Recommendations based on "The Periodic Table"

‘You are no longer a number’Poland, 1944The train slowed and halted with a squeal of the breaks. It felt like we waited in the carriage for an eternity, but eventually, the heavy doors opened, directly into the chaos inside.Sara Leibovitz, a 16-year-old Jewish girl, was a passenger on the train with her family. They spent their final moments together on the platform in Auschwitz before their horrific fates were sealed. Sara’s mother and baby brothers were sent straight to their deaths. Her father was made to work in the Sonderkommando as one of the men forced to remove the bodies from the gas chambers, and was later executed. Sara survived.This is the powerful true story of Sara Leibovits and the incredible pain and hardships she went through during her time in the death camp. Yet despite the horrors she faced, she always tried to maintain her family’s values of courage, faith and kindness to others. In this compelling memoir, Sara’s story is intertwined with that of her daughter, Eti. Seventy years after the horrors of the Holocaust, Eti reveals the inherited trauma of the second generation and completes the Holocaust survivor’s tale.What readers are saying about The Girl Who Survived Auschwitz:‘Let us never stop reading these novels. These memoirs are the ones that keep all the voices alive’‘Highly recommend… I finished reading it with a newfound sense of love and compassion’‘Reading this family’s memories is a rewarding experience in that it will ensure future generations will remember and learn. Many thanks to the author…for the trust in allowing me to review this life-changing memoir.’‘A raw and gripping Holocaust recount’‘What I loved most about this book is that it is a dual perspective…I was grateful to have a little glimpse into the mind of Eti and her absolute respect for her parents…together they learned, they grieved and they healed’‘It makes me really proud of my Jewish heritage and this story of perseverance. I highly recommend this book for any and all to read so we can keep survivor's stories alive and never let this type of tragedy happen again’‘Powerful, heartbreaking and inspiring. We need to know what happened. It will make your heart break. It is beyond horrific. But we need to know in memory of the six million innocents who died and of those who survived’‘A haunting and beautiful read…I give it a resounding 5 stars’‘We have the perspective of a woman who survived the holocaust as well as her daughter who had never known the horrrors her mother endured, yet asked…I feel honored to have read this memoir’‘Anyone who reads this book will not be left untouched…truly moving'‘This is one of those books everyone should read'‘Remarkable… a profoundly impactful book, one which should be required reading for everyone''Sara Leibovits is an amazing lady. She showed strength of character, resilience and maintained a kind heart, as she shared what little she had with those around her in Auschwitz'

In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker and a bon viveur, but to them he became a saviour. This is the extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy.

In this groundbreaking book, leading Arab and Jewish intellectuals examine how and why the Holocaust and the Nakba are interlinked without blurring fundamental differences between them. While these two foundational tragedies are often discussed separately and in abstraction from the constitutive historical global contexts of nationalism and colonialism, The Holocaust and the Nakba explores the historical, political, and cultural intersections between them. The majority of the contributors argue that these intersections are embedded in cultural imaginations, colonial and asymmetrical power relations, realities, and structures. Focusing on them paves the way for a new political, historical, and moral grammar that enables a joint Arab-Jewish dwelling and supports historical reconciliation in Israel/Palestine.This book does not seek to draw a parallel or comparison between the Holocaust and Nakba or to merely inaugurate a “dialogue” between them. Instead, it searches for a new historical and political grammar for relating and narrating their complicated intersections. The book features prominent international contributors, including a foreword by Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury on the centrality of the Holocaust and Nakba in the essential struggle of humanity against racism, and an afterword by literary scholar Jacqueline Rose on the challenges and contributions of the linkage between the Holocaust and Nakba for power to shift and a world of justice and equality to be created between the two peoples. The Holocaust and the Nakba is the first extended and collective scholarly treatment in English of these two constitutive traumas together.

