This is the story of Chęciny, my hometown in southern Poland, and of the people who lived there between the two world wars of the 20th Century.

The Nazi invasion of Poland in October 1939 started World War II. Millions of Polish Jews died in the ensuing Holocaust, including 4,000 citizens of Chęciny, and 50 members of my family. I was lucky: my mother, brother, three sisters and I had joined my father in America in 1930. I finished high school in Chicago, went to college and graduated from the University of Illinois Medical School. I became a doctor and a psychiatrist, setting up a long and rewarding private practice in Los Angeles that spanned more than 50 years.

Like the wall paintings in Pompeii, which offer a glimpse into the daily life of that city before the volcano, I hope that these stories offer a glimpse into the daily life of my hometown before the Holocaust.

But most of all, this is the story of my family, and a tribute to my beloved Aunt Chana and her daughter, my cousin Rachel, whose courage and self-sacrifice saved Miriam - Chęciny's youngest survivor of the Holocaust - from the Nazi murderers.

Published in 1945 by the 65th Fighter Wing, Saffron Walden, 8th U.S. Air Force. This document was written to make and show why certain recommendations may help future air force commanders conserve fighters; this is not a training manual, however. It details the fact that flak was by far the most dangerous weapon the strategic fighter had to face. How it all came about and what was done to meet the problem (what was encountered, solution by phases, and lessons learned and recommendations) are told in the report. Please note this a high quality, carefully and extensively cleaned up copy of an archive document and while many efforts have been made to clean up these historic texts there may be occasional blemishes, usually reflecting the age of the documents and the typescript used at the time of writing.

Making the Best of Things is a record of the experiences of its author, Len Williams, over a period of more than thirty years. His narrative opens with a vivid and engaging memoir of childhood and adolescence in Camberwell during the 1910s and early 1920s, and culminates in a personal and anecdotal history of the Second World War, during which he served with the Auxiliary Fire Service and with an RAF Maintenance Unit (60 MU) based in Yorkshire and other parts of England. The central chapters are concerned with the changing fortunes of the Williams family during the 1920s and 1930s, offering an evocative account of the era of the Depression from the perspective of one who toiled, with little hope of advancement, as part of London's army of shopworkers. Williams presents these memoirs as a candid history of his family, and more particularly as his testimony with regard to an extraordinary and disturbing family secret uncovered in the wake of his father's death. The scope of the work quickly broadens, however, to form a rich and detailed panorama of his surroundings in Camberwell, one that pays special attention to the places he knew intimately, including Stobart Mansions, Kimpton Mission, the United Kingdom Tea Company and the Camberwell Green branch of the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society. Making the Best of Things is a meticulous and absorbing recreation of a lost world, offering masterful descriptions of the rituals and routines of ordinary life as Williams knew it, as well as first-hand accounts of many of the more momentous episodes in London's history, including Zeppelin raids, Armistice Night, the General Strike and the Blitz. This new edition, which collects these memoirs into a single volume for the first time, features editorial notes, an index, and a series of appendices relating to Williams's father and other members of his family. Making the Best of Things is also copiously illustrated with photographs and maps.

Her memoirs cover the pre WWII period of the 1930's in her birth country, Bulgaria and her growing up in the German and Russian cultures of her parents and that of Bulgaria. The uprooting of her family because of WWII and subsequent events tells of the increasing horrors and dislocations not only of her family but that of countless others.

Bennett collects oral histories from men of three United States regiments that participated in the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. The 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment was the most widely scattered of the American parachute infantry regiments to be dropped on D-Day. However, the efforts of 180 men to stop the advance of an SS Panzer Grenadier division largely have been ignored outside of France. The 116th Infantry Regiment received the highest number of casualties on Omaha Beach of any Allied unit on D-Day. Stationed in England through most of the war, it had been the butt of jokes while other regiments did the fighting and dying in North Africa and the Mediterranean; that changed on June 6, 1944. And the 22nd Infantry Regiment, a unit that had fought in almost every campaign waged by the U.S. Army since 1812, came ashore on Utah Beach quite easily before getting embroiled in a series of savage fights to cross the marshland behind the beach and to capture the German heavy batteries to the north. Each participant's story is woven into the larger picture of the assault, allowing Bennett to go beyond the largely personal viewpoints yielded by traditional oral history but avoiding the impersonal nature of studies of grand strategy. In addition to the interviews and memoirs Bennett collected, he also discovered fresh documentary evidence from American, British, and French archives that play an important part in facilitating this new approach, as well as archives in Britain and France. The author unearths new stories and questions from D-Day, such as the massacre of soldiers from the 507th at Graignes, Hemevez, and elsewhere. This new material includes a focus on the regimental level, which is all but ignored by historians, while still covering strategic, tactical, and human issues. His conclusions highlight common misperceptions about the Normandy landings. Questions have already been raised about the wisdom of the Anglo-American amphibious doctrine employed on D-Day. In this study, Bennett continues to challenge the assumption that the operation was an exemplary demonstration of strategic planning.

