Erik Larson, "New York Times" bestselling author of "Devil in the White City, " delivers a remarkable story set during Hitler's rise to power.
The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the "New Germany," she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance--and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition.
Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Goring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, "In the Garden of Beasts" lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

Before Pep Guardiola and before Jose Mourinho, there was Bela Guttmann: the first superstar football coach, and the man who paved the way for the celebrated coaches of the modern age. He was also a Holocaust survivor. In 1944, much of Europe had wanted Guttmann dead. He hid for months in an attic near Budapest as thousands of fellow Jews in the neighbourhood were dragged off to be murdered. Later, he escaped from a slave labour camp before a planned deportation and almost certain death. His father, sister and wider family were murdered. But by 1961, as coach of Benfica, he had lifted Europe's greatest sporting prize, the European Cup, a feat he repeated the following year. This biography spans two contrasting visions of Europe: one of barbarism and genocide, and one of beauty, wonder and romance, of balmy evenings in magnificent cities, where great players would stretch every sinew in a bid to win football's holy grail. With dark forces rising once again in that continent, the story of Bela Guttmann's life asks the question: which vision will triumph in our times?

In simple and moving words this book for the intermediate grades tells the story of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust is usually understood as a European story. Yet, this pivotal episode unfolded across North Africa and reverberated through politics, literature, memoir, and memory-Muslim as well as Jewish-in the post-war years. The Holocaust and North Africa offers the first English-language study of the unfolding events in North Africa, pushing at the boundaries of Holocaust Studies and North African Studies, and suggesting, powerfully, that neither is complete without the other. The essays in this volume reconstruct the implementation of race laws and forced labor across the Maghreb during World War II and consider the Holocaust as a North African local affair, which took diverse form from town to town and city to city. They explore how the Holocaust ruptured Muslim-Jewish relations, setting the stage for an entirely new post-war reality. Commentaries by leading scholars of Holocaust history complete the picture, reflecting on why the history of the Holocaust and North Africa has been so widely ignored-and what we have to gain by understanding it in all its nuances. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In the early months of 1994, it became clear that the government of Rwanda had not acted in good faith in signing peace accords with its adversary, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Acts of government-sponsored violence grew more frequent. The author of this book, who at that point was conducting fieldwork in Rwanda, on several occasions found either himself or the Rwandans accompanying him threatened with, or sustaining, bodily harm. Finally, active hostilities between the antagonists escalated on April 7, 1994, just hours after the Rwandan President's plane was shot down. During the author's evacuation from Rwanda in the months following, he interviewed many survivors.
This book, the outcome of the author's experiences during the conflict, is an attempt to understand the atrocities committed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which nearly one million people, mostly of Tutsi ethnicity, were slaughtered in less than four months. Beyond this, the author shows that political and historical analyses, while necessary in understanding the violence, fail to explain the forms that the violence took and the degree of passion that motivated it. Instead, Rwandan ritual and practices related to the body are revelatory in this regard, as the body is the ultimate tablet upon which the dictates of the nation-state are inscribed. One rather bizarre example of this is that Hutu extremists often married or had sexual relations with Tutsi women who, according to the Hamitic hypothesis, were said to be sexually alluring. Their mixed-race offspring were not exempt from the genocide. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in light of the recent resurgence of violence, the author advances hypotheses abouthow the violence in Rwanda and Burundi might be transcended.

From April 1933 to early 1943, Bernard Loesener served as the official "Jewish Expert" in the German Third Reich's Ministry of the Interior, the government body responsible for the Nazi's legislative assault on German Jewry. In that role, he personally drafted much of the legislation, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 preeminently, that gradually dispossessed, disenfranchised, and dehumanized the Jews of Nazi Germany. During the first six years of Nazi rule, the seminal period of government-sponsored anti-Semitism, Loesener kept the minutes of many crucial, high-level, inter-ministerial conferences concerned with the "Jewish Question." As observer and participant, his experiences were virtually unparalleled. In 1950, Loesener penned a memoir that sought to explain, and justify, his actions during the ten-year escalation of Nazi oppression that resulted, to Loesener's professed horror, in the Final Solution. It was published in 1961, in German, by the journal "Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte." It has never before appeared in English, until now - in "Legislating the Holocaust."

