"The book is the product of a protracted, laborious and scrupulous research and draws on a most extensive and varied assembly of documents. But the archival evidence, factual accounts and even personal narratives would have remained remote, dry and cold if not for the author's remarkable gift of empathy. Barbara Engelking gives the witnesses of the Holocaust a voice which readers of this book will understand....Under her pen memories come alive again."--from the Foreword by Zygmunt BaumanOriginally published in Polish to great acclaim and based on interviews with survivors of the Holocaust in Poland, Holocaust and Memory provides a moving description of their life during the war and the sense they made of it. The book begins by looking at the differences between the wartime experiences of Jews and Poles in occupied Poland, both in terms of Nazi legislation and individual experiences. On the Aryan side of the ghetto wall, Jews could either be helped or blackmailed by Poles. The largest section of the book reconstructs everyday life in the ghetto. The psychological consequences of wartime experiences are explored, including interviews with survivors who stayed on in Poland after the war and were victims of anti-Semitism again in 1968. These discussions bring into question some of the accepted survivor stereotypes found in Holocaust literature. A final chapter looks at the legacy of the Holocaust, the problems of transmitting experience and of the place of the Holocaust in Polish history and culture.

For fans of Radium Girls and history and WWII buffs, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line takes you inside the lives and experiences of 15 unknown women heroes from the Greatest Generation, the women who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen during WWII-in and out of uniform, for theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come. The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line are the heroes of the Greatest Generation that you hardly ever hear about. These women who did extraordinary things didn't expect thanks and shied away from medals and recognition. Despite their amazing accomplishments, they've gone mostly unheralded and unrewarded. No longer. These are the women of World War II who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen-in and out of uniform. Young Hilda Eisen was captured twice by the Nazis and twice escaped, going on to fight with the Resistance in Poland. Determined to survive, she and her husband later emigrated to the U.S. where they became entrepreneurs and successful business leaders. Ola Mildred Rexroat was the only Native American woman pilot to serve with the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in World War II. She persisted against all odds-to earn her silver wings and fly, helping train other pilots and gunners. Ida and Louise Cook were British sisters and opera buffs who smuggled Jews out of Germany, often wearing their jewelry and furs, to help with their finances. They served as sponsors for refugees, and established temporary housing for immigrant families in London. Alice Marble was a grand-slam winning tennis star who found her own path to serve during the war-she was an editor with Wonder Woman comics, played tennis exhibitions for the troops, and undertook a dangerous undercover mission to expose Nazi theft. After the war she was instrumental in desegregating women's professional tennis. Others also stepped out of line-as cartographers, spies, combat nurses, and troop commanders. Retired U.S. Army Major General Mari K. Eder wrote this book because she knew their stories needed to be told-and the sooner the better. For theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come.

Colonel Jan Breytenbach writes in the foreword: 'On Ascension Day, 1978, a composite South African parachute battalion jumped onto the tactical HQ of SWAPO's PLAN army, based at Cassinga, 250 kilometers north of the Angolan border to destroy the facility, their logistics, and to wipe out a strong concentration of SWAPO guerrillas. The airborne assault, part of Operation Reindeer, was an unqualified success; the whole base was destroyed. 608 PLAN fighters were killed, with many more wounded which pushed the final SWAPO death toll to well over a thousand. We lost only four paratroopers killed in action plus a dozen or so wounded. According to airborne experts in Britain and Australia, this was the most audacious parachute assault since the Second World War; the mounting airfield was well over 1,000 nautical miles away. I was the commander of that airborne assault, which although successful above all expectations, also highlighted many shortcomings, some of which nearly led to a disastrous outcome.' 44 Parachute Brigade was formed later that year, with the need for a specialist Pathfinder Company patently clear. Into the ranks came professional veterans from the UK, USA, Australasia, Rhodesia and elsewhere, from such Special Forces units as the SAS, Selous Scouts and the RLI. 'This is their book, a collection of stories about the founding and deployment of a unit of 'Foreign Legionnaires', from different parts of the world who became welded together into a remarkable combat unit, unsurpassed by any other South African Defence Force unit in their positive and aggressive approach to battle. For me it was an honor to have faced incoming lead together with them.

Over the past century, South Africa’s military has established itself in several defining battles and operations. Preferring manoeuvre over attrition, and often punching above their weight, they have become known for their tenacity, dash, and ability to defy the odds. Their unique command style also sets them apart from other armies and has helped them excel in challenging circumstances.

In 20 Battles, military historians Evert Kleynhans and David Brock Katz investigate how South Africa’s way of war evolved over a 100-year period. They track the evolution of the doctrine and structure of the South African defence forces, rediscovering historical continuity, if any, and the lessons learned in past battles and operations such as Otavifontein, Delville Wood, Southern Ethiopia, Tobruk, Chiusi, Savannah, Cassinga, Cuito Cuanavale and Boleas.