“To me, hard times are like hide-and-seek - where is the solution, where is the hope? We can never give up looking for these things because they are just waiting to be found.”Gidon Lev arrived at the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt in the former Czechoslovakia as prisoner number 885. He was six years old. Liberated when he was just ten years old, Gidon is one of only a handful of children who survived the camp. He lost 26 members of his family in the Holocaust, including his father, grandfather, and great-grandparents. After decades of silence, Gidon first told his story to a group of German high school students. Now, Gidon has spoken to celebrities and diplomats all over the world and taken social media by storm - all with his signature candor, charm, and wisdom. Let’s Make Things Better is the calling card of an indomitable spirit—sharing timeless truths, from reconciling with the past, standing up to hate, living for the moment, bringing people together, and finding hope for the future in an increasingly uncertain world. Ultimately, Gidon’s lesson for all of us is that we have opportunities, large and small, every day to make things better now and to leave the world a better place when we are gone. This astonishingly simple power is available to all of us, and Gidon Lev's life is a lesson about how to do it, even in the face of extraordinary adversity.

#1 New York Times Bestseller and #1 International Bestseller - Now a Peacock Original Series starring Harvey Keitel and Melanie LynskeyThis beautiful, illuminating tale of hope and courage is based on interviews that were conducted with Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov--an unforgettable love story in the midst of atrocity."The Tattooist of Auschwitz is an extraordinary document, a story about the extremes of human behavior existing side by side: calculated brutality alongside impulsive and selfless acts of love. I find it hard to imagine anyone who would not be drawn in, confronted and moved. I would recommend it unreservedly to anyone, whether they'd read a hundred Holocaust stories or none."--Graeme Simsion, internationally-bestselling author of The Rosie ProjectIn April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism--but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov's experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.

THE TIMES 100 BEST BOOKS FOR SUMMER The inspiring true story of a father and son's fight to stay together and survive the Holocaust, for anyone captivated by The Cut Out Girl, The Choice and The Tattooist of Auschwitz. 'An extraordinary tale' The Times (Best Books of 2019) ___________ Where there is family, there is hope . . . Vienna, 1939. Nazi police seize Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer and his son, Fritz, and send the pair to Buchenwald in Germany. There began an unimaginable ordeal that saw the pair beaten, starved and forced to build the very concentration camp they were held in. When Gustav was set to be transferred to Auschwitz, a certain death sentence, his son refused to leave his side. Throughout the horrors they witnessed and the suffering they endured, there was one constant that kept them alive: the love between father and son. Based on Gustav's secret diary and meticulous archive research, this book tells their incredible story for the first time - a story of courage and survival unparalleled in the history of the Holocaust. The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz is a reminder of both the best and the worst of humanity, the strength of family ties, and the power of the human spirit. ___________ THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'An emotionally devastating story of courage - and survival' i Paper 'Extraordinary' Observer 'We should all read this shattering book about the Holocaust. An astonishing story of the unbreakable bond between a father and a son. Brilliantly researched and written with searing clarity' Daily Mail 'A deeply humane account. This book could not be more timely and deserves the widest possible readership' Daily Express As seen on BBC Breakfast and Sky News, and heard on BBC Radio 4 & BBC Radio 5 Live.

One morning on the outskirts of Damascus, two starving friends are walking through their desolate city and come across a familiar street that has been turned to rubble, concrete bridges towering above them like tombs and houses turned inside out. Aeham turns to the only comfort he has left and sits at his piano to play a song of hope to his fellow Syrians. It is a song that will reach far beyond the streets of his home and carry consequences he could never have dreamed of. This tender and poetic account of Aeham's experiences, from losing his city, friends and family to leaving his country and finding safety, will move readers with raw and candid emotion. This is a gripping portrait of a man's search for solace and of a country that has been fiercely torn apart.