'Among the most moving documents I have read in years ... You will not forget it' Elie Wiesel From her small, sunny hometown between the beautiful Carpathian Mountains and the blue Danube River, Elli Friedmann was taken - at a time when most girls are growing up, having boyfriends and embarking upon the adventure of life - and thrown into the murderous hell of Hitler's Final Solution. When Elli emerged from Auschwitz and Dachau just over a year later, she was fourteen. She looked like a sixty year old. This account of horrifyingly brutal inhumanity - and dogged survival - is Elli's true story.

Split into three volumes, The Cambridge World History of Genocide offers an analytical survey of genocide across six continents from prehistory to the twenty-first century. Combined, they compare and contrast cases in multiple different cultures and contexts, demonstrating common themes and sharp variations that have developed over time. By examining the long-term and immediate causes of genocide, these essays emphasize that genocidal intent has historically been shaped by structural factors and human decision-making. Featuring over 80 essays from experts across the field, together they cover ancient Carthage, the Holocaust, medieval Crusader massacres, Mongol conquests, the extermination of Indigenous peoples in European settler colonies in the Americas, Africa, and Australia, as well as prehistoric mass graves from the Alps to the Andes, and the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. A much-needed addition to genocide studies, these volumes reveal how genocide is a world historical phenomenon that has operated under different names and capacities, but possesses similar key characteristics.

A strikingly original book about a terrible photograph - an exceptionally rare image documenting the horrific final moment of the murder of a family in Ukraine. A Times Book of the Year 'A very rare kind of picture... To the murdered others, this book is an act of restitution' David Aaronovitch, The Times 'Detective work of the highest and most gripping order' Philippe Sands 'Lower's pursuit of the truth is both captivating and meticuous' TLS 'Extraordinary and spell-binding' Daily Mail 'One photograph. That's what it took to start Wendy Lower on an incredible journey of discovery' Deborah Lipstadt The terrible mass shootings in Poland and the Ukraine are often neglected in studies of the Holocaust, because the perpetrators were meticulously careful to avoid leaving any evidence of their actions. Wendy Lower stumbled across one such piece of evidence - a photograph documenting the shooting of a mother and her children and the men who killed them - and has crafted a forensically brilliant and moving study that brings the larger horror of the genocide into focus. Shortlisted for the Historical Writers' Association Non-Fiction Crown.

Drawing on testimonies, memoirs, and personal interviews of Holocaust survivors, Francoise S. Ouzan reveals how the experience of Nazi persecution impacted their personal reconstruction, rehabilitation, and reintegration into a free society. She sheds light on the life trajectories of various groups of Jews, including displaced persons, partisan fighters, hidden children, and refugees from Nazism. Ouzan shows that personal success is not only a unifying factor among these survivors but is part of an ethos that unified ideas of homeland, social justice, togetherness, and individual aspirations in the redemptive experience. Exploring how Holocaust survivors rebuilt their lives after World War II, Ouzan tells the story of how they coped with adversity and psychic trauma to contribute to the culture and society of their country of residence.

During the Second World War, Christians from many nations and denominations stepped forward with courage, ingenuity and determination to protect and rescue Jews from the Holocaust. In Defying the Holocaust, Tim Dowley shares the stories of ten of these extraordinary women and men. From the Most Unorthodox Nun: Mother Maria of Paris to Committed Swedes: Pastors Erik Perwe and Erik Myrgren, Tim Dowley introduces an array of brave Christians, and tells the reader about the incredible lengths they went to in order to help rescue the Jews. In Defying the Holocaust each of their stories is accompanied by photos of the individuals themselves and further photos to add context to their stories. Christians and those fascinated by stories about the Holocaust will find Tim Dowley's book to be incredibly inspiring, a reminder that these ten brave men women and men stood up to the cruelty of the times.

Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle. In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold Stalingrad at any cost, then caught their Nazi enemy in an astonishing reversal. As never before, Stalingrad conveys the experience of soldiers on both sides as they fought in inhuman conditions, and of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield. Antony Beevor has interviewed survivors and discovered completely new material in a wide range of German and Soviet archives, including reports of prisoner interrogations, desertions, and executions. The battle of Stalingrad was the psychological turning point of World War II; as Beevor makes clear, it also changed the face of modern warfare. As a story of cruelty, courage, and human suffering, Stalingrad is unprecedented and unforgettable.

