Surviving the Holocaust is a compelling sociological account of two brothers who survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. One brother, the author’s father, endured several concentration camps, including the infamous camp at Auschwitz, as well as a horrific winter death march; while the other brother, the author’s uncle, survived outside the camps by passing as a Catholic among anti-Semitic Poles, including a group of anti-Nazi Polish Partisans, eventually becoming an officer in the Soviet army. As an exemplary "theorized life history," Surviving the Holocaust applies concepts from life course theory to interpret the trajectories of the brothers’ lives, enhancing this approach with insights from agency-structure and collective memory theory. Challenging the conventional wisdom that survival was simply a matter of luck, it highlights the prewar experiences, agentive decision-making and risk-taking, and collective networks that helped the brothers elude the death grip of the Nazi regime. Surviving the Holocaust also shows how one family’s memory of the Holocaust is commingled with the memories of larger collectivities, including nations-states and their institutions, and how the memories of individual survivors are infused with collective symbolic meaning.

Describes the life of Eva Mozes and her twin sister Miriam as they were interred at the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust, where Dr. Josef Mengele performed sadistic medical experiments on them until their release.

Leslie Schwartz, born in Hungary in 1930, is a teenage survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau. He lost his entire immediate family in the Holocaust. His lifelong search for wholeness led him back to Germany, where his dream now is to leave a legacy of healing and conflict resolution. In 2013, Schwartz will be awarded Germany's highest civilian honor - The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Book jacket.

Now in his eighties, Sam Pivnik tells for the first time the extraordinary story of how he survived the Holocaust Sam Pivnik is the ultimate survivor from a world that no longer exists. On fourteen occasions he should have been killed, but luck, his physical strength, and his determination not to die all played a part in Sam Pivnik living to tell his extraordinary story. In 1939, on his thirteenth birthday, Pivnik's life changed forever when the Nazis invaded Poland. He survived the two ghettoes set up in his home town of Bedzin and six months on Auschwitz's notorious Rampe Kommando where prisoners were either taken away for entry to the camp or gassing. After this harrowing experience he was sent to work at the brutal Fürstengrube mining camp. He could have died on the ‘Death March' that took him west as the Third Reich collapsed and he was one of only a handful of people who swam to safety when the Royal Air Force sank the prison ship Cap Arcona in 1945, mistakenly believing it to be carrying fleeing members of the SS. He eventually made his way to London where he found people too preoccupied with their own wartime experiences on the Home Front to be interested in what had happened to him. Now in his eighties, Sam Pivnik tells for the first time the story of his life, a true tale of survival against the most extraordinary odds.

This remarkable chronicle of life and death in the Jewish Ghetto of Kovno, Lithuania, from June 1941 to January 1944, was written under conditions of extreme danger by a Ghetto inmate and secretary of the Jewish Council. After the war, in order to escape from Lithuania, the author was forced to entrust the diary to leaders of the Escape movement; eventually it made its way to his new home in Israel. The diary incorporates Avraham Tory’s collections of official documents, Jewish Council reports, and original photographs and drawings made in the Ghetto. It depicts in grim detail the struggle for survival under Nazi domination, when—if not simply carted off and murdered in a random “action”—Jews were exploited as slave labor while being systematically starved and denied adequate housing and medical care. Through it all, Tory’s overriding purpose was to record the unimaginable events of these years and to memorialize the determination of the Jews to sustain their community life in the midst of the Nazi terror. Of the surviving diaries originating in the principal European Ghettos of this period, Tory’s is the longest written by an adult, a dramatic and horrifying document that makes an invaluable contribution to contemporary history. Tory provides an insider’s view of the desperate efforts of Ghetto leaders to protect Jews. Martin Gilbert’s masterly introduction establishes the authenticity of the diary, presents its events against the backdrop of the war in Europe, and considers the crucial questions of collaboration and resistance.

"Chronicles the true story of two children from different worlds: a city boy and a country girl. When the persecution of Jews began in the 1940s, both were plucked from their homes and thrust into concentration camps. They were stripped of everything and forced to navigate a truly incomprehensible, volatile, dangerous and unpredictable world. Despite their exposure to the horrors of the Holocaust, they endured and carried on with a determination that shaped them forever. Follow the lives of Max and Rose as they learned to adapt to a reality beyond belief and emerged stronger than ever. When they were finally liberated from their concentration camps, they navigated a new world individually before finding each other to form what each so tragically lost: a family."-- https://twowhosurvived.com/

Featured in the PBS documentary, "The US and the Holocaust" by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein "Superbly written and researched, synthesizing the classics while digging deep into a vast repository of primary sources." —Josef Joffe, Wall Street Journal Why? explores one of the most tragic events in human history by addressing eight of the most commonly asked questions about the Holocaust: Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Why murder? Why this swift and sweeping? Why didn’t more Jews fight back more often? Why did survival rates diverge? Why such limited help from outside? What legacies, what lessons? An internationally acclaimed scholar, Peter Hayes brings a wealth of research and experience to bear on conventional views of the Holocaust, dispelling many misconceptions and challenging some of the most prominent recent interpretations.

The stench of decay pierced the air aboard the boxcar of trapped Jews. “Why me?” fifteen-year-old Max asked himself, as a convoy rumbled from the Warsaw Ghetto to Majdanek death camp in May 1943. The Nazis had destroyed the Glauben family’s business, upended their rights, and ultimately decimated their neighborhood. The deluge of questions would only intensify after the Nazis murdered Max’s mother, father, and brother. Max channeled grit, determination, and a fortuitous knack for manufacturing airplane parts to outlast six horrific concentration camps in his quest to survive. This memoir explores Max’s mischievous childhood and teen years as a go-to ghetto smuggler. Max journeys from displaced person to American immigrant and Korean veteran. He reveals how he ached as he dared to court love and rear children. For decades, he bottled up his trauma. Then he realized: He could transform his pain into purpose. Infused with raw emotion and vivid detail, historical records and Max’s poignant voice, this memoir relays the true story of the harrowing violence and dehumanization Max endured. It relays Max’s powerful lifetime commitment to actively thwarting hate and galvanizing resilience. Max insists you, too, can transform your adversity into your greatest strength. In the seventy-five years since his liberation, Max has ceased to ask himself, “Why me?” Instead, he reframes his focus, eager to partner with you and ask: “What can we do next?”

When the German Army captured Lwow in 1941, Poland's third-largest city contained a vibrant Jewish community of 160,000 people. Because the Final Solution began there so early, no other Jewish community of similar size came so close to complete eradication. In 1943, the region's SS chief proudly reported to Hitler that it had been "cleansed of Jews"; in fact, less than one half of one percent of Lwow's Jews survived the war. For the Jews of Lwow, there was no miracle, no Raoul Wallenberg, no Oskar Schindler. Mainly because so few lived through Lwow's nightmare, little has been written about it. Samuel Drix survived. A respected Lwow physician, he lost every member of his large and loving family to the Holocaust, including his young wife, his beloved two-year-old daughter, and almost all his friends. Somehow he endured nearly a year in the infamous Janowska concentration camp, helping his fellow prisoners stay alive. Miraculously, Drix escaped and hid out with the aid of a courageous Polish farm couple. Then the Red Army came, and the war ended. But peace only brought the Soviet brand of anti-Semitism. Homeless, sick, and broken, he contemplated suicide, until a woman's love gave him renewed hope. Drix began a new family - and in America, a new life. And, as a witness at war-crimes trials, he was instrumental in bringing Nazi killers to justice.