Jewish History

In autumn 1942, Anna Goldenberg's great-grandparents and one of their sons are deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Hans, their elder son, survives by hiding in an apartment in the middle of Nazi-controlled Vienna. But this is no Anne Frank-like existence; teenage Hans passes time in the municipal library and buys standing-room tickets to the Vienna State Opera. Hans never sees his family again. Goldenberg reconstructs this unique story in magnificent reportage.

Gilbert Michlin's sober text thoroughly documents the story of a Jewish immigrant family in France during the war years. Known as the country of enlightenment and human rights, France drew many Jews from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, including Michlin's parents, who fled the harsh conditions of Poland in the mid-1920s. Michlin's memoir evokes the golden years of his family's life in prewar Paris, where he was born, but also reflects on the difficulties of being Jewish in France.

Based on the true story of the French villagers in WWII who saved thousands of Jews, this novel tells how a group of young teenagers stood up for what is right. Among them is a young Jewish boy who learns to forge documents to save his mother and later goes on to save hundreds of lives with his skills. There is also a girl who overcomes her fear to carry messages for the Resistance. And a boy who smuggles people into Switzerland. But there is always the threat that they will be caught. As the knot tightens, the young people must race against time to bring their friends to safety.

On June 6, 1944, Werner T. Angress parachuted down from a C-47 into German-occupied France with the 82nd Airborne Division. Nine days later, he was captured behind enemy lines and, concealing his identity as a German-born Jew, became a prisoner of war. Eventually, he was freed by US forces, rejoined the fight, and participated in the liberation of a concentration camp. Although he was an American soldier, less than 10 years before he had been an enthusiastically patriotic German-Jewish boy. Rejected and threatened by the Nazi regime, the Angress family fled....

In the eighth century, a debate between Sergius the Stylite and a Jew occurred. The discussion was conveniently titled Debate against a Jew. It records arguments about the relevance of biblical texts to Christians and the Jewish people. The anti-Jewish perspectives of Sergius are not surprising. The response given by his Jewish interlocutor is, however. The Jew noted that he was surprised by the number of Christians who attended his synagogue, contributed to it, and celebrated various Jewish holidays alongside Jews.

Anything But Yes is the true story of a young woman's struggle to defend her identity in the face of relentless attempts to destroy it. In 1749, eighteen-year-old Anna del Monte was seized at gunpoint from her home in the Jewish ghetto of Rome and thrown into a convent cell at the Casa dei Catecumeni, the house of converts.

In Holocaust: A Jewish Survivor Testimony, you'll meet Regina, a Polish woman who lived through the Holocaust during World War II. She was only a young girl of 22 when she was captured by German soldiers, and the events of her life since then provide a picture of what it was like to experience the horror of the Holocaust first hand.

The award-winning New York Times columnist and former foreign correspondent turns a compassionate yet discerning eye on the legacy of his own family - most notably his mother's - in order to understand more profoundly the nature of modern Jewish experience. Through his emotionally lucid prose, we relive the anomie of European Jews after the Holocaust, following them from Lithuania to South Africa, England, the United States, and Israel.

They Forgot to Tell Me I Was Jewish is the story of acclaimed jazz pianist Les Horan, born in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. They Forgot to Tell Me I Was Jewish begins with a montage of Les' early memories: When his family is hiding in an underground bunker, he thinks they're camping in the woods. When Hungarian soldiers, under the impression that he's a girl, take him on a picnic, he has no idea of the danger he's in. It would appeal to listeners who want to learn about the effects of the Holocaust, postwar anti-Semitism bound in a uniquely personal memoir.

From the creators of the smash hit play comes the ultimate audiobook of Jewish humor, a hysterical guide to Judaism that explores all of the religion's stereotypes, history, and shameless guilt trips.

Through meticulously researched and stirring accounts — some well known and some chronicled here in book form for the first time — Doreen Rappaport brings to light the defiance of tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. These resisters answered the genocidal madness and unspeakable depravity that was Hitler’s Holocaust with the greatest weapons of all — courage, ingenuity, the will to survive, and the resolve to save others or to die trying.

In 1942, in Kaunas, Lithuania, the occupying German forces decreed that any pregnant Jewish woman would be summarily executed. On August 26, 1942, a Jewish woman realized she was pregnant and approached her rabbi, Ephraim Oshry, seeking advice. He determined that an abortion was necessary to save her life. The situation was something no woman or rabbi should have to face. But the scenario was real, and Rabbi Ephraim Oshry ruled based on Jewish law.

The History of Yud-Tes Kislev. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad- Lubavitch Chasidism, was arrested, persecuted, and imprisoned in the year 1798 for his selfless efforts to strengthen the Jewish people and to disseminate Chasidic teachings. Rabbi Schneur Zalman's arrest imperiled not only his own life, but also the future of Chasidism.This book explores this noteworthy turning point in the Chasidic movement, and its importance as a milestone in Jewish History.

A young American author immerses herself in modern Jewish Hungary. The 21 stories she shares will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you want to be your own best self. Somehow I Am Different provides an opportunity to connect in a world that otherwise begs us to stand alone. This book serves as a reminder that in spite of the factors working against us, we have the power to make a difference.

One of the most common assumptions about World War II is that the Jews did not actively or effectively resist their own extermination at the hands of the Nazis. In this powerful book, Benjamin Ginsberg convincingly argues that the Jews not only resisted the Germans but actually played a major role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. The question, he contends, is not whether the Jews fought but where and by what means.

In the context of Crypto-Jewish individuals and communities, both in the Iberian Peninsula and in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of the New World, as well as in India, the knowledge of and distinction between halakhah and minhag persisted. But as contact with established Jewish communities (in particular, in Spain before the expulsion), with rabbis, and with Jewish texts lessened, the overall knowledge of Jewish practice and beliefs diminished. This short work explores the practices and beliefs that characterized the dual identity of crypto-Jews.

Peace between Arabs and Jews seems forever out of reach, both sides caught in a never-ending cycle of violence and revenge. But while treaties and other top-down solutions have had little lasting effect, peacemakers on the ground are creating real change - within themselves and with their enemies. In Bridges Across an Impossible Divide, American professor Marc Gopin offers an unprecedented exploration of the spiritual lives of Arab and Jewish peacemakers who have evolved deep friendships despite decades of war and suffering on all sides.

This audiobook is the first audiobook in the new academic book series, Hermit Kingdom Studies in Christianity and Judaism, which seeks to encourage advancement of knowledge in the area of Hebrew language studies, Jewish historical studies, and Early Christianity/New Testament studies. The academic series particularly encourages the use of interdisciplinary approaches and creative thinking.

This true story begins long ago in Spain, where a bride and groom are gifted a hand-painted haggadah. It is used at many Passover seders until the Spanish Inquisition when the family escapes. The haggadah survived for centuries in different countries. Scholars declared it a treasure. To protect it from the Nazis, a curator smuggled it out of a Sarajevo museum and hid it in a village mosque. On Passover of 1995, with bombs exploding overhead, the Bosnian president brought out the book from an underground vault to show the world that it was safe.

Memories of an Italian Holocaust refugee as told to his son.