In the early months of 1994, it became clear that the government of Rwanda had not acted in good faith in signing peace accords with its adversary, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Acts of government-sponsored violence grew more frequent. The author of this book, who at that point was conducting fieldwork in Rwanda, on several occasions found either himself or the Rwandans accompanying him threatened with, or sustaining, bodily harm. Finally, active hostilities between the antagonists escalated on April 7, 1994, just hours after the Rwandan President's plane was shot down. During the author's evacuation from Rwanda in the months following, he interviewed many survivors.
This book, the outcome of the author's experiences during the conflict, is an attempt to understand the atrocities committed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which nearly one million people, mostly of Tutsi ethnicity, were slaughtered in less than four months. Beyond this, the author shows that political and historical analyses, while necessary in understanding the violence, fail to explain the forms that the violence took and the degree of passion that motivated it. Instead, Rwandan ritual and practices related to the body are revelatory in this regard, as the body is the ultimate tablet upon which the dictates of the nation-state are inscribed. One rather bizarre example of this is that Hutu extremists often married or had sexual relations with Tutsi women who, according to the Hamitic hypothesis, were said to be sexually alluring. Their mixed-race offspring were not exempt from the genocide. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in light of the recent resurgence of violence, the author advances hypotheses about how the violence in Rwanda and Burundi might be transcended.

"Excellent and absorbing.... Indispensable to any attempt to understand the Khmer Rouge." -William Shawcross New York Review of Books "A dramatic account of Pol Pot's rise to power in 1975 and his direction of Cambodia's autogenocide.... David Chandler has given us an absorbing and authoritative portrait of Brother Number One and a fascinating insight into Cambodia's cruel history." -Frederick Z. Brown New York Times Book Review "This first biography of Pol Pot is valuable not just for what it tells us about Cambodia's past, but for helping us understand the present and perhaps predict the future.... Superbly written, pioneering work. Chandler makes up for the paucity of details about Pol Pot's life by painting a rich tableau of his times and setting out the historical context of his policies.... The only plausible portrait of the man whose gentle persona and brutal actions remain an enduring paradox." -Nayan Chanda Far Eastern Economic Review "This book is particularly welcome. Although a work of scholarship, [it] has the fast pace of a thriller.... [Chandler's] analysis rings true, and he has no ideological axe to grind; he is willing to go where the evidence takes him." -Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly "Chandler's gracefully written biography of the enigmatic revolutionary of this century, Saloth Sar (alias Pol Pot), deserves wide readership.... Chandler successfully walks a fine line, condemning Pol Pot and all his works, but trying to understand what motivates him.... Recommended without reservation." -Choice "No biographer could hope for a more elusive or enigmatic subject than Pol Pot. From interviews and extensive research, Chandler pieces together a riveting account of the life of this inaccessible man who was alternately mild mannered, cultivated, and genocidal.... Highly recommended." -Library Journal In Cambodia's recent, tragic past, no figure looms larger or more ominously than that of Pol Pot. In this revised edition of the first book-length study of the man, the historian David P. Chandler throws light on the shadowy figure of Pol Pot, illuminating the ideas and behavior of this enigmatic man and his entourage against the background of post-World War II events, providing a key to understanding this horrific, pivotal period of Cambodian history.

While Anne Frank was in hiding during the German Occupation of the Netherlands, she wrote what has become the world's most famous diary. But how could an unknown Jewish girl from Amsterdam be transformed into an international icon? Renowned Dutch scholar David Barnouw investigates the facts and controversies that surround the global phenomenon of Anne Frank. Barnouw highlights the ways in which Frank's life and ultimate fate have been represented, interpreted, and exploited. He follows the evolution of her diary into a book (with translations into nearly 60 languages and editions that added previously unknown material), an American play, and a movie. As he asks, "Who owns Anne Frank?" Barnouw follows her emergence as a global phenomenon and what this means for her historical persona as well as for her legacy as a symbol of the Holocaust.

For the Jewish world and the Yishuv in particular, the 1930s was a time of escalating crises?the rise of the Nazis and their antisemitic policies, the declining fortunes of Eastern European Jewry, increasing Arab enmity, and the hardening of British Mandatory policies in Palestine. Reexamining some of the most controversial episodes in modern Jewish history, this invaluable study offers the first systematic institutional analysis of the Yishuv's responses to the imperative of saving German and European Jewry from the growing Nazi threat between 1933 and 1939. Drawing on a wealth of archival research and a thorough knowledge of the secondary literature, this informative, important book will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of the Holocaust.

