its victims disoriented and hyper-violent, rages out of Cuba into the Florida Keys. The bewildered government destroys the mainland bridge and...

The Evonso virus spreads faster eventually becoming air-borne. Taiwo and what remains of the Nigerian military struggle to find a workable vaccine to stop the scourge while another world ending threat looms in the developed worldThe third and final chapter of the highly entertaining zombie apocalypse virus series. In this instalment, the world titters on the brink of destruction. Taiwo and scattered members of what remains of the Nigerian military struggle to find a solution to the Evonso virus problem. The race for the vaccine takes them from Ghana, Cairo, South Africa and Egypt with another world ending threat looming in the Asian Pacific

It is an all too common belief that Jews did nothing to resist their own fate in the Holocaust. However, the parallel realities of disintegrating physical and psychological conditions in the ghetto, and the efforts of ghetto undergrounds to counter both collaborationist judenrat policies and the despair of a beaten down population, could not but lead to a breakdown in spiritual life. James M. Glass examines spiritual resistance to the Holocaust and the place of this within political and violent resistance. He explores Jewish reactions to the murderous campaign against them and their creation of new spiritual and moral rules to live by. He argues that the Orthodox Jewish response to annihilation, often seen as unduly passive, was predicated in the insanity of the times and can be seen as spiritually noble.

Robert Briganti is the Assassin. Ruthless, indifferent to his own survival, he lives only to destroy the Mafia. This time, armed with his hand-picked arsenal of superweapons, he moves south for his most savage hit: a Mafia summit conference in a New Orleans motel where no one outside the syndicate can get in, or out, alive.

A weird short story : Alison, an opera singer is going to play her first part, but the whole thing is going to turn out in a strange way.Colleen has lost him once. She doesn't want to let it happen again. A professional American racing driver in Europe on a shoestring budget, Dan Thornton is gifted behind the wheel. But when the former love of his life turns up, his feelings get complicated, and the Mille Miglia, a thousand mile race around Italy, demands full attention. Someone at the pinnacle of the Nazi hierarchy has hatched a devious plot, as the Holy See and Pope Pius XI’s statements on racial science and National Socialism are unwelcome and a threat to Nazi ambitions. Still very much in love with Dan, Colleen Bryant must use him for the sake of truth and freedom, at the risk losing Dan a second time.

Yankel's simple life is upended when the Nazis invade Romania in this biographical novel. As the fascist dictator Ion Antonescu imposes increasingly ruthless antisemitic edicts, the horrors of the Holocaust are visited on Romania's Jewish community. Stripped of their rights, Yankel's family is forced from their home in Czernowitz and sent on a long and dangerous journey across the Dniester River to Transnistria - the Ukrainian killing fields. Through the ghettos and labor camps of Ukraine, the front lines of the Red Army, and the displaced persons camps of Italy, death stalks Yankel at every turn as he struggles to survive.This biographical novel, written by Yankel's grandson, is the harrowing story of a young man's remarkable courage, strength, and determination to survive. This incredible story of perseverance in the face of monstrous evil will stay with you long after you put it down.

The denial of the Holocaust has no more credibility than the assertion that the earth is flat. Yet there are those who insist that the death of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by a powerful Zionist conspiracy. Sixty years ago, such notions were the province of pseudohistorians who argued that Hitler never meant to kill the Jews, and that only a few hundred thousand died in the camps from disease; they also argued that the Allied bombings of Dresden and other cities were worse than any Nazi offense, and that the Germans were the "true victims" of World War II.For years, those who made such claims were dismissed as harmless cranks operating on the lunatic fringe. But as time goes on, they have begun to gain a hearing in respectable arenas, and now, in the first full-scale history of Holocaust denial, Deborah Lipstadt shows how--despite tens of thousands of living witnesses and vast amounts of documentary evidence--this irrational...

