(14)This pioneering work on Polish family history is designed to provide the American researcher with the kind of information he needs in order to succeed in his genealogical research. Written by a national director of the Polish Genealogical Society of America, it throws cold water on the myth that successful Polish genealogical research is beyond the powers of ordinary people. Mrs. Chorzempa begins with an examination of Polish-American resources, touching first on records kept by the Polish-American family, then veering off into a discussion of the standard records employed in genealogical research, such as census and naturalization records, ships' passenger lists, vital records of birth, marriage and death, records of fraternal societies, newspapers, church records, and military records. She treats each of these record groups in the context of Polish-American research, setting a framework for her discussion of the records held by the LDS Church in Salt Lake City. She also provides a breakdown of libraries and archives with Polish genealogical materials and a comprehensive list of Polish genealogical societies. The bulk of the book is focused on research in Poland, as the author shows the reader how to find and use church and civil records; how and where to locate research services, libraries, and archives; how to make sense of Polish names and the naming practices of the major ethnic groups; and how, ultimately, to deal with the Polish language. To clinch it, there is even a letter-writing guide, a transliteration of queries and requests to be sent to Polish churches, civil record offices, and institutions for purposes of obtaining assistance.
(2)This collection of Enlightenment Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau includes his most influential works: THE SOCIAL CONTRACT, CONFESSIONS, EMILE, and includes several other essays of interest: A DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY, INEQUALITY AMONG MEN, CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF POLAND, and A CONSTITUTIONAL PROJECT FOR CORSICA.
Rousseau was a major Swiss philosopher, writer, and composer of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought.
This ebook is DRM free and includes an active table of contents.
September, 1939. Przemysl, Poland. Three-year-old Renata is woken by her Mamusia in the middle of the night and bundled into the basement. The peacock quilt she is wrapped in reminds her of a story about a giant who guards a mysterious place called the Underworld. She drifts back to sleep as the sound of thunder rages around them.
No one has explained to Renata what war is. She knows her Tatus, a doctor, is in Europe with the Polish Army and that her beautiful Mamusia is not allowed to work at the university anymore. But, more than anything, she notices that their frequent visitors - among them Great Aunt Zuzia and Uncle Julek with their gifts of melon and lovely clothes - have stopped coming entirely. One morning Mamusia returns home with little yellow, six-pointed stars for them to wear. Renata thinks that they will keep them safe.
June, 1942. Two soldiers in grey-green uniforms burst into their apartment carrying guns. Renata, Mamusia and grandmother ’Babcia’ are taken to the Ghetto and crammed into one room with other frightened families. The adults are forced to work long hours at the factory and to survive on next to no food. One day Mamusia and Babcia do not return from their shifts.
Renata is six years old. Utterly alone, she is passed from place to place and survives through the willingness of ordinary people to take the most deadly risks. Her unlikely blonde hair and blue eyes and other twists of fate save her life but stories become her salvation. Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales transport her to a magical world; David Copperfield reminds her what it is like to be on your own; and the family in Swallow and Amazons become the family she longs for.
A true story of the horrors of war, Let Me Tell You a Story is a powerful and moving memoir of growing up in extraordinary times, and of the magical discovery of books.
(162)All But My Life is the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein's six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty. From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops--including the man who was to become her husband--in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey.
Gerda's serene and idyllic childhood is shattered when Nazis march into Poland on September 3, 1939. Although the Weissmanns were permitted to live for a while in the basement of their home, they were eventually separated and sent to German labor camps. Over the next few years Gerda experienced the slow, inexorable stripping away of "all but her life." By the end of the war she had lost her parents, brother, home, possessions, and community; even the dear friends she made in the labor camps, with whom she had shared so many hardships, were dead.
Despite her horrifying experiences, Klein conveys great strength of spirit and faith in humanity. In the darkness of the camps, Gerda and her young friends manage to create a community of friendship and love. Although stripped of the essence of life, they were able to survive the barbarity of their captors. Gerda's beautifully written story gives an invaluable message to everyone. It introduces them to last century's terrible history of devastation and prejudice, yet offers them hope that the effects of hatred can be overcome.