In 1941, three brothers witnessed their parents and two other siblings being led away to their eventual murders. It was a grim scene that would, of course, be repeated endlessly throughout the war. Instead of running or giving in to despair, these brothers -- Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski -- fought back, waging a guerrilla war of wits against the Nazis.

By using their intimate knowledge of the dense forests surrounding the Belarusan towns of Novogrudek and Lida, the Bielskis evaded the Nazis and established a hidden base camp, then set about convincing other Jews to join their ranks. As more and more Jews arrived each day, a robust community began to emerge, a "Jerusalem in the woods."

After two and a half years in the woods, in July 1944, the Bielskis learned that the Germans, overrun by the Red Army, were retreating back toward Berlin. More than one thousand Bielski Jews emerged -- alive -- on that final, triumphant exit from the woods.

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award: viewing the Holocaust through the eyes of youth "Zapruder . . . has done a great service to history and the future. Her book deserves to become a standard in Holocaust studies classes. . . . These writings will certainly impress themselves on the memories of all readers."-Publishers Weekly "These extraordinary diaries will resonate in the reader's broken heart for many days and many nights."-Elie Wiesel This stirring collection of diaries written by young people, aged twelve to twenty-two years, during the Holocaust has been fully revised and updated. Some of the writers were refugees, others were in hiding or passing as non-Jews, some were imprisoned in ghettos, and nearly all perished before liberation. This seminal National Jewish Book Award winner preserves the impressions, emotions, and eyewitness reportage of young people whose accounts of daily events and often unexpected thoughts, ideas, and feelings serve to deepen and complicate our understanding of life during the Holocaust. The second paperback edition includes a new preface by Alexandra Zapruder examining the book's history and impact. Simultaneously, a multimedia edition incorporates a wealth of new content in a variety of media, including photographs of the writers and their families, images of the original diaries, artwork made by the writers, historical documents, glossary terms, maps, survivor testimony (some available for the first time), and video of the author teaching key passages. In addition, an in-depth, interdisciplinary curriculum in history, literature, and writing developed by the author and a team of teachers, working in cooperation with the educational organization Facing History and Ourselves, is now available to support use of the book in middle- and high-school classrooms.

Seventy years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, the contributions collected in this volume each attempt, in various ways and from various perspectives, to trace the relationship between Nazi-occupied spaces and Holocaust memory, considering the multitude of ways in which the passing of time impacts upon, or shapes, cultural constructions of space. Accordingly, this volume does not consider topographies merely in relation to geographical landscapes but, rather, as markers of allusions and connotations that must be properly eked out. Since space and time are intertwined, if not, in fact, one and the same, an investigation of the spaces - the locations of horror - in relation to the passing of time might provide some manner of comprehension of one of the most troubling moments in human history. It is with this understanding of space, as fluid sites of memory that the contributors of this volume engage: these are the kind of shifting topographies that we are seeking to trace. This book was originally published as a special issue of Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History.

This beautifully written memoir is composed of linked stories about growing up on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1950s and 60s, when children spent most of their time, from birth on, in a Children's House. This memoir starts with a Prologue drawn from the diaries of Rachel Biale's mother and the letters her parents exchanged while her father served in the British army. With excerpts from these documents, she describes how the long trials and tribulations that encompassed her parents dangerous escape from Eastern Europe to Israel - fleeing from the Nazis from Prague in 1939, five years of dangerous sea voyages, and long internments in British refugee camps. Throughout these ordeals, her parents socialist and Zionist values sustained them and eventually brought them to their kibbutz. The middle and main section of the memoir is devoted to Rachel's growing up as a kibbutz child. While Rachel's parents soon realized that no community can live up to its utopian ideals, Rachel's youth on kibbutz was a robust and buoyant one. Rachel pens 24 beautifully written and engaging stories about her kibbutz childhood -- from earliest memories at age three as part of a children's society, to her army service at age twenty. The stories focus on the world of children, but also offer a window into the lives of the adult kibbutz members, including Holocaust survivors. The book ends with a Postscript-as Rachel revisits her kibbutz and updates the stories of her childhood companions.