This inspiring book examines the often incredible and nearly always tragic examples of Jewish resistance in ghettos and concentration camps during the Nazis ‘Final Solution’. It shows that the Warsaw Uprising in Poland during April to May 1944 was not the only occasion of defiant opposition. Throughout the Nazis’ extermination programme Jews and other prisoners fought back against their murderers, often with stunning results. The Germans were nearly always taken by surprise by the sudden emergence of armed Jewish resistance and often paid dearly. This happened in ghettos and concentration campos (including Treblinka, Auschwitz, Syrels and Sobibor) throughout Poland and the Ukraine. Some Jews tried to stop the machinery of the Holocaust by rising up and destroying the gas chambers while others bravely tried to take over an extermination camp and escape en masse. In virtually every case the brave men and women who volunteered to fight back paid with their lives. Importantly these men and women are not just portrayed as victims but also as brave and resourceful fighters and resisters against their tragic fate. These are stories that are uplifting, inspiring and often profoundly moving. About the Author: Born in Colchester in 1974, Dr Mark Felton is the author of numerous World War II related titles with emphasis on Japan and the Japanese involvement during the war. He currently lives in China where he teaches at Fudan University.

Amazon.com ReviewWhen World War II began, Irene Gutowna was a 17-year-old Polish nursing student. Six years later, she writes in this inspiring memoir, "I felt a million years old." In the intervening time she was separated from her family, raped by Russian soldiers, and forced to work in a hotel serving German officers. Sickened by the suffering inflicted on the local Jews, Irene began leaving food under the walls of the ghetto. Soon she was scheming to protect the Jewish workers she supervised at the hotel, and then hiding them in the lavish villa where she served as housekeeper to a German major. When he discovered them in the house, Gutowna became his mistress to protect her friends--later escaping him to join the Polish partisans during the Germans' retreat. The author presents her extraordinary heroism as the inevitable result of small steps taken over time, but her readers will not agree as they consume this thrilling adventure story, which also happens to be a drama of moral choice and courage. Although adults will find Irene's tale moving, it is appropriately published as a young adult book. Her experiences while still in her teens remind adolescents everywhere that their actions count, that the power to make a difference is in their hands. --Wendy SmithFrom Publishers WeeklyEven among WWII memoirsAa genre studded with extraordinary storiesAthis autobiography looms large, a work of exceptional substance and style. Opdyke, born in 1922 to a Polish Catholic family, was a 17-year-old nursing student when Germany invaded her country in 1939. She spent a year tending to the ragtag remnants of a Polish military unit, hiding out in the forest with them; was captured and raped by Russians; was forced to work in a Russian military hospital; escaped and lived under a false identity in a village near Kiev; and was recaptured by the Russians. But her most remarkable adventures were still to come. Back in her homeland, she, like so many Poles, was made to serve the German army, and she eventually became a waitress in an officers' dining hall. She made good use of her positionArisking her life, she helped Jews in the ghetto by passing along vital information, smuggling in food and helping them escape to the forest. When she was made the housekeeper of a German major, she used his villa to hide 12 JewsAand, at enormous personal cost, kept them safe throughout the war. In translating Opdyke's experiences to memoir (see Children's Books, June 14), Armstrong and Opdyke demonstrate an almost uncanny power to place readers in the young Irene's shoes. Even as the authors handily distill the complexities of the military and political conditions of wartime Poland, they present Irene as simultaneously strong and vulnerableAa likable flesh-and-blood woman rather than a saint. Telling details, eloquent in their understatement, render Irene's shock at German atrocities and the gradually built foundation of her heroic resistance. Metaphors weave in and out, simultaneously providing a narrative structure and offering insight into Irene's experiences. Readers will be rivetedAand no one can fail to be inspired by Opdyke's courage. Ages 10-up. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Published to extraordinary praise, this provocative international bestseller details the story of IBM’s strategic alliance with Nazi Germany. IBM and the Holocaust provides a chilling investigation into corporate complicity, and the atrocities witnessed raise startling questions that throw IBM’s wartime ethics into serious doubt. Edwin Black’s monumental research exposes how IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies for the Nazis, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.

Maurice and Norman Messer, father-and-son business partners, know a good product when they see it. That product is the Holocaust, and Maurice, a Holocaust survivor with an inflated personal history, and Norman, enjoying vicarious victimhood as a participant in the second-generation movement, proceed to market it enthusiastically. Not even the disappearance of Nechama, Norman's daughter and Maurice's granddaughter, into the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, where she is transformed into a nun, Sister Consolatia of the Cross, deters them from pushing their agenda. Father and son embark on a tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, which Maurice--now the driving force behind the most powerful Holocaust memorialization institution in America--organizes to soften up a potential major donor, and which Norman takes advantage of to embark on a surrealistic search for his daughter. At the death camp they run into assorted groups and individuals all clamoring for a piece of...

