Holocaust
At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture
"You might come back, because you're young, but I will not come back."--Marceline Loridan's father to her, 1944
A runaway bestseller in France, But You Did Not Come Back has already been the subject of a French media storm and hailed as an important new addition to the library of books dealing with the Holocaust. It is the profoundly moving and poetic memoir by Marceline Loridan-Ivens, who at the age of fifteen was arrested in occupied France, along with her father. Later, in the camps, he managed to smuggle a note to her, a sign of life that made all the difference to Marceline--but he died in the Holocaust, while Marceline survived. In But You Did Not Come Back, Marceline writes back to her father, the man whose death overshadowed her whole life. Although her grief never diminished in its intensity, Marceline ultimately found her calling, working as both an activist and a documentary filmmaker. But now, as France and Europe in general faces growing anti-Semitism, Marceline feels pessimistic about the future. Her testimony is a memorial, a confrontation, and a deeply affecting personal story of a woman whose life was shattered and never totally rebuilt.
I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concen
I Want You to Know We're Still Here: A Post-Holocaust Memoir
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS FINALIST - "Part personal quest, part testament, and all thoughtfully, compassionately written."--The Washington Post "Esther Safran Foer is a force of nature: a leader of the Jewish people, the matriarch of America's leading literary family, an eloquent defender of the proposition that memory matters. And now, a riveting memoirist."--Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR
Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching. So when Esther's mother casually mentions an astonishing revelation--that her father had a previous wife and daughter, both killed in the Holocaust--Esther resolves to find out who they were, and how her father survived. Armed with only a black-and-white photo and a hand-drawn map, she travels to Ukraine, determined to find the shtetl where her father hid during the war. What she finds reshapes her identity and gives her the opportunity to finally mourn. I Want You to Know We're Still Here is the poignant and deeply moving story not only of Esther's journey but of four generations living in the shadow of the Holocaust. They are four generations of survivors, storytellers, and memory keepers, determined not just to keep the past alive but to imbue the present with life and more life.
Dear Dov, You must really be surprised to be receiving a letter from a girl you don't know... Dov Indig was killed on October 7, 1973, in a holding action on the Golan Heights in Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Letters to Talia, published in his memory by family and friends, contains excerpts from an extensive correspondence Dov maintained with Talia, a girl from an irreligious kibbutz in northern Israel, in 1972 and '73, the last two years of his life. At the time, Talia was a highschool student, and Dov was a student in the Hesder yeshiva Kerem B'Yavneh, which combines Torah study with military service. It was Talia's father who suggested that Talia correspond with Dov, and an intense dialogue developed between them on questions of Judaism and Zionism, values and education. Their correspondence continued right up to Dov's death in the Yom Kippur War.
Loss & Legacy: The Half-Century Quest To Reclaim A Birthright Stolen By The Nazis
John Gronner, son of the Jewish owners of a prominent clothing store in the small German town of Ilmenau,devoted his life to reclaiming the property and good name of his forebears after the Nazi Holocaust. Having achieved economic success and social prominence by 1930,the Gronner clan was soon thereafter shunned by neighbors and subjected to economic boycott. Aryan laws forced them to relinquish their business. Deportation and execution followed. Still, the Nazis' aim of obliterating this Jewish family from Ilmenau's history was foiled by the sheer determination of the surviving son, who made it his life's mission to right a grievous hate crime, and to establish his own legacy as an advocate against silence in the face of bigotry.