Survivor Biography

1944: Heavy footfalls thud on the road on a rainy May night. A band of gunmen scour a hilltop farm, acting on rumors that it harbors a Jewish family. For 18 months, the Rozeneks have been hiding safely, but their luck is about to run out. Only one from the family of six will live to see the sunrise. Sixteen-year-old Hena Rozenek shelters in the woods until morning . . . and then she runs.

Keri Blakinger always lived life at full throttle. Growing up, that meant throwing herself into competitive figure skating with an all-consuming passion that led her to nationals. But when her skating career suddenly fell apart, that meant diving into self-destruction with the intensity she once saved for the ice. For the next nine years, Keri ricocheted from one dark place to the next: living on the streets, selling drugs and sex, and shooting up between classes all while trying to hold herself together enough to finish her degree at Cornell.

For more than 30 years, Phillip Maisel has worked selflessly to record the harrowing stories of Holocaust survivors. Volunteering at Melbourne's Jewish Holocaust Centre, Phillip has listened tirelessly to their memories, preserved their voices and proven, time and time again, just how healing storytelling can be. Each testimony of survival is a miracle in itself - earning Phillip the nickname 'the Keeper of Miracles'.

Follow the winding path of a Jewish refugee turned US Army interrogator who ends up processing Nazi scientists during WWII. Fred Michel was a teenager when he escaped Nazi Germany with his family. When war broke out, he was drafted and trained at Camp Ritchie, a high level intelligence center. He ended up at an obscure fort along the Potomac River known only as P.O. Box 1142.

In the tranquil towns of New England during the 1970s, a sinister mystery unfolded when several boys vanished without a trace, and the community’s peace was shattered. One boy’s body was found years later, but what happened to the others remained a mystery. In 2013, author David McGrath, a former host on the Law Enforcement Today Network and an investigator with a relentless drive for justice, watched a documentary about the missing boys.

Seeing every challenge as an opportunity for growth, Dr. Ichak Adizes moved beyond a childhood marked by imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp and immigration to an unfamiliar country to discover the benefits of opening his heart. Rejecting isolation and fear, he became a renowned thought leader who advises companies and governments worldwide on structuring thriving organizations around a culture of trust and respect. Dr. Adizes’s personal story is more than a string of external events that propelled him through adversity after adversity to become the compassionate person he is today.

Erika Krouse has one of those faces. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she’s doing. Then a lawyer named Grayson assigns her to investigate a sexual assault, a college student who was attacked by football players and recruits at a party a year earlier. Erika knows she should turn the assignment down.

After surviving the horrors of the Holocaust - in ghettos, on death marches, and in concentration camps - a young couple seeks refuge in Canada. They settle into a new life, certain that the terrors of their past are behind them. They build themselves a cozy little cottage on a lake in Muskoka, a cottage that becomes emblematic of their victory over the Nazis. The charming retreat is a safe haven, a refuge from haunted memories. That is, until a single act of unspeakable violence defiles their sanctuary.

Based on the true story of her mother, Mona Golabek describes the inspirational story of Lisa Jura's escape from Nazi-controlled Austria to England on the famed Kindertransport. Jewish musical prodigy Lisa Jura has a wonderful life in Vienna. But when the Nazis start closing in on the city, life changes irreversibly. Although he has three daughters, Lisa's father is only able to secure one berth on the Kindertransport. The family decides to send Lisa to London so that she may pursue her dreams of a career as a concert pianist.

This book details Alice’s struggles in navigating life and climbing up the ladder of success. It is about taking a step ahead from the fear of failure and conquering all the challenges that life lays in front of you with persistence. Remember, when struggling in life, you have a choice; you can either dwell on your miseries or you can use them as a stepping stone to be stronger.

Quickly becoming a cornerstone of Holocaust historiography, this is a devastatingly stark memoir from one of the lone survivors of Treblinka. Why do some live while so many others perish? Tiny children, old men, beautiful girls - in the gas chambers of Treblinka, all are equal. The Nazis kept the fires of Treblinka burning night and day, a central cog in the wheel of the Final Solution.

When veteran war reporter Benjamin Hall woke up in Kyiv on the morning of March 14, 2022, he had no idea that, within hours, Russian bombs would nearly end his life. As a journalist for Fox News, Hall had worked in dangerous war zones like Syria and Afghanistan, but with three young daughters at home, life on the edge was supposed to be a thing of the past. Yet when Russia viciously attacked Ukraine in February 2022, Hall quickly volunteered to go. A few weeks later, while on assignment, Hall and his crew were blown up in a Russian strike.

Joseph and Yitzhak are two young brothers hiding under fake Christian identities in the Aryan section of a city in Poland during the Holocaust. Courage and Grace is the chilling and inspiring documentation of a story that will leave you riveted to your seat, flood you with heartbreaking emotions and, at the same time, with enormous hope for a better future.

Told by a former high-level member of the Peoples Temple and Jonestown survivor, Seductive Poison is the "truly unforgettable" (Kirkus Reviews) story of how one woman was seduced by one of the most notorious cults in recent memory and how she found her way back to sanity.

A Delayed Life is the breathtaking memoir that tells the story of Dita Kraus, the real-life Librarian of Auschwitz. Dita Kraus grew up in Prague in an intellectual, middle-class Jewish family. She went to school, played with her friends, and never thought of herself as being different - until the advent of the Holocaust. Torn from her home, Dita was sent to Auschwitz with her family. From her time in the children’s block of Auschwitz to her liberation from the camps and on into her adulthood, Dita’s powerful memoir sheds light on an incredible life - one that is delayed no longer.

Kati and her younger sister, Ilonka, arrive in Canada with painful memories from the Holocaust, which has taken both of their parents. Their harrowing time alone in the Budapest ghetto is fresh in their minds, as are their fragile hopes to be adopted. But their lives in Toronto are far from what they expected, and full of broken promises. As the sisters navigate their new surroundings, they each grow fiercely strong and independent, while holding onto the comfort that they will be Never Far Apart.

Amid the constant rain of German bombs and the escalating violence of World War II, British parents by the thousands chose to send their children out of the country: the wealthy, independently; the poor, through a government relocation program called CORB. In September 1940, passenger liner SS City of Benares set out in a convoy of 19 ships sailing for Canada. On board were 90 CORB children, chaperones, and crew, along with paying passengers. When the war ships escorting the Benares to safe waters peeled off, a German submarine attacked and torpedoed the Benares.

The sound of snapping twigs closed in on the five teenagers enjoying an evening around a glowing campfire at Gitchie Manitou State Park. The night of music and laughter had taken a dark turn. Evil loomed just beyond the tree line, and before the night was over, one of the Midwest's most horrific mass murders had left its bloodstains spewed across the campsite. One managed to survive and would come to be known as the "Gitchie Girl".

Betty Ford: First Lady, Women’s Advocate, Survivor, Trailblazer is the inspiring story of an ordinary Midwestern girl thrust onto the world stage and into the White House under extraordinary circumstances. Setting a precedent as first lady, Betty Ford refused to be silenced by her critics as she publicly championed equal rights for women and spoke out about issues that had previously been taboo - breast cancer, depression, abortion, and sexuality.

Elida Friedman was not supposed to have been born. In the Kovno Ghetto in Lithuania, Nazi law forbade Jewish women from giving birth. Yet, despite the fear of death, Dr. Jonah Friedman and his wife Tzila choose to bring a daughter into the world, a little girl they name Elida—meaning non-birth in Hebrew.