This book examines the experience of two British Infantry Divisions, the 43rd (Wessex) and 53rd (Welsh), during the Overlord campaign in Northwest Europe. To understand the way the British fought during Operation Overlord, the book considers the political and military factors between 1918 and 1943 before addressing the major battles and many of the minor engagements and day-to-day experiences of the campaign. Through detailed exploration of unit war diaries and first-hand accounts, Louis Devine demonstrates how Montgomery's way of war translated to the divisions and their sub units. While previous literature has suggested that the British Army fought a cautious war in order to avoid the heavy casualties of the First World War, Devine challenges this concept by showing that the Overlord Campaign fought at sub-divisional levels was characterised by command pressure to achieve results quickly, hasty planning and a reliance on massive artillery and mortar contributions to compensate for deficiencies in anti-tank and armoured support. By following two British infantry divisions over a continuous period and focusing on soldiers' experience to offer a perspective 'from below', as well as challenging the consensus of a 'cautious' British campaign, this book provides a much-needed re-examination of the Overlord campaign which will be of great interest to students and scholars of the Second World War and modern military history in general.

Hitler's Theology investigates the use of theological motifs in Adolf Hitler's public speeches and writings, and offers an answer to the question of why Hitler and his theo-political ideology were so attractive and successful presenting an alternative to the discontents of modernity. The book gives a systematic reconstruction of Hitler's use of theological concepts like providence, belief or the almighty God. Rainer Bucher argues that Hitler's (ab)use of theological ideas is one of the main reasons why and how Hitler gained so much acquiescence and support for his diabolic enterprise. This fascinating study concludes by contextualizing Hitler's theology in terms of a wider theory of modernity and in particular by analyzing the churches' struggle with modernity. Finally, the author evaluates the use of theology from a practical theological perspective. This book will be of interest to students of Religious Studies, Theology, Holocaust Studies, Jewish Studies, Religion and Politics, and German History.

This book examines and analyses the relationship between the RAF, the Free French Movement and the French fighter pilots in WWII. A highly significant subject, this has been ignored by academics on both sides of the Channel. This ground-breaking study will fill a significant gap in the historiography of the War. Bennett's painstaking research has unearthed primary source material in both Britain and France including Squadron records, diaries, oral histories and memoirs. In the post-war period the idea of French pilots serving with the RAF seemed anachronistic to both sides. For the French nation the desire to draw a veil over the war years helped to obscure many aspects of the past, and for the British the idea of French pilots did not accord with the myths of the Few to whom so much was owed. Those French pilots who served had to make daring escapes. Classed as deserters they risked court martial and execution if caught. They would play a vital role on D-Day and the battle for control of the skies which followed.

The events of World War II thrust young Marine Corps recruit Ralph T. Eubanks into a world he could not have imagined as a boy growing up on a farm in western Arkansas. This firsthand account of his experiences - based on recollections, research and numerous letters to his family and sweetheart back home - chronicles the tense and uncertain years of his service in the Marines. Eubanks describes his admiration for the traditions and glorious history of the Marine Corps that convinced him to join. We follow the adventures of this young recruit through his weeks of boot camp, intense training as an aviation ordnanceman, service in the Pacific combat zone, marriage to Betty Carty, trials of officer candidate school, preparations and execution of the occupation of Japan, and his eventual return to civilian life. Along the way, the farm boy from Arkansas is transformed into a model soldier who lives the maxim "once a Marine, always a Marine" the rest of his life. This is a rare glimpse into the everyday trials of a World War II Marine during one of our country's most trying periods.

Captain Graham Wright is a man ahead of his time. He saw life and work differently from others. However, speaking his mind brought him more trouble than good, as others didn't often agree with his point of view or vision. But during his current 93 years, he's seen many of his predictions and ideas come to fruition. Putting It Wright covers his life to date, from joining the Royal Australian Navy at age 13, his experiences in Palestine, Malta, Turkey and adventures during World War II in the Mediterranean, Madagascar, South-East Asia and most importantly Archangel and the truth behind a secret meeting with Stalin in Moscow by Sir Walter Citrine, UK Trade Union Congress leader, under Churchill's orders in 1941. No other book in history has ever exposed this detail. This Naval career highlight earned him the Arctic Star. His service continued during peacetime until 1962 amid major changes in the Navy and then all the Defence Forces. After 29 years of Naval service he accepted an offer from the then Department of External Affairs, spending two interesting years amongst the communist spy scandals in Bangkok, Thailand, as Head of Research in the South East Asian Treaty Organization Headquarters. Later, after joining the Australian Public Service, his major achievement was working with Sir Arthur Tange in producing the well-known Tange Report. With his Bachelor of Arts Honours degree and his thesis work, the Tange Report amalgamated the administration of the three armed services and Supply Department, creating the Department of Defence as we know it today. Even after being criticized by Australian National University gurus who believed that an insider couldn't be credited with writing about Defence matters, Wright proved to be right again - as history has shown that what we have today with the day-to-day operations of the three Services now controlled by the Headquarters at Bungendore - is just as he'd written it.

