New Books in the Library

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

By Nathan Englander. NY: Vintage Books, 2013
A New York Times Notable Book. An NPR Best Book of 2012. 
These eight powerful stories, dazzling in their display of language and imagination, show a celebrated short-story writer and novelist grappling with the great questions of modern life.


From the title story, a provocative portrait of two marriages inspired by Raymond Carver’s masterpiece, to “Peep Show” and “How We Avenged the Blums,” two stories that return to the author’s classic themes of sexual longing and ingenuity in the face of adversity, these stories affirm Nathan Englander’s place at the very forefront of contemporary American fiction. Read More

Taking Root: My Live As A Child Of Janusz Korczak - The Father Of Children's Rights. The biography of Shlomo Nadel.

By Lea Lipiner. Translated by Ora Baumgarten. Toronto: Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth, 2015.

Shlomo Nadel was born in 1920 in Warsaw, Poland. His father died when he was very young and his mother was forced to place Shlomo in Dr. Korczak’s orphanage and his younger brother Simcha (Samek) in a very different type of orphanage. Nadel thrived during his time at the orphanage (1927 -1935) and became the resident photographer. It was the orphanage’s policy to “discharge” children at the age of 15. It was a harsh reality for Nadel to face, but the skills he acquired served him well. Shlomo Nadel's memories of the orphanage reveal the story of a wonderful institution founded by Dr. Korczak for Jewish children in Warsaw. 

Borrow the book from our library or download the book for free here.  Special thanks to Tatyana Spady for donating the book to our library. 

White House in a Grey City. 

Written and Illustrated by Itzchak Belfer, a child of Janusz Korczak. Toronto: Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth, 2015.

Itzchak Belfer, born in Warsaw, Poland, one of the children in the orphanage under the management of Dr. Korczak, was the only survivor of his large family which was wiped out in the Holocaust.

Itzchak fulfilled his dream of living in Israel and studied at the Avni Institute of Art and Design. He has channeled his artistic talents, which were already obvious during his years in the orphanage, to the commemoration of Dr. Korczak's work and the memory of his family. Borrow the book from our library or download the book for free here.  Special thanks to Tatyana Spady for donating the book to our library. 

One Voice, Two Lives: From Auschwitz Prisoner to 101st Airborne Trooper

By Cantor David S. Wisnia. NJ: ComteQ Publishing, 2015.

This powerful memoir takes the reader from a peaceful home in Sochaczew, Poland to terror in Auschwitz-Birkenau and lastly to the safety of the Screaming Eagles. David Wisnia, a child singing star, was the middle child in a family of five. His father was a prosperous furniture manufacturer; his mother a contented housewife.  After the family moved to Warsaw, David’s family celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. He remembers the marmalade, a rare delicacy, served on this special day. Months later, Europe was at war, Warsaw was occupied, and tragedy struck his family. David became a fugitive on the run from the Nazis. Special thanks to Carl Shuthoff for donating this book to our library. Read More

A Brief Stop on the Road From Auschwitz.

By Goran Rosenberg. Translated by Sarah Death. NY: Other Press, 2015. Winner of the August Prize. 

A shattering memoir by a journalist about his father’s attempt to survive the aftermath of Auschwitz in a small industrial town in Sweden. On August 2, 1947 a young man gets off a train in a small Swedish town to begin his life anew. Having endured the ghetto of Lodz, the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the slave camps and transports during the final months of Nazi Germany, his final challenge is to survive the survival. 

In this intelligent and deeply moving book, Göran Rosenberg returns to his own childhood to tell the story of his father: walking at his side, holding his hand, trying to get close to him. It is also the story of the chasm between the world of the child, permeated by the optimism, progress, and collective oblivion of postwar Sweden, and the world of the father, darkened by the long shadows of the past. Read more