The book also identifies a number of firsts for the defence force, such as the first ever deployment during the 1914 Industrial Strike; the varied deployments across different theatres during both world wars; the first large scale crossborder deployments during the Border War; the first deployment of the new South African National Defence Force after 1994; and, culminating with the recent, and now infamous, Battle of Bangui.

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Leonidas Polk is one of the most fascinating figures of the Civil War. Consecrated as a bishop of the Episcopal Church and commissioned as a general into the Confederate army, Polk's life in both spheres blended into a unique historical composite. Polk was a man with deep religious convictions but equally committed to the Confederate cause. He baptized soldiers on the eve of bloody battles, administered last rites and even presided over officers' weddings, all while leading his soldiers into battle. Historian Cheryl White examines the life of this soldier-saint and the legacy of a man who unquestionably brought the first viable and lively Protestant presence to Louisiana and yet represents the politics of one of the darkest periods in American history.

Holocaust survivor Eddie Jaku made a vow to smile every day and now believes he is the ‘happiest man on earth’. In his inspirational memoir, he pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story and sharing his wisdom.

Life can be beautiful if you make it beautiful. It is up to you.

Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed in November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp.

Over the next seven years, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on a Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country.

The Happiest Man on Earth is a powerful, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful memoir of how happiness can be found even in the darkest of times.

On September 10, 1813, the hot, still air that hung over Lake Erie was broken by the sounds of sharp conflict. Led by Oliver Hazard Perry, the American fleet met the British, and though they sustained heavy losses, Perry and his men achieved one of the most stunning victories in the War of 1812. Author Walter Rybka traces the Lake Erie Campaign from the struggle to build the fleet in Erie, Pennsylvania, during the dead of winter and the conflict between rival egos of Perry and his second in command, Jesse Duncan Elliott, through the exceptionally bloody battle that was the first U.S. victory in a fleet action. With the singular perspective of having sailed the reconstructed U.S. brig Niagara for over twenty years, Rybka brings the knowledge of a shipmaster to the story of the Lake Erie Campaign and the culminating Battle of Lake Erie.

On July 11, 1864, some residents cheered and others watched in horror as Confederate troops spread across the fields and orchards of Silver Spring, Maryland. Many fled to the capital while General Jubal Early's troops ransacked their property. The estate of Lincoln's postmaster general, Montgomery Blair, was burned, and his father's home was used by Early as headquarters from which to launch an attack on Washington's defenses. Yet the first Civil War casualty in Silver Spring came well before Early's raid, when Union soldiers killed a prominent local farmer in 1862. This was life in the shadow of the Federal City. Drawing on contemporary accounts and memoirs, Dr. Robert E. Oshel tells the story of Silver Spring over the tumultuous course of the Civil War.

In vergeelde foto’s van drie dekades gelede staan oopgesigseuns vol bravade voor Ratel-gevegsvoertuie. Hierdie dienspligtiges van 61 Gemeganiseerde Bataljongroep staan aan die begin van hul reis diep in Angola in om vir volk en vaderland te gaan veg.

In ’n bloedige geveg op Valentynsdag 1988 en in die doodsakker by Tumpo sou hul jeugdige onskuld egter sneuwel. In die hitte van die gevegte kom die besef: Nou gaan dit nie oor ideologie nie, maar om oorlewing.

Ná die oorlog gaan die lewe voort, maar die vrae en geestelike letsels wyk nie. In 2018 keer ’n groep van dié ouddienspligtiges terug na Cuito Cuanavale op soek na afsluiting - en om die wrak te vind van die Ratel waarin ’n makker op die laaste dag van die oorlog gesterf het.

Die Brug vertel van hul reis van jong man na veteraan en gee ook ’n stem aan die vroue in hul lewe. Dit is ’n verhaal van ontnugtering, maar ook van trotse kameraderie en genesing.

A military operation unlike any other on American soil, Morgan's Raid was characterized by incredible speed, superhuman endurance and innovative tactics. One of the nation's most colorful leaders, Confederate general John Hunt Morgan, took his cavalry through enemy-occupied territory in three states in one of the longest offensives of the Civil War. The effort produced the only battles fought north of the Ohio River and reached farther north than any other regular Confederate force. With twenty-five maps and more than forty illustrations, Morgan's Raid historian David L. Mowery takes a new look at this unprecedented event in American history, one historians rank among the world's greatest land-based raids since Elizabethan times.

Too far north, the great state of Maine did not witness any Civil War battles. However, Mainers contributed to the war in many important ways. From the mainland to the islands, soldiers bravely fought to preserve the United States in all major battles. Men like General Joshua Chamberlain, a hero of Little Round Top, proudly returned home to serve as governor. Maine native Hannibal Hamlin served as Abraham Lincoln's first vice president. And Maine's strong women sacrificed and struggled to maintain their communities and support the men who had left to fight. Author Harry Gratwick diligently documents the stories of these Mainers, who preserved "The Way Life Should Be" for Maine and the entire United States.