The testament to a tragedy. Voices from The Holocaust follows the whole history of the 'Shoah' from Hitler's rise to power to the Nuremburg trials, but of course the exterminations and death camps of 'The Final Solution' take centre stage. It tells the story from the perspective of the people who were there, and were witnesses - on both sides - of the horror. While some of the eye-witnesses are well-known, such as Anne Frank, Primo Levi and Heinrich Himmler, the book includes recollections of camp inmates, SS Totenkopf guards and the British soldiers who liberated Belsen. Shocking, powerful and personal, Voices from the Holocaust retells history, written by those who were there.

A Nazi war criminal has returned from the dead, angry and hell bent on genocide. A young composer and his girlfriend are drawn to his dark purpose until they discover the truth. There is something complex and evil hiding inside the music, waiting to strike. Time is running out as Roxanne and Jeremiah fight to save their souls, and perhaps the very soul of mankind, from the clutches of extinction. The Holocaust Opera is a fast-paced thriller that will leave you breathless with wonder and possibilities.

The author's reminiscences about her childhood in Germany, years of which were spent in a Nazi concentration camp. Includes several of her original poems.

THE RED SKULL! His name inspires terror wherever it is heard, and sane men tremble in undisguised fear before his awesome, hideous presence! There is nothing this despotic madman is incapable of creating, nothing he will hesitate to destroy! And now he has set into motion the most monstrous scheme of his infamous career—and every tick of the clock brings our world that much closer to the brink of Thermonuclear Warfare! Tick ... tick ... tick ... tick ... tick ... tick ... tick ... CAPTAIN AMERICA: HOLOCAUST FOR HIRE! A heart-pounding, thrill-a-minute manhunt, pitting the insane genius of the Red Skull against the patriotic power of CAPTAIN AMERICA: Living Legend of World War Two! AN INSTANT COLLECTOR’S ITEM: THE STAR-SPANGLED AVENGER IN A FULL-LENGTH NOVEL!

This dynamic collection of poetry is the inaugural winner of the David Uniapon Award for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers. Graeme Dixon's ballards speak out on comtemporary and controversial issues, from Black deaths in custody to the struggles of single mothers. Contrasted with these are poems of spirited humour and sharp satire. In Holocaust Island a powerful new voice emerges from a history of displacement.

Nonna Bannister carried a secret almost to her Tennessee grave: the diaries she kept as a young girl experiencing the horrors of the Holocaust while learning compassion and love for her fellow human beings. Nonna's writings tell the remarkable tale of how a Russian girl, born into a family that had known wealth and privileges, was exposed to the concentration camps and learned the value of human life and the importance of forgiveness. For a half century, a horrible secret lay hidden, locked in a trunk in an attic... Photos, official documents, and scraps of a diary written by a nine-year-old girl... I kept secret my horror stories.I am an old woman now.It is time to tell my story. The Secret Holocaust Diaries is a haunting eyewitness account of Nonna Lisowskaja Bannister, a remarkable Russian-American woman who had seen and survived the unspeakable evils of the Holocaust as a young girl. For half a century, she kept her story secret while living a normal American life. She locked all her photos, documents, diaries, and dark memories from World War II in a trunk. Late in life, she unlocked the trunk, first for her husband, and now for the rest of the world. Nonna’s story is one of suffering, torture, and death--but also of incredible acts of kindness that show the ultimate triumph of faith and love over despair and evil. The Secret Holocaust Diaries is in part a tragedy, yet it’s also an unforgettable true story about forgiveness, courage, and hope. Born into an aristocratic Russian family, Nonna Lisowskaja fully expected to enjoy a cultured, privileged life. Her family had many advantages at a time when other Russians struggled to buy food. By her sixth birthday, Nonna spoke four languages. She had a good life. But then her life fell apart.The Nazis invaded Russia.And, though her family was not Jewish, she lost everything . . . except a few family photos and scraps of a journal hidden from the Nazis in a small pillow. This is her story.