(53)During World War II, Nazi doctor Josef Mengele subjected some 3,000 twins to medical experiments of unspeakable horror; only 160 survived. In this remarkable narrative, the life of Auschwitz's Angel of Death is told in counterpoint to the lives of the survivors, who until now have kept silent about their heinous death-camp ordeals.
(56)Filip Müller came to Auschwitz with one of the earliest transports from Slovakia in April 1942 and began working in the gassing installations and crematoria in May. He was still alive when the gassings ceased in November 1944. He saw millions come and disappear; by sheer luck he survived. Müller is neither a historian nor a psychologist; he is a source—one of the few prisoners who saw the Jewish people die and lived to tell about it. Eyewitness Auschwitz is one of the key documents of the Holocaust. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "A shattering, centrally important testimony."—from the Foreword by Yehuda Bauer. "A very detailed description of day-to-day life, if we can call it that, in Hell’s inmost circle...Having read other books of this kind, I had expected to read this one straight through. But no, Eyewitness Auschwitz is jammed with infernal information too terrible to be taken all at once."—Terrence Des Pres, New Republic. "Riveting...It is a tale of unprecedented, incomparable horror. Profoundly, intensely painful; but it is essential reading."—Jewish Press Features.
(467)The harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.
Since the end of Communism, Jews from around the world have visited Poland to tour Holocaust-related sites. A few venture further, seeking to learn about their own Polish roots and connect with contemporary Poles. For their part, a growing number of Poles are fascinated by all things Jewish. Erica T. Lehrer explores the intersection of Polish and Jewish memory projects in the historically Jewish neighborhood of Kazimierz in Krakow. Her own journey becomes part of the story as she demonstrates that Jews and Poles use spaces, institutions, interpersonal exchanges, and cultural representations to make sense of their historical inheritances.
(50)During World War II, Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, organized a rescue network of fellow social workers to save 2,500 Jewish children from certain death in the Warsaw ghetto. Incredibly, after the war her heroism, like that of many others, was suppressed by communist Poland and remained virtually unknown for 60 years.
Unknown, that is, until three high school girls from an economically depressed, rural school district in southeast Kansas stumbled upon a tantalizing reference to Sendler’s rescues, which they fashioned into a history project, a play they called Life in a Jar. Their innocent drama was first seen in Kansas, then the Midwest, then New York, Los Angeles, Montreal, and finally Poland, where they elevated Irena Sendler to a national hero, championing her legacy of tolerance and respect for all people.
Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project is a Holocaust history and more. It is the inspirational story of Protestant students from Kansas, each carrying her own painful burden, each called in her own complex way to the history of a Catholic woman who knocked on Jewish doors in the Warsaw ghetto and, in Sendler’s own words, “tried to talk the mothers out of their children.” Inspired by Irena Sendler, they are living examples of the power of one person to change the world and models for young people everywhere.
Sixty percent (60%) of the royalties of Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project are donated to the Irena Sendler/Life in a Jar Foundation. The foundation promotes Irena Sendler’s legacy and encourages educators and students to emulate the project by focusing on unsung heroes in history to teach respect and understanding among all people, regardless of race, religion, or creed.
(74)In 1943, with Lvov's 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of Polish Jews daringly sought refuge in the city's sewer system. The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, shares one of the most intimate, harrowing and ultimately triumphant tales of survival to emerge from the Holocaust. The Girl in the Green Sweater is Chiger's first-person account of the fourteen months she spent with her family in the fetid sewers of Lvov.
The Girl in the Green Sweater is also the story of Leopold Socha, the group's unlikely savior. A Polish Catholic and former thief, Socha risked his life to help Chiger's underground family survive, bringing them food and supplies. A moving memoir of life under unimaginable circumstances, The Girl in the Green Sweater is ultimately a tale of intimate survival, friendship, and redemption.
(80)The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.
The extraordinary, controversial story of Vera Gran, beautiful, exotic prewar Polish singing star; legendary, sensual contralto, Dietrich-like in tone, favorite of the 1930s Warsaw nightclubs, celebrated before, and during, her year in the Warsaw Ghetto (spring 1941–summer 1942) . . . and her piano accompanist: W³adys³aw Szpilman, made famous by Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning film The Pianist, based on Szpilman’s memoir.
