Books about Righteous from Amazon.com

the New York Times bestseller: a true story in which the keepers of the Warsaw zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.

When Germany invaded poland, stuka bombers devastated warsaw—and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants—otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes.

with her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of the zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonina refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her. 8 pages of illustrations..
Price: $8.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

At a time when the Middle East has come closer to achieving peace than ever before, eminent Israeli historian Benny Morris explodes the myths cherished by both sides to present an epic history of Zionist-Arab relations over the past 120 years.

Tracing the roots of political Zionism back to the pogroms of Russia and the Dreyfus Affair, Morris describes the gradual influx of Jewish settlers into Palestine and the impact they had on the Arab population. Following the Holocaust, the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel, but it also shattered Palestinian Arab society and gave rise to a massive refugee problem. Morris offers distinctive accounts of each of the subsequent Israeli-Arab wars and details the sporadic peace efforts in between, culminating in the peace process initiated by the Rabin Government. In a new afterword to the Vintage edition, he examines Ehud Barak’s leadership, the death of President Assad of Syria, and Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, and the recent renewed conflict with the Palestinians. Studded with illuminating portraits of the major protagonists, Righteous Victimsprovides an authoritative record of the middle east and its continuing struggle toward peace.
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Price: $9.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

IRENE GUT WAS just 17 in 1939, when the Germans and Russians devoured her native Poland. Just a girl, really. But a girl who saw evil and chose to defy it.

“No matter how many Holocaust stories one has read, this one is a must, for its impact is so powerful ”—School Library Journal, Starred

A Book Sense Top Ten Pick

A Publisher’s Weekly Choice of the Year’s Best Books

A Booklist Editors Choice.
Price: $3.16 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Winner of the Booker Prize
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction

Schindler's List is a remarkable work of fiction based on the true story of German industrialist and war profiteer, Oskar Schindler, who, confronted with the horror of the extermination camps, gambled his life and fortune to rescue 1,300 Jews from the gas chambers.

Working with the actual testimony of Schindler's Jews, Thomas Keneally artfully depicts the courage and shrewdness of an unlikely savior, a man who is a flawed mixture of hedonism and decency and who, in the presence of unutterable evil, transcends the limits of his own humanity..
Price: $15.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List popularized the true story of a German businessman who manipulated his Nazi connections and spent his personal fortune to save some 1,200 Jewish prisoners from certain death during the Holocaust. But few know that those lists were made possible by a secret strategy designed by a young Polish Jew at the Plaszów concentration camp. Mietek Pemper’s compelling and moving memoir tells the less-known story of how Schindler’s list really came to pass.

Pemper was born in 1920 into a lively and cultivated Jewish family for whom everything changed in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland. Evicted from their home, they were forced into the Krakow ghetto and, later, into the nearby camp of Plaszów where Pemper’s knowledge of the German language was put to use by the sadistic camp commandant Amon Göth. Forced to work as Göth’s personal stenographer–an exceptional job for a Jewish prisoner–Pemper soon realized that he could use his position to familiarize himself with the inner workings of the Nazi bureaucracy and exploit the system to his fellow detainees’ advantage. Once he gained access to classified documents, Pemper was able to pass on secret information for Schindler to compile his famous lists. After the war, Pemper was the key witness for the prosecution in the 1946 trial against Göth and in trials against several other SS officers. The Road to Rescue stands as a historically authentic testimony of one man’s unparalleled courage, wit, defiance, and bittersweet victory over the Nazi regime..
Price: $12.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From the author of The Pursuit of God comes this collection of essays that Tozer wrote and hand-picked himself for this thought-provoking classic "Without a sound root," Tozer says, "there is no lasting life," so he challenges the reader to focus not on the fruit of the tree but on the deep roots from which the fruit comes..
Price: $7.33 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $7.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Gala opera evenings Sudden wealth and fame. Dangerous undercover missions into the heart of Nazi Germany Standing up to the perils of the Blitz. No one would have predicted such glamorous and daring lives for Ida and Louise Cook—two decidedly ordinary Englishwomen who came of age between the wars and seemed destined never to stray from their quiet London suburb and comfortable civil service jobs. But in 1923 a chance hearing of an aria from Madame Butterfly sparked a passion in the sisters that became a vehicle for both their greatest happiness and the rescue of dozens of Jews facing persecution and death.

Safe Passage is one of the most unusual and inspiring accounts to come out of the cataclysm of World War II. First published in 1950, Ida's memoir of the adventures she and Louise shared remains as fresh, vital and entertaining as the woman who wrote it. The Cook sisters' zest for life and genuine "goodness" shines through every page and explains why the leading opera singers of their day befriended and loved them. Even when Ida began to earn thousands as a successful romance novelist, the sisters never departed from their homespun virtues of thrift, hard work, self-sacrifice and unwavering moral conviction. They sewed their own clothes, traveled third class, bought the cheapest tickets during opera season and directed every spare resource, as well as their own considerable courage and ingenuity, toward saving as many people as they could from Hitler's death camps.

Uplifting and utterly charming, Safe Passage is moving testimony to all that can be achieved when conscience and compassion are applied to a collapsing world..
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A portrait of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania in 1940, explains how he used his powers--against the orders of his own government--to assist thousands of Jews escape the Holocaust, actions that resulted in the imprisonment and disgrace of his entire family.".
Price: $4.34 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When we were two, we were no longer babies-we were becoming little girls. And when we were thirteen, we were leaving childhood behind, becoming young women. But somewhere along the way, we stopped becoming. We became "un-women." Wallflowers who are just breathing and smiling and blending in to stay out of the way.

That is not what God had in mind when He created us. He wants us to keep becoming. He wants us to become strong, decisive, wise, creative, passionate, courageous-all the things we've dreamed of becoming. When Wallflowers Dance is a fresh challenge to women who have lived hesitant, cautious lives but long to break free and dance!

Using both Scripture and story, Angela Thomas addresses the attributes of "becoming" and the freedom we have in Christ to keep developing the characteristics that reflect our God-given longings.

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