The main objective of the book is to allocate the grass roots initiatives of remembering the Holocaust victims in a particular region of Russia which has a very diverse ethnic structure and little presence of Jews at the same time. It aims to find out how such individual initiatives correspond to the official Russian hero-orientated concept of remembering the Second World war with almost no attention to the memory of war victims, including Holocaust victims. North Caucasus became the last address of thousands of Soviet Jews, both evacuees and locals. While there was almost no attention paid to the Holocaust victims in the official Soviet propaganda in the postwar period, local activists and historians together with the members of Jewish communities preserved Holocaust memory by installing small obelisks at the killing sites, writing novels and making documentaries, teaching about the Holocaust at schools and making small thematic exhibitions in the local and school museums. Individual types of grass roots activities in the region on remembering Holocaust victims are analyzed in each chapter of the book.

Many Americans know something about the Navajo code talkers in World War II - but little else about the military service of Native Americans, who have served in our armed forces since the American Revolution, and still serve in larger numbers than any other ethnic group. But, as we learn in this splendid work of historical restitution, code talking originated in World War I among Native soldiers whose extraordinary service resulted, at long last, in U.S. citizenship for all Native Americans. The first full account of these forgotten soldiers in our nation's military history, The First Code Talkers covers all known Native American code talkers of World War I - members of the Choctaw, Oklahoma Cherokee, Comanche, Osage, and Sioux nations, as well as the Eastern Band of Cherokee and Ho-Chunk, whose veterans have yet to receive congressional recognition. William C. Meadows, the foremost expert on the subject, describes how Native languages, which were essentially unknown outside tribal contexts and thus could be as effective as formal encrypted codes, came to be used for wartime communication. While more than thirty tribal groups were eventually involved in World Wars I and II, this volume focuses on Native Americans in the American Expeditionary Forces during the First World War. Drawing on nearly thirty years of research - in U.S. military and Native American archives, surviving accounts from code talkers and their commanding officers, family records, newspaper accounts, and fieldwork in descendant communities - the author explores the origins, use, and legacy of the code talkers. In the process, he highlights such noted decorated veterans as Otis Leader, Joseph Oklahombi, and Calvin Atchavit and scrutinizes numerous misconceptions and popular myths about code talking and the secrecy surrounding the practice. With appendixes that include a timeline of pertinent events, biographies of known code talkers, and related World War I data, this book is the first comprehensive work ever published on Native American code talkers in the Great War and their critical place in American military history.

Mere decades after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the promise of European democracy seems to be out of joint. What has become of the once-shared memory of victory over fascism? Historical revisionism and nationalist propaganda in the post-Yugoslav context have tried to eradicate the legacy of partisan and socialist struggles, while Yugonostalgia commodifies the partisan/socialist past. It is against these dominant 'archives' that this book launches the partisan counter-archive, highlighting the symbolic power of artistic works that echo and envision partisan legacy and rupture. It comprises a body of works that emerged either during the people's liberation struggle or in later socialist periods, tracing a counter-archival surplus and revolutionary remainder that invents alternative protocols of remembrance and commemoration. The book covers rich (counter-)archival material - from partisan poems, graphic works and photography, to monuments and films - and ends by describing the recent revisionist un-doing of the partisan past. It contributes to the Yugoslav politico-aesthetical "history of the oppressed" as an alternative journey to the partisan past that retrieves revolutionary resources from the past for the present.

This soldier's pocketbook from 1944, and the tale of its creation, reveal a fascinating moment of history: a snapshot of prejudices, expectations, assumptions and fears. It was created in conditions of secrecy to prepare British and Allied soldiers for entering and occupying Germany - but at a time when even victory was not guaranteed. What would they face? How would they be treated? How would they manage a population they were used to thinking of only as "enemy combatants"?Part practical guide, part everyman's history of the German people, part propaganda tool, it is an instantly absorbing window on an uncertain time. It shows how the Allied civilian and military command wanted to condition the ordinary serviceman's thoughts about what he would encounter. Today's reader will find here opinionated comment and crude stereotype, but also subtle insights and humor - intentional and unintentional. The pocketbook says as much about the mindset of its British compilers as it does about the German people or about the Nazi regime that eventually the soldiers would topple. An illuminating introduction, drawing on the National Archives' unique original records, reveals the intelligence community's misgivings and disagreements about the content of the pocketbook as it went through its various stages.