Felicia Weingarten has saved poetic expressions of her life for us in this collection of short stories from WWII Poland and her experiences of surviving the Lodz ghetto and four concentration camps during the Holocaust. The stories are powerful not so much in how they speak to our minds but how they tear into our hearts. We are drawn into Felicias life vicariously at first, as though a stranger watching from the sidelines. But as each story unfolds, oftentimes with a twist at the end, we are suddenly faced with our own humanity, our own survival, our own actions and our own conscience as human beings. We are led into the darkness holding hands with an innocent, yet hopeful and courageous teenager; we emerge as reflective, perhaps even changed people, because of our human experience shared with Felicia. These are stories that transcend time and place and challenge us to be people of integrity, hope and commitment.

The book contains a wealthy collection of actual quotes from the Second World War concentration camps prisoners and their approach to life at that time through music. The Orchestra consisted from three independent prisoners' orchestras that played on the territory of Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Second Word War. The book represents their structure, mechanism of working and experiences of musicians.

Throughout the book, Marcus brings a variety of perspectives to bear on the question of how Italian filmmakers are confronting the Holocaust, and why now given the sparse output of Holocaust films produced in Italy from 1945 to the early 1990s.

A son chronicles his Jewish mother’s real-life efforts to save as many young women as possible from the Auschwitz gas chambers during World War II. Arrested in 1943 and deported to Auschwitz, Elsa survived because she had the “opportunity” to join the women’s orchestra. But Elsa kept her story a secret, even from her own family. Indeed, her son would only discover what had happened to his mother many years later, after gradually unearthing her unbelievable story following her premature death, without ever having revealed her secret to anyone . . . Jean-Jacques Felstein was determined to reconstruct Elsa’s life in Birkenau, and would go in search of other orchestra survivors in Germany, Belgium, Poland, Israel, and the United States. The recollections of Hélène, first violin, Violette, third violin, Anita, a cellist, and other musicians, allowed him to rediscover his twenty-year-old mother, lost in the heart of hell. The story unfolds in two intersecting stages: one, contemporary, is that of the investigation, the other is that of Auschwitz and its unimaginable daily life, as told by the musicians. They describe the recitals on which their very survival depended, the incessant rehearsals, the departure in the mornings for the forced labourers to the rhythm of the instruments, the Sunday concerts, and how Mengele pointed out the pieces in the repertoire he wished to listen to in between “selections.” In this remarkable book, Jean-Jacques Felstein follows in his mother’s footsteps and by telling her story, attempts to free her, and himself, from the pain that had been hidden in their family for so long.

Written for young adults, this graphic novel tells the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe and his extraordinary life of sacrifice. From his childhood, Maximilian ardently desired to share his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This desire eventually led him across the world, from Poland to Rome and from India to Japan. Like the great saints he admired, including St. Paul Miki and St. Catherine Labouré, Maximilian Kolbe was a true witness to the unfailing love of Mary and to the joy of self-sacrifice, even in the hopeless hunger bunker of Auschwitz. His courage and faith will inspire readers to entrust themselves totally to the will of God in all things.

Religion After Auschwitz is a philosophical approach to the notion of revelation. Following such authors as A. Dulles, R. Swinburne, or K. Ward, Balazs Mezei investigates some of the main problems of revelation and connects them to the general problem of religion today. Religion is considered in the perspective of the age "after Auschwitz", an expression coined by Hans Jonas and further elaborated by J. B. Metz. Mezei develops the insights of these philosophers and investigates various aspects of religion and revelation "after Auschwitz": contemporary theistic philosophy, phenomenology, art, mysticism, and the question of university education today. A fascinating amalgam of subjects and approaches, Religion and Revelation After Auschwitz is an important contribution to contemporary discussions on the possibility of Catholic philosophy.

Sing and Change The World! combines "chicken soup" inspiration with "Mozart-effect" musical power to demonstrate the impact of singing on ordinary life. Thematic chapters present historic characters, celebrities and everyday people who changed themselves and their world with a well-timed tune. Included are personal testimonies from Robert Goulet, Yoko Ono and others.

Church historian and op-ed writer David Steinmetz examines problems in the present by using the perspective the past affords - primarily, though not exclusively, the church's past.

A middle-grade biography of Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish priest who, at Auschwitz, offered himself in exchange for the life of a man with two children.

In Music in the Holocaust Shirli Gilbert provides the first large-scale, critical account of the role of music amongst communities imprisoned under Nazism. She documents a wide scope of musical activities, ranging from orchestras and chamber groups to choirs, theatres, communal sing-songs, and cabarets, in some of the most important internment centres in Nazi-occupied Europe, including Auschwitz and the Warsaw and Vilna ghettos. Gilbert is also concerned with exploring theways in which music - particularly the many songs that were preserved - contribute to our broader understanding of the Holocaust and the experiences of its victims. Music in the Holocaust is, at its core, a social history, taking as its focus the lives of individuals and communities imprisoned under Nazism.Music opens a unique window on to the internal world of those communities, offering insight into how they understood, interpreted, and responded to their experiences at the time.