Holocaust Survivor Memoirs
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Ebook
(4)
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.
Ebook
(1)
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.
Ebook
(3)
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.
Ebook
(0)
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
Ebook
(2)
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.
Ebook
(1)
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.
Ebook
(5)
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.
Ebook
(4)
Joy Runs Deeper
by Bronia Beker
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Bronia and Josio (Joseph) grew up in Kozowa, a shtetl filled with lively culture, eccentric characters and extended family. When Bronia met Josio, she was charmed by his confidence and fearlessness. Separated when Josio was drafted into the army, reunited amid the chaos of war, their connection endured as their persecution intensified. When everything they held dear was lost, together they built a future.
Ebook
(3)
In the Hour of Fate and Danger
by Ferenc Andai
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Ferenc Andai is one of approximately 6,000 Jewish Hungarian men conscripted to work as forced labourers in the copper mines of Bor, Serbia, between 1943 and 1944. Subject to the whims of cruel Hungarian commanders and German overseers, the men are forced to work to exhaustion while they subsist on a starvation diet. For nineteen-year old Ferenc, the only relief from his harsh reality is his company - an artistic and literary circle of men that includes the inspirational poet Miklós Radnóti.
Ebook
(1)
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.
Ebook
(0)
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.
Ebook
(2)
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?
Ebook
(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.
Ebook
(5)
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.
Ebook
(2)
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.
Ebook
(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.
Ebook
(0)
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.
Ebook
(1)
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.
Ebook
(1)
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.
Ebook
(4)
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.
Ebook
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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.
Ebook
(2)
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.
Ebook
(4)
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.
Ebook
(1)
Confronting Devastation
Memoirs of Holocaust Survivors from Hungary
by Various Authors
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
An anthology of writing from Hungarian Holocaust survivors that examines the experiences and memory of the Holocaust in Hungary. Editor Ferenc Laczó frames excerpts from some twenty memoirs in their historical and political context, analyzing the events that led to the horrific "last chapter" of the Holocaust - the genocide of approximately 550,000 Jews in Hungary in 1944.
Ebook
(3)
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.
Ebook
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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.
Ebook
(2)
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.
Ebook
(2)
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.
Ebook
(1)
Suddenly the Shadow Fell
by Leslie Meisels
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
When 17-year-old Leslie Meisels insisted that his mother and two brothers join a transport leaving Debrecen, Hungary, to go who knows where, that decision luckily put them among the roughly 20,000 "exchange Jews" whose lives had been bartered for cash and military equipment in a secret deal with Adolf Eichmann.
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Vanished Boyhood
by George Stern
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
A month before George Stern's thirteenth birthday, Germany invaded his native Hungary, anti-Jewish edicts were passed and a ghetto was established. A rebel even then, George refused to wear the Jewish star. "Passing" as a Christian boy, he survived the siege of Budapest as the Soviet Red Army pressed closer, strafing the city while the fascist Arrow Cross continued to hunt for Jews.
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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.
Ebook
(1)
W Hour
by Arthur Ney
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Arthur Ney, a twelve-year-old smuggler outside the Warsaw ghetto walls when the ghetto uprising began in the spring of 1943, fled to the countryside with false papers to work on a farm. Almost a year later, he returned to Warsaw and faced the realization that his family was gone. Under the protection of the Salesian Fathers as a "Christian" boy, he struggled with loneliness, guilt, fear and indecision regarding his "dual identity." When the Warsaw Uprising began on August 1, 1944, then fourteen-year-old Arthur Ney joined the barricades and fought the Germans – W Hour is the code name for the Uprising.
Ebook
(1)
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.
Ebook
(3)
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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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.
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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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Buried Words
The Diary of Molly Applebaum
by Molly Applebaum
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Hidden away underground, in a box, twelve-year-old Molly has only her older cousin and her diary to keep her company. For two years, she writes of her confinement "in a grave": the cold, dark and stuffiness, the unbearable suffering from insufficient food, and the complicated reliance on the two farmers who are risking their own lives to save her. Buried Words is a stark confession of Molly's fears, despair and secrets and, above all, her fervent wish to stay alive.
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Six Lost Years
by Amek Adler
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
"How much longer could we last?" sixteen-year-old Amek Adler laments, after arriving at yet one more concentration camp in the spring of 1945. From the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos to the Radom forced labor camp, and from the Natzweiler concentration camp to Dachau, Amek has witnessed too much destruction and tragedy to bear any more suffering. To hold onto hope for his survival, he dreams of the life he had with his parents and three brothers, reminiscing about holidays, social events, and dinners; he dreams of a life without pain and starvation; and he dreams of the future. When Amek is finally liberated, he is determined to embrace all the opportunities that freedom offers.
Ebook
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Gatehouse to Hell
by Felix Opatowski
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
At fifteen, Felix Opatowski begins smuggling goods out of the Lodz ghetto in exchange for food. In 1943 he is deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he is recruited as a runner for the Polish Underground and implicated in the plot to blow up the crematoria.
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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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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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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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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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Little Girl Lost
by Betty Rich
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
When the Nazis invaded her small town of Zduńska Wola, Poland, in 1939, sixteen-year-old Basia Kohn (later Betty Rich) escaped into Soviet-occupied Poland. Over the next five years, her journey took her thousands of kilometres from a forced labour camp in the far north of the USSR to the subtropical Soviet Georgian region and back to Poland. After the war, Betty and her husband fled from the Polish Communist regime and eventually immigrated to Toronto. Rich's poetic memoir, Little Girl Lost, is "a montage of graphic snapshots and moments in motion... both testimony and a meditation on what it meant to her sense of self to endure and survive as a young woman growing into adulthood in exile."
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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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In Fragile Moments / The Last Time
by Zsuzsanna Fischer Spiro
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
Born two hundred kilometres away from each other and two years apart, Zsuzsanna Fischer and Eva Steinberger are both thrown into chaos when Germany occupies Hungary and destroys their peaceful childhoods. In the spring of 1944, as Zsuzsanna and Eva are sent into ghettos and then to Auschwitz, they each take refuge in the one constant in their lives — their older sisters. A glimpse into the fierceness of a sister's love, In Fragile Moments and The Last Time mirror the remarkable differences of similar paths of survival.
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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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Before All Memory Is Lost
Women's Voices from the Holocaust
by Various Authors
Part of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs series
In this first Azrieli Foundation anthology, twenty-five women reflect on their experiences of survival — from the heart-stopping fears of hiding to the extreme risks of "passing" as non-Jews, and from the terrors of the Nazi camps to the treacheries of the Soviet Union. This powerful collection, woven together by the common thread of resistance, features a wide variety of narrative styles, including prose, poetry and diary excerpts.