Seven million people in the "breadbasket of Europe" were deliberately starved to death at Stalin's command. This story has been suppressed for half a century. Now, a survivor speaks.In 1929, in an effort to destroy the well-to-do peasant farmers, Joseph Stalin ordered the collectivization of all Ukrainian farms. In the ensuing years, a brutal Soviet campaign of confiscations, terrorizing, and murder spread throughout Ukrainian villages. What food remained after the seizures was insufficient to support the population. In the resulting famine as many as seven million Ukrainians starved to death. This poignant eyewitness account of the Ukrainian famine by one of the survivors relates the young Miron Dolot's day-to-day confrontation with despair and death—his helplessness as friends and family were arrested and abused—and his gradual realization, as he matured, of the absolute control the Soviets had over his life and the lives of his people. But it is also the story of personal dignity in the face of horror and humiliation. And it is an indictment of a chapter in the Soviet past that is still not acknowledged by Russian leaders.**

Hanna has dreams of being a gymnast. But in 1939 the Nazis invade her home, Warsaw, and everything changes. All Jews are being rounded up and being threatened. Her family escape to a farm with their housekeeper, but how long can they remain hidden? And what will happen when they are taken to the Ghetto?

Nonna Bannister carried a secret almost to her Tennessee grave: the diaries she kept as a young girl experiencing the horrors of the Holocaust while learning compassion and love for her fellow human beings. Nonna's writings tell the remarkable tale of how a Russian girl, born into a family that had known wealth and privileges, was exposed to the concentration camps and learned the value of human life and the importance of forgiveness. For a half century, a horrible secret lay hidden, locked in a trunk in an attic... Photos, official documents, and scraps of a diary written by a nine-year-old girl... I kept secret my horror stories.I am an old woman now.It is time to tell my story. The Secret Holocaust Diaries is a haunting eyewitness account of Nonna Lisowskaja Bannister, a remarkable Russian-American woman who had seen and survived the unspeakable evils of the Holocaust as a young girl. For half a century, she kept her story secret while living a normal American life. She locked all her photos, documents, diaries, and dark memories from World War II in a trunk. Late in life, she unlocked the trunk, first for her husband, and now for the rest of the world. Nonna’s story is one of suffering, torture, and death--but also of incredible acts of kindness that show the ultimate triumph of faith and love over despair and evil. The Secret Holocaust Diaries is in part a tragedy, yet it’s also an unforgettable true story about forgiveness, courage, and hope. Born into an aristocratic Russian family, Nonna Lisowskaja fully expected to enjoy a cultured, privileged life. Her family had many advantages at a time when other Russians struggled to buy food. By her sixth birthday, Nonna spoke four languages. She had a good life. But then her life fell apart.The Nazis invaded Russia.And, though her family was not Jewish, she lost everything . . . except a few family photos and scraps of a journal hidden from the Nazis in a small pillow. This is her story.

Three young children smuggle themselves into Auschwitz in search for their mothers. * "Probably the most powerful ending to a book I have ever read." * "I haven't been so emotionally affected by a book before in all the years I have been reading." * "Harrowing and gripping. This novel was so different from every other I've read about the Holocaust." Verified reviews.

Lauren Yanofsky doesn't want to be Jewish anymore. Her father, a noted Holocaust historian, keeps giving her Holocaust memoirs to read, and her mother doesn't understand why Lauren hates the idea of Jewish youth camps and family vacations to Holocaust memorials. But when Lauren sees some of her friends—including Jesse, a cute boy she likes—playing Nazi war games, she is faced with a terrible choice: betray her friends or betray her heritage. Told with engaging humor, Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust isn't simply about making tough moral choices. It's about a smart, funny, passionate girl caught up in the turmoil of bad-hair days, family friction, changing friendships, love—and, yes, the Holocaust.