Anne Applebaum wields her considerable knowledge of a dark chapter in human history and presents a collection of the writings of survivors of the Gulag, the Soviet concentration camps. Although the opening of the Soviet archives to scholars has made it possible to write the history of this notorious concentration camp system, documents tell only one side of the story. "Gulag Voices" now fills in the other half.The backgrounds of the writers reflect the extraordinary diversity of the Gulag itself. Here are the personal stories of such figures as Dmitri Likhachev, a renowned literary scholar; Anatoly Marchenko, the son of illiterate laborers; and Alexander Dolgun, an American citizen. These remembrances many of them appearing in English for the first time, each chosen for both literary and historical value collectively spotlight the strange moral universe of the camps, as well as the relationships that prisoners had with one another, with their guards, and with professional criminals who lived beside them.A vital addition to the literature of this era, annotated for a generation that no longer remembers the Soviet Union, "Gulag Voices" will inform, interest, and inspire, offering a source for reflection on human nature itself."

A noted French thinker's poignant reflections, in words and photographs, on his visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau.On a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Georges Didi-Huberman tears three pieces of bark from birch trees on the edge of the site. Looking at these pieces after his return home, he sees them as letters, a flood, a path, time, memory, flesh. The bark serves as a springboard to Didi-Huberman's meditations on his visit, recorded in this spare, poetic, and powerful book. Bark is a personal account, drawing not on the theoretical apparatus of scholarship but on Didi-Huberman's own history, memory, and knowledge. The text proceeds as a series of reflections, accompanied by Didi-Huberman's photographs of the visit. The photographs are not meant to be art—Didi-Huberman confesses that he “photographed practically everything without looking”—but approach it nevertheless. Didi-Huberman tells us that his grandparents died at Auschwitz, but his account is more universal than biographical. As he walks from place to place, he observes that in German birches are birken; Birkenau designates the meadow where the birches grow. Didi-Huberman sees and photographs the “reconstructed” execution wall; the floors of the crematorium, forgotten witnesses to killing; and the birch trees, lovely but also resembling prison bars. Taking his own photographs, he thinks of the famous photographs taken in 1944 by a member of the Sonderkommando, the only photographic documentation of the camp before the Germans destroyed it, hoping to hide the evidence of their crimes. Didi-Huberman notices a “bizarre proliferation of white flowers on the exact spot of the cremation pits.” The dead are not departed.

What are you willing to do to survive? What are you willing to endure if it means you might live?'Achingly moving, gives much-needed hope . . . Deserves the status both as a valuable historical source and as a stand-out memoir' Daily Express'A story that needs to be heard' 5***** Reader ReviewEntering Terezin, a concentration camp, Franci was expected to die. She refused.In the summer of 1942, twenty-two-year-old Franci Rabinek - designated a by the racial laws - arrived at Terezin, a concentration camp and ghetto forty miles north of her home in Prague. It would be the beginning of her three-year journey from Terezin to the Czech family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to the slave labour camps in Hamburg, and finally to Bergen Belsen.Franci, a spirited and glamorous young woman, was known among her fellow inmates as the Prague dress designer. Having endured the transportation of her parents, she never forgot her mother's parting words:'Your only duty to us is to stay alive'.During an Auschwitz selection, Franci would spontaneously lie to officer Dr Josef Mengele, and claim to be an electrician.A split-second decision that would go on to endanger - and save - her life.Unpublished for 50 years, Franci's War is an astonishing account of one woman's attempt to survive. Heartbreaking and candid, Franci finds the light in her darkest years and the horrors she faces instill in her, strength and resilience to survive and to live again. She gives a voice to the women prisoners in her tight-knit circle of friends. Her testimony sheds new light on the alliances, love affairs, and sexual barter that took place during the Holocaust, offering a compelling insight into the resilience and courage of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation.Above all, Franci's War asks us to explore what it takes to survive, and what it means to truly live.'A candid account of shocking events. Franci is someone many women today will be able to identify with' 5***** Reader Review'First-hand accounts of life in death camps never lose their terrible power but few are as extraordinary as Franci's War' Mail on Sunday'Fascinating and traumatic. Well worth a read' 5***** Reader Review