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This book brings to light women's experiences in the Holocaust. It
explains why women's difficulties were different to those of men.
Men were taken away and the women were left to cope with children
and elderly relatives and obliged to take on new roles. Women like
Andrew Sachs' mother had to deal with organising departure for a
foreign country and making choices about what to take and what to
abandon. The often desperate hunt for food for themselves and those
in their care more often than not fell to the women, as did medical
issues. They had to face pregnancies, abortions and, in some camps,
medical experiments. Many women wrote diaries, memoirs, letters and
books about their experiences and these have been used extensively
here. The accounts include women who fought or worked in the
resistance, like Zivia Lubetkin who was part of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising. Dr Gisella Perl was a doctor in Auschwitz under the
infamous Dr Mengele. Some young girls acted as Kashariyot,
underground couriers between ghettos. Their varied experiences
represent the extremities of human suffering, endeavour and
courage. The author herself is a survivor, born in 1944. Her mother
struggled to keep her safe in the mayhem of the Budapest Ghetto
when she was a tiny baby and dealt with the threat from Russian
soldiers after the liberation of Budapest in January 1945.
Who Betrayed the Jews? is a groundbreaking study that examines the
various ways Jews were betrayed by their fellow countrymen during
the Holocaust. In many cases they regarded themselves as a person
of their nation first and a Jew second, so persecution came as a
terrible shock to them. Many had fought for their country in the
First World War, but this offered very little protection - not even
for those awarded Germany's Iron Cross. They were forced out of
their professions and universities. Their neighbours and school
friends betrayed them to the authorities. The authorities 'legally'
withdrew their rights and stripped them of their businesses under
Aryanization policies. Many who professed to be Christian were
affected by the Nazis' racial laws and found themselves and their
children categorised as 'halfbreeds'. Bodies such as the police and
railway companies co-operated with the Nazis in transporting Jews
to their deaths or to be subjected to unspeakable medical
experiments. The betrayal did not end in 1945 as there is evidence
of Holocaust survivors being attacked as and when they returned
home. Agnes Grunwald-Spier MBE reveals, among other accounts, the
story of the slave labourers who toiled for German firms and
international companies like Ford; the fate of Jewish Olympians who
were murdered; and the impact of Nazi policies on figures such as
Margaret Thatcher and Coco Chanel.
The inspiring stories of courageous non-Jews who risked their own
lives to save Jews from the Holocaust Thanks to Thomas Keneally's
book "Schindler's Ark," and the film based on it, "Schindler's
List," people have become more aware of the fact that, in the midst
of Hitler's extermination of the Jews, courage and humanity could
still overcome evil. While six million Jews were murdered by the
Nazi regime, some were saved through the actions of non-Jews whose
consciences would not allow them to pass by on the other side, and
many are honored by Israel's official memorial to Jewish Holocaust
victims, Yad Vashem, as "Righteous among the Nations" for their
actions. As a baby, Agnes Grunwald-Spier was herself saved from the
horrors of Auschwitz by an unknown official, and is now a trustee
of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. She has collected the stories
of 30 individuals who rescued Jews, providing a new insight into
why these people were prepared to risk so much for their fellow men
and women. With a foreword by one of the leading experts on the
subject, this is an ultimately uplifting account of how some good
deeds really do shine in a weary world.
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