Virginia's Shenandoah Valley was known as the "Breadbasket of the Confederacy" due to its ample harvests and transportation centers, its role as an avenue of invasion into the North and its capacity to serve as a diversionary theater of war. The region became a magnet for both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War, and nearly half of the thirteen major battles fought in the valley occurred as part of General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign. Civil War historian Jonathan A. Noyalas examines Jackson's Valley Campaign and how those victories brought hope to an infant Confederate nation, transformed the lives of the Shenandoah Valley's civilians and emerged as Stonewall Jackson's defining moment.

Stafford Cripps cut an incongruous figure in British politics in the 1930s. His fortuitous appointment as Ambassador to Moscow in 1940 secured him a prominent position in the War Cabinet. His meticulously kept diary describes the change in his political fortune and bears witness to key German-Soviet events during World War 2.

The first political history of the Second World War, of building the Grand Alliance to defeat Hitler, by the Sunday Times-bestselling author of Appeasing Hitler.

After the fall of France in June 1940, only Britain stood between Hitler and total victory. Desperate for allies, Winston Churchill did everything he could to bring the United States into the conflict, drive the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany apart and persuade neutral countries to resist German domination.

By 1942, after the German invasion of Russia and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the British-Soviet-American alliance was in place. Yet it was an improbable and incongruous coalition, divided by ideology and politics and riven with mistrust and deceit. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were partners in the fight to defeat Hitler, yet they were also rivals who disagreed on strategy, imperialism and the future of liberated Europe. Only by looking at their points of conflict, as well as of co-operation, are we able to understand the course of the war and world that developed in its aftermath.

Allies at War is a fast-paced, narrative history, based on material drawn from over a hundred archives. Using vivid, first-hand accounts and unpublished diaries, we enter the rooms where the critical decisions were made while going beyond the confines of the Grand Alliance to examine, among other themes, the doomed Anglo-French alliance, fractious relations with General de Gaulle and the Free French, and interactions with Poland, Greece and Nationalist China.

Ambitious and compelling, revealing the political drama behind the military events, Allies at War offers a fresh perspective on the Second World War and the origins of the Cold War.

Told here for the first time is the compelling story of the Bluff City during the Civil War. Historian and preservationist Mike Bunn takes you from the pivotal role Eufaula played in Alabama's secession and early enthusiasm for the Confederate cause to its aborted attempt to become the state's capital and its ultimate capture by Union forces, chronicling the effects of the conflict on Eufaulans along the way. "Civil War Eufaula "draws on a wide range of firsthand individual perspectives, including those of husbands and wives, political leaders, businessmen, journalists, soldiers, students and slaves, to produce a mosaic of observations on shared experiences. Together, they communicate what it was like to live in this riverside trading town during a prolonged and cataclysmic war. It is the story of ordinary people in extraordinary times.

Coral and Concrete, Greg Dvorak's cross-cultural history of Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, explores intersections of environment, identity, empire, and memory in the largest inhabited coral atoll on earth. Approaching the multiple "atollscapes" of Kwajalein's past and present as Marshallese ancestral land, Japanese colonial outpost, Pacific War battlefield, American weapons-testing base, and an enduring home for many, Dvorak delves into personal narratives and collective mythologies from contradictory vantage points. He navigates the tensions between "little stories" of ordinary human actors and "big stories" of global politics-drawing upon the "little" metaphor of the coral organisms that colonize and build atolls, and the "big" metaphor of the all-encompassing concrete that buries and co-opts the past. Building upon the growing body of literature about militarism and decolonization in Oceania, this book advocates a layered, nuanced approach that emphasizes the multiplicity and contradictions of Pacific Islands histories as an antidote to American hegemony and globalization within and beyond the region. It also brings Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, and American perspectives into conversation with Micronesians' recollections of colonialism and war. This transnational history-built upon a combination of reflective personal narrative, ethnography, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies-thus resituates Kwajalein Atoll as a pivotal site where Islanders have not only thrived for thousands of years, but also mediated between East and West, shaping crucial world events. Based on multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, as well as Dvorak's own experiences growing up between Kwajalein, the United States, and Japan, Coral and Concrete integrates narrative and imagery with semiotic analysis of photographs, maps, films, and music, traversing colonial tropical fantasies, tales of victory and defeat, missile testing, fisheries, war-bereavement rituals, and landowner resistance movements, from the twentieth century through the present day. Representing history as a perennial struggle between coral and concrete, the book offers an Oceanian paradigm for decolonization, resistance, solidarity, and optimism that should appeal to all readers far beyond the Marshall Islands.