|
|
|
Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance
At Leizer Bart’s funeral, one of the mourners told his son Michael that the gravestone should include a reference to the Freedom Fighters of Nekamah, to honor his late father’s involvement in the Jewish resistance movement in Vilna (now Vilnius), Lithuania, at the end of World War II. Michael had never heard of the Freedom Fighters. Following his father’s death, and with his mother in failing health, Michael embarked on a ten-year research project to find out more details about his parents’ time in the Vilna ghetto, where they met, fell in love, and married, and about their activities as members of the Jewish resistance. Until Our Last Breath is the culmination of his research, and his parents’ story of love and survival is seamlessly tied into the collective story of the Vilna ghetto, the partisans of Vilna, and the wider themes of world history. Zenia, Bart’s mother, was born and raised in Vilna. Leizer fled there to escape the Nazi invasion of his hometown of Hrubieshov in Poland. They were married by one of the last remaining rabbis ninety days before the liquidation of the ghetto. Leizer was friends with Zionist leader Abba Kovner and became a member of the Vilna ghetto underground. Shortly before the total liquidation of the ghetto, Zenia and Leizer, along with about 120 members of the underground, were able to escape to the Rudnicki forest, about 25 miles away. They became part of the Jewish partisan fighting group led by Abba Kovner—known as the Avengers—which carried out sabotage missions against the Nazi army and eventually participated in the liberation of Vilna. Until Our Last Breath is intensely personal and painstakingly researched, a lasting memorial to the Jews of Vilna, including the resistance fighters and the author’s family. .
Price: $8.85
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Thanks to My Mother
Susie Weksler was only eight when Hitler's forces invaded her Lithuanian city of Vilnius Over the next few years, Susie endured starvation, brutality, and forced labor in three concentration camps. With courage and ingenuity, Susie's mother helped her to survive--by disguising her as an adult, finding food to add to their scarce rations, and giving her the will to endure. This harrowing memoir portrays the best and worst of humanity in heartbreaking scenes that you will never forget. Translated by James Skofield.
Price: $0.92
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
From that Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938-1947
From that Place and Time is the memoir of Lucy S. Dawidowicz, an American-Jewish historian who set out to study Yiddish language and Jewish history at YIVO, the Jewish Scientific Institute in Vilna, Poland, in 1938. Escaping Poland only days before the Nazi onslaught, she worked in the New York YIVO during the war, and returned to Europe from 1946 to 1947 to aid Jewish displaced persons in Munich and Belsen with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Dawidowicz's memoir not only describes her pre-war year in Jewish Eastern Europe, but also treats the ghostly post-war period, and her role in salvaging what remained of Vilna's scorched Jewish archives and libraries. Nancy Sinkoff's new introduction explores the historical forces, particularly the dynamic world of secular Yiddish culture, which shaped Dawidowicz's decision to journey to Poland and her reassessment of those forces in the last years of her life..
Price: $19.99
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Baltic Capitals, 3rd: Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, and Kaliningrad: The Bradt Travel Guide
Still the best guide to the Baltic states for those touring these cultural capitals, this guide excels in packing all the essentials travelers need into one trim book. Independent travelers will find it easy to put together their own itinerary, and a good range of information on the heritage, architecture, entertainment, restaurants, and cafes of each city is contained in this handy volume. A section on excursions out from each center expands the possibilities further for visitors, and includes gems such as the medieval Trakai castle on the outskirts of Vilnius, the Latvian seaside resort of Jurmala, and the year-round delight and tranquility of the Kadriog Park near Tallinn. Features include: >City information including sightseeing and walking tours plus half-day excursions from each city >Background material including history and culture >Essential words and phrases in four languages >An ideal source for both tourists and business travelers .
Price: $7.67
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
The Three Tragic Heroes of the Vilnius Ghetto: Witenberg, Sheinbaum, Gens
Vilnius (Vilna, Wilno), the capital of Lithuania, has been one of the main centres of Jewish cultural, religious, social and political activity of the Diaspora since the middle ages. At one time, one half of the city inhabitants were Jewish. Everything changed during the Holocaust. The Jewish community was destroyed by the Nazis and their collaborators. But there were those who refused to surrender without a fight. Witenberg and Sheinbaum were the leaders of the Jewish underground resistance organisations in the Vilnius ghetto. Gens was the Jewish Head of the ghetto, appointed to this position by the German authorities. Each person had the same objective -- personal and communal survival. All three perished during the destruction of the Jewish ghetto. These three figures constitute the 'Three Tragic Heroes of the Vilnius Ghetto'. This book compares the different approaches to the issues of resistance and survival and illuminates the specific problems of Jewish resistance and also the larger dilemma of survival during the Nazi era..
Price: $9.44
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Voices from Vilna
To my great joy, I found poignant letters in my family home describing my father’s and his family’s life and current events from 1930 to 1940 in Vilnius, Lithuania On a “roots trip” there in 2000, the letters were shown to the Director of the Vilna Gaon Museum who thought them valuable. Voices is a creative, non-fiction memoir told from the perspective of a first generation ‘child’. The letters are arranged chronologically, interspersed with letters to my father telling him what I found. Sadly, new photographs show evidence of ongoing anti-Semitism. I wrote this story as a memorial to the letter writers. Chapter One contains love letters to my mother from my father. It also describes his desperate attempts to leave the country. Chapter Two shows how hard my father tried to get some of his family out, especially his sister married to a rabbi. Rabbis were targets of oppression. Chapter Three illustrates how difficult life became in Vilna even before the Holocaust. It was a cry for help. They knew what was coming, yet kept hope alive. I’m glad my father could not go back with me because the experience would have been too painful for him. .
Price: $6.17
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps 1939-1944
For five horrifying years in Vilna, the Vilna ghetto, and concentration camps in Estonia, Herman Kruk recorded his own experiences as well as the life and death of the Jewish community of the city symbolically called "The Jerusalem of Lithuania." This unique chronicle includes many recovered pages of Kruk's diaries and provides a powerful eyewitness account of the annihilation of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. This volume includes the Yiddish edition of Kruk's diaries, published in 1961 and translated here for the first time, as well as many widely scattered pages of the chronicles, collected here for the first time and meticulously deciphered, translated, and annotated. Kruk describes vividly the collapse of Poland in September, 1939, life as a refugee in Vilna, the manhunt that destroyed most of Vilna Jewry in the summer of 1941, the creation of a ghetto and the persecution and self-rule of the remnants of the "Jerusalem of Lithuania," the internment of the last survivors in concentration camps in Estonia, and their brutal deaths.Kruk scribbled his final diary entry on September 17, 1944, managing to bury the small, loose pages of his manuscript just hours before he and other camp inmates were shot to death and their bodies burnt on a pyre. Kruk's writings illuminate the tragedy of the Vilna Jews and their courageous efforts to maintain an ideological, social, and cultural life even as their world was being destroyed. To read Kruk's day-by-day account of the unfolding of the Holocaust is to discern the possibilities for human courage and perseverance even in the face of profound fear..
Price: $41.00
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
|
|
|