After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, they quickly began persecuting anyone who was Jewish. Millions were shoved into ghettos and forced to live under the swastika. Death camps were built and something called "Operation Reinhard" was set into motion. Its goal? To murder all the Jews of Poland. The Commandant of Lubizec is a harrowing account of a death camp that never actually existed but easily could have in the Nazi state. It is a sensitive, accurate retelling of a place that went about the business of genocide. Told as a historical account in a documentary style, it explores the atmosphere of a death camp. It describes what it was like to watch the trains roll in, and it probes into the mind of its commandant, Hans-Peter Guth. How could he murder thousands of people each day and then go home to laugh with his children? This is not only an unflinching portrayal of the machinery of the gas chambers, it is also the story of how prisoners burned the camp to the ground and fled into the woods. It is a story of rebellion and survival. It is a story of life amid death. With a strong eye towards the history of the Holocaust, The Commandant of Lubizec compels us to look at these extermination centers anew. It disquiets us with the knowledge that similar events actually took place in camps like Bełzec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. The history of Lubizec, although a work of fiction, is a chillingly blunt distillation of real life events. It asks that we look again at "Operation Reinhard". It brings voice to the silenced. It demands that we bear witness.Review"A heart-rending novel about a Nazi death camp that didn't exist—but could have. Hicks. . . tells the story of the fictional Lubizec as if it were a historical account, complete with footnotes and quotes from future fictional documentaries, to devastating effect. . . . Hicks' prose is clear and unflinching, and while, as a result, there are many difficult-to-read scenes, this is as it should be. . . .Thought-provoking and gut-wrenchingly powerful." -- Kirkus Reviews "The fictional presentation here measures up to any factual account of the Holocaust this reviewer has ever read. Highly recommended, especially for general readers who wish to know more about this unspeakable chapter of human history. Even specialists will be taken in by its human-interest dimension."  -- Library Journal "This is a vividly detailed, terrifying, convincing, and completely spellbinding story rooted in those murderous events we now call the Holocaust.  It is also the story of a loving, good-humored family man who each morning goes off to oversee mass homicide -- a dramatic example of what Hannah Arendt once referred to as 'the banality of evil.'  Patrick Hicks has accomplished a very difficult literary task.  He has a given a believable and fresh and original face to barbarism.  What a fine book this is." -- Tim O'Brien, author of *The Things They Carried* "Out of the cooling ashes of Holocaust history, Patrick Hicks manages to break our hearts with a story we thought we already knew. The Commandant of Lubizec is profound, provocative, and profane in all the best ways. While reading The Commandant of Lubizec, one question kept running through my mind: 'Was it really this bad?' Through his all-too-real fiction, Patrick Hicks convinces me that, sadly, the answer is 'Yes.'  The Commandant of Lubizec is important and unforgettable." -- David Abrams, author of Fobbit, a novel about the Iraq War "In a powerful blend of research and imagination, Patrick Hicks ushers us through the history of a prototypical death camp during the Holocaust. This novel mourns the millions who were silenced, while reminding us how ordinary and matter-of-fact the face of evil can be. The Commandant of Lubizec is a painfully necessary book." -- Clint McCown, author of War Memorials and Haints; winner of the American Fiction Prize "In The Commandant of Lubizec, Patrick Hicks imagines the unimaginable and thus gives us a glimpse into the terrible complexity of the human heart. This is a fascinating and important book."  -- Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, They Whisper, and *A Small Hotel* "The Commandant of Lubizec melds the historian’s factual precision with a storyteller’s compassion and love for humanity. This is fiction at its highest register -- creating inroads into the past so that we might hear those murdered in the extermination camps of the Holocaust, so that we might better recognize the world we have inherited. Profound and trenchant, The Commandant of Lubizec is a brave and unflinching book. It is a stunning literary debut. I urge you to read it before it’s made into a film."  -- Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet and *Phantom Noise* "In The Commandant of Lubizec, Patrick Hicks may have invented a brand new genre, the fictional documentary. This novel seems so convincingly based in evidence that any reader unsure of the names of the Nazi death camps is likely to read it as non-fiction—which is part of Hicks’ deep intent. He reveals to us how quickly we lose track of history and how troubling that loss is. In writing a novel about those who survived a fictional death camp, he mysteriously makes us feel and understand the millions of deaths in the real ones. Through his playful art, he makes us feel and understand the horror of the Holocaust in ways most non-fiction simply cannot. It’s a remarkable and elegant artistic achievement. This is a novel I deeply admire." -- Kent Meyers, author of The Work of Wolves and Twisted TreeAbout the AuthorPatrick Hicks is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Finding the Gossamer and This London. His work has appeared in some of the most vital literary journals in America, including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, The Missouri Review, and many others. He has been nominated seven times for the Pushcart Prize, been a finalist for the High Plains Book Award, the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition, and the Gival Press Novel Award. He has won the Glimmer Train Fiction Award as well as a number of grants, including ones from the Bush Artist Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. After living in Europe for many years, he now lives in the Midwest where he is the Writer-in-Residence at Augustana College and also a faculty member in the low-residency MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College. The author lives in Sioux Falls, SD.

