Sons and Soldiers

Sons and Soldiers: TheUntold Story of the Jews who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler

Bruce Henderson

“Sons and Soldiers begins during the menacing rise of Hitler’s Nazi party, as Jewish families were trying desperately to get out of Europe. Bestselling author Bruce Henderson captures the heartbreaking stories of parents choosing to send their young sons away to uncertain futures in America, perhaps never to see them again. As these boys became young men, they were determined to join the fight in Europe. Henderson describes how they were recruited into the U.S. Army and how their unique mastery of the German language and psychology was put to use to interrogate German prisoners of war.

These young men – known as the Ritchie Boys, after the Maryland camp where they trained – knew what the Nazis would do to them if they were captured. Yet they leap at the opportunity to be sent in small, elite teams to join every major combat unit in Europe, where they collected key tactical intelligence on enemy strength, troop and armored movements, and defensive positions that saved American lives and helped win the war. A postwar army report found that nearly 60 percent of the credible intelligence gathered in Europe came from the Ritchie Boys.

Sons and Soldiers draws on original interviews and extensive archival research to vividly re-create the stories of six of the men, tracing their journeys from childhood through their escapes from Europe, their feats and sacrifices during the war, and finally their desperate attempts to find their missing loved ones. Sons and Soldiers is an epic story of heroism, courage, and patriotism that will not soon be forgotten.

Provided by publisher.

Books are available to borrow from the Holocaust Center's library

Email: rosa@holocaustcenterseattle.org

How could this happen: Explaining the Holocaust

How could this happen: Explaining the Holocaust
Dan McMillan

"The Holocaust has long seemed incomprehensible, a monumental crime that beggars our powers of description and explanation. Historians have probed the many sources of this tragedy, but no account has united the various causes into an overarching synthesis that answers the vital question: How was such a nightmare possible in the heart of Western civilization? In How Could This Happen, historian Dan McMillan distills the vast body of Holocaust research into a cogent explanation and comprehensive analysis of the genocide's many causes, revealing how a once-progressive society like Germany could have carried out this crime. The Holocaust, he explains, was caused not by one but by a combination of factors--from Germany's failure to become a democracy until 1918, to the widespread acceptance of anti-Semitism and scientific racism, to the effects of World War I, which intensified political divisions within the country and drastically lowered the value of human life in the minds of an entire generation. Masterfully synthesizing the myriad causes that led Germany to disaster, McMillan shows why thousands of Germans carried out the genocide while millions watched, with cold indifference, as it enveloped their homeland. Persuasive and compelling, How Could This Happen explains how a perfect storm of bleak circumstances, malevolent ideas, and damaged personalities unleashed history's most terrifying atrocity"-


Books are available to borrow from the Holocaust Center's Library
Emai; rosa@holocaustcenterseattle.org

Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History

by Helen Epstein 
Publisher: Holmes & Meier Publishers; Reprint edition (April 15, 2005)

Helen Epstein, an American journalist by profession, the daughter of Frances Epstein, a survivor, is drawn upon the death of her mother to search out literally, “where she came from.” Who was this woman with whom, “So intense was our bond, that I was never sure what belonged to whom, where I ended, and where she began.” 

Working from the text of a 12-page letter written by her mother, Epstein sets off on a multinational research project to unearth the history of the three generations of Jewish women who preceded her. I appreciated the richly descriptive history of Jewish life and culture over the centuries in Central Europe and was fascinated by the challenges of her research. But even more compelling was witnessing the evolution during this research of the relationship between Helen, Czech born and American bred, and her European mother who immigrated to the U.S. in 1948. Helen had always loved her mother but now, in uncovering her history, she sought to understand this woman who was an extension of herself.

Epstein’s investigation is fascinating and painstaking – an eight year process. Faced with a lack of official documentation on the lives of ordinary women who were typically not involved in a world beyond the domestic and private, she had to resort to flinging her net wider and wider, having to search for the descendants of someone who would have known her grandmother or great-grandmother and then moving on from there to reconstruct their lives.  Epstein claimed she, “… began to feel like an archaeologist, who, instead of collecting shards of broken pottery, was picking up pieces of narrative.” 

What she finds is the story of her connection to this line of three Jewish women who challenged the constraints of their role in Jewish society, evolved with history, and wended their way in a continually unstable landscape where their fortunes were constantly changing.

The narrative is beautifully written, weaving the past with the present, and unearthing the interlocking mysteries that tie family through generations. Epstein’s previous book, Children of the Holocaust, also concerns the topic of second-generation Holocaust survivors.

Available to borrow at the Holocaust Center for Humanity (email Rosa@HolocaustCenterSeattle.org to request the book) or on Amazon. 

The House of Ashes by Oscar Pinkus

An unforgettable book. Regarded as a one of the literary classics of the Holocaust, it is a beautifully written and emotionally powerful first person account of the author’s experience in surviving WW II. I hesitate to write about this book for fear of not doing it justice. Perhaps the immediacy of the experience is tied to the journal he kept throughout the war and used in writing his story. His prose is gentle and direct: silent as a shadow; or speaking of watching the body of his murdered friend, He would float away in pools of green light, then come back hugging the cobblestones. He was not a corpse but the silhouette of a murdered city.

