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After her father was taken prisoner by German officials, the author and her mother were arrested as they escaped to Paris, and endured cruel treatment in Germany's Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
The time of the Third Reich is one of the ugliest periods in human history. To execute Adolph Hitlers plan to destroy all Jewish people in Europe, Nazi propagandists demonized and dehumanized the Jews, leaving people desensitized to the discrimination and destruction heaped on them. This book details the way the Nazis turned a nation against a people, provides sidebars on people caught up in both sides of the great conflict, and outlines the ramifications of the persecution of the Jews. It also contains a persecution timeline.
In 1945, young Francine and her maman are sent to the Bergen-Belsen Nazi prison camp, where life is gray and hopeless. Determined to lift Francine’s spirits, Maman shares a secret: hidden inside her bag are two pieces of chocolate. They’re the first sweets Francine has seen in years, but Maman tells her not to eat them. “One day, when I see that you really need them...that’s when I’ll give the chocolates to you.” When Francine meets Hélène, a fellow prisoner, she learns another secret: Hélène is pregnant. But there is very little food in the camp, and even less hope. Hélène and her baby are in grave danger. Remembering the chocolates, Francine realizes she may be able to help. Francine’s act of kindness will make ripples in their lives for decades to come. Inspired by a remarkable true story.
Since the beginning of the 21st century France has seen the return of anti-Semitism with attacks, desecration of cemeteries, insults, and threats. This book is the outcome of a survey carried out by Michel Wieviorka along with a dozen sociologists. He examines different tracks: the possible links between anti-Semitism and the presence of a considerable Muslim population in France, the hypothesis of a meeting between Islamism and the anti-Semitic extreme left, as well as the hypothesis whereby the rise of anti-Semitism is connected with the evolution of the Jewish population in France which is increasingly attracted by a community-oriented way of life. This book demonstrates that present-day anti-Semitism owes as much to factors internal to French society (the social, institutional, and political crisis) as it does to the projection of global issues on French soil, in particular those which originate in the Middle East. He demonstrates that this phenomenon has novel aspects, but its more classical features are also borne in mind. This rigorous and objective book is the first scientific study of present-day French anti-Semitism.
This is a unique exploration of the experience of children who survived the Holocaust—including Roma and Sinti victims—and the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Children are among the principal victims of armed conflicts and slaughters; nonetheless, they perceive events through the prism of their unique perspective and have a different range of coping techniques than adults. This overview of the writings of ninety-one child survivors bears evidence to a wide range of human ruthlessness. The author presents little-known texts along with famous memoirs and autobiographical fiction, with abundant quotations. Many of these are not only compelling as historical testimony, but poetic,...
See the Holocaust through the Eyes of Children. Stefan and Marion Hess's happy childhood was shattered in 1943. Torn from their home in Amsterdam, the six-year-old twins and their parents were deported to a place their mother called "this dying hell"—the infamous concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. Inseparable is the vivid account of one family's struggle to survive the Holocaust. In the camp, the children ran from SS soldiers, making it a game to see who could get closest to the guard towers before being warned they would be shot. Stefan and Marion witnessed their father beaten beyond recognition, dodged strafing warplanes, and somehow survived in a place where "the children were looking...
A unique and haunting first-person Holocaust account by Zalmen Gradowski, a Sonderkommando prisoner killed in Auschwitz. On October 7, 1944, a group of Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz obtained explosives and rebelled against their Nazi murderers. It was a desperate uprising that was defeated by the end of the day. More than four hundred prisoners were killed. Filling a gap in history, The Last Consolation Vanished is the first complete English translation and critical edition of one prisoner’s powerful account of life and death in Auschwitz, written in Yiddish and buried in the ashes near Crematorium III. Zalmen Gradowski was in the Sonderkommando (special squad) at Auschwitz, a Jewish priso...
This book focuses on a little-known corpus of testimonial accounts published by French women deported to Nazi camps, and will be of interest to those studying modern French literature, women's studies and the Holocaust.
This book examines how material distress shaped the interactions of native and refugee populations as well as perceptions of the Vichy government's legitimacy.
Set in the Canary Islands at the outset of the Spanish Civil War, The Ravine is the provocative, disturbing account of a child's experience with war. Narrated by an unnamed seven-year-old girl, the story begins in the early days of the war when her father—a staunch supporter of the Republic—goes into hiding. As the girl and her family await news of his whereabouts, they learn he is taken prisoner, brought to trial, and eventually sentenced to forced labor in a concentration camp. Confused and bereft, they visit him in the camp, hoping he will be spared the firing squad and the subsequent "burial" in the ravine, a fate that befalls so many prisoners. Acclaimed since its original appearance in French in 1958, The Ravine has been published in several languages and remains the novel for which Nivaria Tejera is best known. This is the first English translation.