When all is lost, there’s always the future. But the future is a world shrouded in the radioactive red dust clouds of a generation — old global nuclear war depends on finding hidden caches of food, weapons, and technology — the legacy of a pre-holocaust society — stashed in lonely outposts known as redoubts. When Ryan Cawdor discovers a redoubt in the bitter freakish wasteland that now passes for Alaska, he also uncovers a new threat to a slowly re-emerging America. Roaming bands of survivors have crossed the Bering strait from Russia to pillage Alaska and use it as the staging ground for an impending invasion of America. In Deathlands, the war for domination is over, but the struggle for survival continues.

Cimmerian n. One of a mythical people described by Homer as inhabiting a place of perpetual mist and darkness, guarding the way to the land of the dead.

Amazon.com ReviewWhen World War II began, Irene Gutowna was a 17-year-old Polish nursing student. Six years later, she writes in this inspiring memoir, "I felt a million years old." In the intervening time she was separated from her family, raped by Russian soldiers, and forced to work in a hotel serving German officers. Sickened by the suffering inflicted on the local Jews, Irene began leaving food under the walls of the ghetto. Soon she was scheming to protect the Jewish workers she supervised at the hotel, and then hiding them in the lavish villa where she served as housekeeper to a German major. When he discovered them in the house, Gutowna became his mistress to protect her friends--later escaping him to join the Polish partisans during the Germans' retreat. The author presents her extraordinary heroism as the inevitable result of small steps taken over time, but her readers will not agree as they consume this thrilling adventure story, which also happens to be a drama of moral choice and courage. Although adults will find Irene's tale moving, it is appropriately published as a young adult book. Her experiences while still in her teens remind adolescents everywhere that their actions count, that the power to make a difference is in their hands. --Wendy SmithFrom Publishers WeeklyEven among WWII memoirsAa genre studded with extraordinary storiesAthis autobiography looms large, a work of exceptional substance and style. Opdyke, born in 1922 to a Polish Catholic family, was a 17-year-old nursing student when Germany invaded her country in 1939. She spent a year tending to the ragtag remnants of a Polish military unit, hiding out in the forest with them; was captured and raped by Russians; was forced to work in a Russian military hospital; escaped and lived under a false identity in a village near Kiev; and was recaptured by the Russians. But her most remarkable adventures were still to come. Back in her homeland, she, like so many Poles, was made to serve the German army, and she eventually became a waitress in an officers' dining hall. She made good use of her positionArisking her life, she helped Jews in the ghetto by passing along vital information, smuggling in food and helping them escape to the forest. When she was made the housekeeper of a German major, she used his villa to hide 12 JewsAand, at enormous personal cost, kept them safe throughout the war. In translating Opdyke's experiences to memoir (see Children's Books, June 14), Armstrong and Opdyke demonstrate an almost uncanny power to place readers in the young Irene's shoes. Even as the authors handily distill the complexities of the military and political conditions of wartime Poland, they present Irene as simultaneously strong and vulnerableAa likable flesh-and-blood woman rather than a saint. Telling details, eloquent in their understatement, render Irene's shock at German atrocities and the gradually built foundation of her heroic resistance. Metaphors weave in and out, simultaneously providing a narrative structure and offering insight into Irene's experiences. Readers will be rivetedAand no one can fail to be inspired by Opdyke's courage. Ages 10-up. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A major work of autobiographical fiction by a second generation Holocaust writer—funny, erotic, irreverent, and deeply moving. Zosha Palovsky was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, but she has grown up in Brooklyn and in Washington Heights, joined a Latina gang, and refused to attend a yeshiva. She's a rebel, outspoken, sexually liberated, and determined to live her own life, free of her parents' past. Yet, as daring and defiant as she is, Zosha cannot escape. Her entire life is touched by the war.She has dreams of Auschwitz, falls in love with "her own private Nazi," and has an affair with a kinky Holocaust scholar. Obsessed with events that took place before her birth, she becomes a writer. By day she summons a "shlock muse in rhinestone harlequin glasses, cabana pants, and spiked heels" to write Elizabeth Taylor stories for the readers of Movie Screen magazine and, by night, writes "blood-eyed poems" about...