The book moves beyond the myopic story of survival for Pinkus and his family, illustrating the larger social and emotional world of those in his orbit as relationships between survivors and rescuers evolve over the course of years of tension. What begins as a monetary transaction eventually becomes a personal relationship with shared goals against a common enemy - the Germans, and protection against the local AK, the Polish Home Army.

In the Epilogue, Oscar Pinkus enumerates every entity in the world that knew genocide was being perpetrated again the Jews and did nothing to stop it. I was left thinking no one wants to be a person who is aware mass murder is being committed and still does nothing. What can we do today to prevent having that same accusation directed at us?   More Info

Reviewed by Kate Boris-Brown

This book is available to borrow from the Holocaust Center's library. Email Rosa@HolocaustCenterSeattle.org. Books will be mailed for free to members. 

The Sweet Dell: The True Story of One Family's Fight to Save Jews in Nazi-Occupied Holland

by Nicholas John Briejer

Winner of the 2016 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Nancy Pearl Award for Best Book, this is the engaging story of the role the author’s maternal grandparents played in providing refuge to Jews escaping the German roundups in Holland. Dr. Pieter Schoorl and Anne Schoorl lived two hours from Amsterdam with their four young children on the family’s isolated farm in Bennekom. Dr. Schoorl maintained a laboratory in Amsterdam and another lab in a village house close to the farm. These facilities were critical to the success of their rescue work as eventually all three locations were used as safe houses for transporting and hiding escaping Jews.

The story of Briejer’s family provides insight to the wartime logistics of resistance and rescue operations, but also provides a view not often presented of the effects of that involvement on the personal relationships of the rescuers and, in this case, their young children who were active in their parents’ work. Pieter and Anne Schoorl are Honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Briejer, who teaches at Pierce College, is a local author. His book is compelling, well-written, and a good addition to the topic of the resistance and rescue in the Netherlands. More info.

Reviewed by Kate Boris-Brown

This book is available to borrow from the Holocaust Center's library - email Rosa@HolocaustCenterSeattle.org. Books are mailed for free to members. 

Featured book for March

Worlds Torn Asunder

Dov Beril Edelstein

"...an important personal and historic document... Gracefully written... a triumph of the human spirit... a universal message." 

-- Prof. Emeritus Michael Kerestesi, Wayne State University

More than a Holocaust survivor memoir. More than just a harrowing tale of survival and hope. What makes this story special is its unique three-dimensional depth.  A retired Rabbi and educator, the author masterfully weaves personal memoir into historical context, with a deep appreciation for Jewish lore and tradition.

Dov Beril Edelstein was Auschwitz inmate #A7868.  He lost both parents, both grandparents and 2 brothers in the holocaust. But he survived... a twisting journey of incredible physical, emotional and spiritual endurance.

But readers of all stripes will also gain a special glimpse into the full richness of Jewish life in Hungary in the years leading up to the war. Jewish faith, customs, community and ethics not only sponsored hope for survivors like Edelstein, these values continue to inspire the forgiveness and tolerance which define the Jewish perspective on this still surreal period of history.

Originally published in the US and later in German by Bohlau Verlag Publishing,  Worlds Torn Asunder has also been used for over a decade as a text at various schools and universities in religion courses with titles like "The Quest for Wholeness."  This enduring memoir is celebrating its 27th year with the release of a new digital version.

Featured book for February

SOMEWHERE THERE IS STILL A SUN
Michael Gruenbaum with Todd Hasak-Lowy

Recommended for Young Readers

Resilience shines throughout Michael Gruenbaum’s “riveting memoir” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) about his time in the Terezin concentration camp during the Holocaust, in this National Jewish Book award finalist and Parents Choice Gold medal award winning title, an ideal companion to the bestselling Boy on the Wooden Box.

Michael “Misha” Gruenbaum enjoyed a carefree childhood playing games and taking walks through Prague with his beloved father. All of that changed forever when the Nazis invaded Prague. The Gruenbaum family was forced to move into the Jewish Ghetto in Prague. Then, after a devastating loss, Michael, his mother and sister were deported to the Terezin concentration camp.

At Terezin, Misha roomed with forty other boys who became like brothers to him. Life in Terezin was a bizarre, surreal balance—some days were filled with friendship and soccer matches, while others brought mortal terror as the boys waited to hear the names on each new list of who was being sent “to the East.”

Those trains were going to Auschwitz. When the day came that his family’s name appeared on a transport list, their survival called for a miracle—one that tied Michael’s fate to a carefully sewn teddy bear, and to his mother’s unshakeable determination to keep her children safe.

Collaborating with acclaimed author Todd Hasak-Lowy, Michael Gruenbaum shares his inspiring story of hope in an unforgettable memoir that recreates his experiences with stunning immediacy. Michael’s story, and the many original documents and photos included alongside it, offer an essential contribution to Holocaust literature.