Following the war, singer and accompanist, each of whom had lived the same harrowing story, were met with opposing fates: Szpilman was celebrated for his uncanny ability to survive against impossible odds, escaping from a Nazi transport loading site, smuggling in weapons to the Warsaw Ghetto for the Jewish resistance.
Gran was accused of collaborating with the Nazis; denounced as a traitor, a “Gestapo whore,” reviled, imprisoned, ultimately exonerated yet afterward still shunned as a performer . . . in effect, sentenced to death without dying . . . until she was found by Agata Tuszyñska, acclaimed poet and biographer of, among others, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel laureate (“Her book has few equals”—The Times Literary Supplement).
Tuszyñska, who won the trust of the once-glamorous former singer, then living in a basement in Paris—elderly, bitter, shut away from the world—encouraged Gran to tell her story, including her seemingly inexplicable decision to return to Warsaw to be reunited with her family after she had fled Hitler’s invading army, knowing she would have to live within the ghetto walls and, to survive, continue to perform at the popular Café Sztuka.
At the heart of the book, Gran’s complex, fraught relationship with her accompanist, performing together month after month, for the many who came from within the ghetto and outside its walls to hear her sing.
Using Vera Gran’s reflections and memories, as well as archives, letters, statements, and interviews with Warsaw Ghetto historians and survivors, Agata Tuszyñska has written an explosive, resonant portrait of lives lived inside a nightmare time, exploring the larger, more profound question of the nature of collaboration, of the price of survival, and of the long, treacherous shadow cast in its aftermath.
The author of these texts was an ethnic German, born, raised and educated in the territories surrendered to Poland under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Absolutely bilingual in both Polish and German, the author dedicated her life to a comparative study of Polish and German history and literature. The information presented here, in English translation, in book form for the first time, is otherwise available only in relatively inaccessible or highly difficult and complicated works written by specialists, almost never in English. "The Image of the Germans in Polish Literature" is an absolutely unique piece of literature providing a unique insight into events and mentalities which continue to produce repercussions to this day. These texts are essential reading for anyone interested, not only in the causes of the Second World War, but in arriving at an understanding of certain German actions and attitudes which would otherwise be incomprehensible. Any equation has two sides.
(85)"To this day, I don't even know what my mother's real name is."
Helen Fremont was raised as a Roman Catholic. It wasn't until she was an adult, practicing law in Boston, that she discovered her parents were Jewish--Holocaust survivors living invented lives. Not even their names were their own. In this powerful memoir, Helen Fremont delves into the secrets that held her family in a bond of silence for more than four decades, recounting with heartbreaking clarity a remarkable tale of survival, as vivid as fiction but with the resonance of truth.
Driven to uncover their roots, Fremont and her sister pieced together an astonishing story: of Siberian Gulags and Italian royalty, of concentration camps and buried lives. After Long Silence is about the devastating price of hiding the truth; about families; about the steps we take, foolish or wise, to protect ourselves and our loved ones. No one who reads this book can be unmoved, or fail to understand the seductive, damaging power of secrets.
What Fremont and her sister discover is an astonishing story: one of Siberian gulags and Italian royalty, of concentration camps and buried lives. AFTER LONG SILENCE is about the devastating price of hiding the truth; about families; about the steps we take, foolish or wise, to protect ourselves and our loved ones. No one who reads this book can be unmoved, or fail to understand the seductive, damaging power of secrets. -->
(98)Olga Lengyel tells, frankly and without compromise, one of the most horrifying stories of all time. This true, documented chronicle is the intimate, day-to-day record of a woman who survived the nightmare of Auschwitz and Birkenau. It was a shocking experience, it is a shocking book. In a letter to Lengyel, Albert Einstein said, "You have done a real service by letting the ones who are now silent and most forgotten speak." Of the book, actress Mira Sorvino said, "...The amazing story of a woman who survived the Nazi concentration camps. It's unbelievable yet horrifying because it's true."
(268)2008 Orion Book Award
The New York Times bestseller: a true story in which the keepers of the Warsaw zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.
" THE POLISH-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
The tide of Polish immigration grew continually until 1914 .The number of returns to Poland was also, indeed, increasing, but these on the average did not exceed 30 per cent,(...)"