All too often, straight historical accounts of the Holocaust allow readers a certain detachment from the horrific events, policies, and processes that actually took place. Gerald Green's novel, Holocaust—based on his teleplay for the 1978 NBC miniseries—seeks to personalize the tragedy by putting faces on the real life tragedy and telling the story of two German families whose lives intersect.There are the Dorfs who are "good" Germans, loyal to the new Nazi regime, with whom their son Erik, a promising lawyer, finds his ambitions realized with the SS at the side of the ruthless Reynard Heydrich. Alternately, we have the Weiss family who are Jewish, also "good" Germans, but under the new regime they are doomed as it seeks to exterminate the Jewish population.Green's story is told through first-person reminiscences of Erik Dorf, the ambitious SS officer, and the courageous young Jew, Rudi Weiss, who ran away as a young boy from his doomed family in an effort to...

Long neglected by European historians, the unspeakable atrocities of Franco’s Spain are finally brought to tragic light in this definitive work.The remains of General Francisco Franco lie in an immense mausoleum near Madrid, built with the blood and sweat of twenty thousand slave laborers. His enemies, however, met less-exalted fates. Besides those killed on the battlefield, tens of thousands were officially executed between 1936 and 1945, and as many again became "non-persons." As Spain finally reclaims its historical memory, a full picture can now be given of the Spanish Holocaust-ranging from judicial murders to the abuse of women and children. The story of the victims of Franco's reign of terror is framed by the activities of four key men-General Mola, Quiepo de Llano, Major Vallejo Najera, and Captain Don Gonzalo Aguilera-whose dogma of eugenics, terrorization, domination, and mind control horrifyingly mirror the fascism of Italy and Germany.Evoking such classics as Gulag and The Great Terror, The Spanish Holocaust sheds crucial light on one of the darkest and most unexamined eras of modern European history. 16 pages of black-and-white illustrationsFrom BookforumEach well-laid, impeccably researched sentence of The Spanish Holocaust, Paul Preston's latest book on the Spanish Civil War, stands as a reminder of how Spain's Fascist past remains an unassimilable muddle; the story is so bloody and horrifying that it's easy, on one level, to grasp why today's Spaniards would just as soon relegate it all to a vague memorial blur. — Jonathan Blitzer Review“Paul Preston’s The Spanish Holocaust, is the most illuminating study I have seen of the complex, modern conflict that observers of Spain today still find difficult to understand. Anyone wanting to know modern Spain will read with great interest, this brilliant, well-informed analysis.” (John Brademas, author of *Anarcosindicalismo y revolución en España, 1930-37* )“A harrowing and moving account of the immense terror and enormous atrocities, especially perpetrated by General Franco's followers, during and after the Spanish Civil War, meticulously researched and superbly written by an outstanding historian.” (Ian Kershaw )“Paul Preston is the outstanding scholar of Spain's Civil War, and The Spanish Holocaust, is unquestionably his opus magnus. For the first time, the horror of the Spanish conflict has been placed in its appropriate historical context. As documented by Preston in this moving, brilliantly rendered account, Spain was not only the scene-setter for World War Two, but also the proving ground for the campaigns of mass-murder that became its ghastly hallmark. A deeply important, powerful work of history.” (Jon Lee Anderson )“What Preston knows about the years of civil war, 1936-1939, is astounding… Preston’s work is a powerful intervention in a Spanish discussion. It’s significance transcends the events it brings to light, and suggests some basic re-evaluations of recent European history.” (Thomas Snyder - *The New Republic* )“Fascinating... Unflinchingly, Preston sifts through the pillage, torture, and mass executions of this bleak chapter in Spanish history.” (New Yorker )“Monumental study... [The Spanish Holocaust] directly links Spain’s Nationalists to the Nazi regime, stressing that Franco’s reign of terror, like that of Hitler and Goebbels, was carefully planned and systematically executed.... The Spanish Holocaust draws on Preston’s vast research, as well as scores of recent historical studies, to establish the most accurate possible estimates of numbers of Spanish victims—statistics that, ever since the outbreak of the war, have been notoriously subject to manipulation and distortion.... [Preston] has produced an indispensable, important book.” (Sebastiaan Faber - *The Volunteer* )