From stories both told and untold, Genin recreates the lives of the Zwerling family in the Jewish quarter of Lemberg (Lvov): There is her strict, deeply religious grandfather, Shulim, the patriarch; his patient but tired wife, Dvoire; and his beautiful and rebellious daughter, Shayndl, who marries the dreamer Avram Genin against her father's wishes and without his blessing, and who will later become Salomea Genin's mother.

Julius Schlesinger, aspiring SS officer, has received orders to remove from the roof of Prague's concert hall the statue of the Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn. But which of the figures adorning the roof is the Jew? Remembering his course on racial science, Schlesinger instructs his men to pull down the statue with the biggest nose. Only as the statue they have carefully chosen begins to topple does he recognize that it is not Mendelssohn; it is Richard Wagner. Thus begins a story of disarming simplicity that traces the transformation of ordinary lives in Nazi-occupied Prague. Death abetted by the petty malevolence of Nazi functionaries wins all the battles but ultimately loses the war, defeated by the fragile flowering of courage and defiance.

Translated from the 1948 French edition. A remarkable memoir of the Polish composer Szymon Laks. While interned at the Auschwitz extermination camp, Laks became kappelmeister of the Auschwitz band. With wit and self-detachment, he records the grotesque phenomena of music among the crematoria. Paper edition (unseen), $10.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This is and English-language publication of a Holocaust memoir with a strong American dimension. It tells the story of Robert Goldmann's youth in a small village in Germany, his experience in the early Nazi years in Frankfurt, his forced emigration in 1939, and his subsequent career in the United States, including service with the Voice of America, brushes with McCarthysim, and a brief tenure as head of the European bureau of the Anti-Defamation League.

Story of a high school teacher whose students (underprivileged and Hispanic) have set standards in mathematics American education. A gripping memoir of German-Jewish leftist Fittko's life as an alien her path from concentration camp internee to underground rescue operative (the great philosopher and was one of many whom she and her comrades saved). Translated from the German edition of 1985 (Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Soon after the end of the war, Ruth returned to Hamburg, where she married the journalist Heinz Liepman. In 1949 they started what would become one of the most respected literary agencies in the world. Ruth runs the agency to this day, and she includes in this book many thoughts and reflections on her years working with books and authors.

This memoir is a moving testament to the power of family. The Lucas clan was a close-knit, successful family of rural German Jews--butchers and meat dealers--whose strength and pride was challenged by the rise of Nazism. As the family grew, so did its prosperity and power, and the sons, daughter, and their relatives became known as the Sovereigns. But anti-Semites, under the protection of the Nazi regime, began to settle old scores, and targeted the economically successful rural Jews. New laws stripped Jewish meat dealers of their rights, and Aryan competitors eagerly forced them aside. That was only the beginning. In the Holocaust that followed, some members of the family escaped. Others did not.

Award-winning writer Henryk Grynberg takes an extraordinary collection of interviews with young Polish war orphans conducted in Palestine in 1943 about their experiences and gives their stories "one voice". The cumulative effect of so many different voices discussing similar horrors is shocking and makes this book unlike any other work on the Holocaust.

So a picture of Gertrud Kolmar, a gifted Jewish writer struggling to sustain her art and family, emerges from these eloquent and allusive letters. Written in the stolen moments before her day as a forced laborer in a munitions factory began, the letters tell of Kolmar's move from the family home in Finkenkrug to a three-room flat in Berlin, which she and her father must soon share with other displaced Jews. They describe her factory work as a learning experience and assert, in the face of ever worsening conditions, that true art, never dependent on comfort or peace, is "capable of triumphing over . . . time and place."

Set during the Nazi occupation of Prague, Life with a Star records the day-to-day life of Josef Roubicek, an ex-bank clerk, who discovers that the prosaic world he has always inhabited is suddenly off-limits to him because he is a Jew. "One of the most powerful works to emerge from the Holocaust; it is a fierce and necessary work of art".--The New York Times.