"A remarkable and important story" BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour "Unputdownable . . . Urbach has also retold the tragic Holocaust story in quite unforgettable lines" A.N. Wilson "This fascinating book, by Alice's granddaughter Karina Urbach, shines a spotlight on this lesser-known aspect of Nazi looting" The Times "A gripping piece of 20th-century family history but also something much more original: a rare insight into the 'Aryanisation' of Jewish-authored books during the Nazi regime" Financial Times What happened to the books that were too valuable to burn? Alice Urbach had her own cooking school in Vienna, but in 1938 she was forced to flee to England, like so many others. Her younger son was imprisoned in Dachau, and her older son, having emigrated to the United States, became an intelligence officer in the struggle against the Nazis. Returning to the ruins of Vienna in the late 1940s, she discovers that her bestselling cookbook has been published under someone else's name. Now, eighty years later, the historian Karina Urbach - Alice's granddaughter - sets out to uncover the truth behind the stolen cookbook, and tells the story of a family torn apart by the Nazi regime, of a woman who, with her unwavering passion for cooking, survived the horror and losses of the Holocaust to begin a new life in America. Impeccably researched and incredibly moving, Alice's Book sheds light on an untold chapter in the history of Nazi crimes against Jewish authors. "As this engaging memoir makes clear, the theft of the cookbook remained for Alice's entire life the symbol of everything that had been taken from her" TLS Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

The poignant story of Holocaust survivors who returned to their hometown in Poland and tried to pick up the pieces of a shattered world. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the lives of Polish Jews were marked by violence and emigration. But some of those who had survived the Nazi genocide returned to their hometowns and tried to start their lives anew. Lukasz Krzyzanowski recounts the story of this largely forgotten group of Holocaust survivors. Focusing on Radom, an industrial city about sixty miles south of Warsaw, he tells the story of what happened throughout provincial Poland as returnees faced new struggles along with massive political, social, and legal change. Non-Jewish locals mostly viewed the survivors with contempt and hostility. Many Jews left immediately, escaping anti-Semitic violence inflicted by new communist authorities and ordinary Poles. Those who stayed created a small, isolated community. Amid the devastation of Poland, recurring violence, and bureaucratic hurdles, they tried to start over. They attempted to rebuild local Jewish life, recover their homes and workplaces, and reclaim property appropriated by non-Jewish Poles or the state. At times they turned on their own. Krzyzanowski recounts stories of Jewish gangs bent on depriving returnees of their prewar possessions and of survivors shunned for their wartime conduct. The experiences of returning Jews provide important insights into the dynamics of post-genocide recovery. Drawing on a rare collection of documents-including the postwar Radom Jewish Committee records, which were discovered by the secret police in 1974-Ghost Citizens is the moving story of Holocaust survivors and their struggle to restore their lives in a place that was no longer home.

On the nights of July 16 and 17, 1942, French police rounded up eleven-year-old Joseph Weismann, his family, and 13,000 other Jews. After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Velodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated: all the adults and most of the children were transported on to Auschwitz and certain death, but 1,000 children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children left behind that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt. After eluding the guards and crawling under razor-sharp barbed wire, Joseph found freedom. But how would he survive the rest of the war in Nazi-occupied France and build a life for himself? His problems had just begun. Until he was 80, Joseph Weismann kept his story to himself, giving only the slightest hints of it to his wife and three children. Simone Veil, lawyer, politician, President of the European Parliament, and member of the Constitutional Council of France-herself a survivor of Auschwitz-urged him to tell his story. In the original French version of this book and in Roselyne Bosch's 2010 film La Rafle, Joseph shares his compelling and terrifying story of the Roundup of the Vel' d'Hiv and his escape. Now, for the first time in English, Joseph tells the rest of his dramatic story in After the Roundup.

El Alamein was the World War II land battle Britain had to win. By the summer of 1942 Rommel's German forces were threatening to sweep through the Western Desert and drive on to the Suez Canal, and Britain was in urgent need of military victory. Then, in October, after 12 days of attritional tank battle and artillery bombardment, Montgomery's Eighth Army, with Australians and New Zealanders playing crucial roles in a genuinely international Allied fighting force, broke through the German and Italian lines at El Alamein. It was a turning-point in the war after which, in Churchill's words, "we never had a defeat". Stephen Bungay's book is as much at home analysing the crucial logistics of keeping desert armies supplied with petrol and tank parts as it is reappraising the combat strategies of Montgomery and Rommel, and ranges widely from the domestic political pressures on Churchill to the aerial siege of Malta, key to the control of the Mediterranean. And in a chapter on "The Soldier's War", Bungay graphically evokes the phantasmagoric blur of thunderous cannonade and tormenting heat that was the lot of the individual men who actually fought and died in the desert.