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Discover unrelenting spirit and strength in the extraordinary true story of Franci: a woman who survived the holocaust against all of the odds '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 Review ______ In 1942 Franci Epstein, a young Jewish woman, was imprisoned in Terezin, a concentration camp close to her home in Prague. Few could expect anything other than death. But for Franci it was the start of a journey that would take her into the very heart of Nazi genocide. Through a combination of guile, ingenuity, endurance and sheer bloody mindedness, Fran...
The engrossing memoir of a spirited and glamorous young fashion designer who survived World War ll, with an afterword by her daughter, Helen Epstein. In the summer of 1942, twenty-two year-old Franci Rabinek--designated a Jew by the Nazi 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 labor camps in Hamburg, and Bergen Belsen. After liberation by the British in April 1945, she finally returned to Prague. Franci was known in her group as the Prague dress designer who lied to Dr. Mengele at an Auschwitz selection, saying she was an electrician, an occupation that both endangered and saved her life. In this memoir, she offers her intense, candid, and sometimes funny account of those dark years, with the women prisoners in her tight-knit circle of friends. Franci's War is the powerful testimony of one incredibly strong young woman who endured the horrors of the Holocaust and survived.
In the summer of 1942, twenty-two year-old Franci Rabinek Epstein arrived at Terezin, a concentration camp and ghetto forty miles north of her home in Prague. It would be the beginning of her six-year journey through several camps during the Second World War, from Terezin to Auschwitz-Birkenau, to forced labor in Hamburg and finally Bergen-Belsen. After the camp's liberation by the British in April 1945, she returned to Prague, a survivor. Franci was known in her group as the Prague seamstress. Her's is a story of ingenuity and endurance- she pretended to be an electrican to escape the Auschwitz selection, secretly fighting for the survival of her fellow inmates. Franci also gives voice to the darker side of women in war - rape and prostitiution - offering an insight into the resilience of people in an unknowable situation.
"I set out to find a group of people who, like me, were possessed by a history they had never lived." The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Helen Epstein traveled from America to Europe to Israel, searching for one vital thin in common: their parent's persecution by the Nazis. She found: • Gabriela Korda, who was raised by her parents as a German Protestant in South America; • Albert Singerman, who fought in the jungles of Vietnam to prove that he, too, could survive a grueling ordeal; • Deborah Schwartz, a Southern beauty queen who—at the Miss America pageant, played the same Chopin piece that was played over Polish radio during Hitler's invasion. Epstein interviewed hundreds of men and women coping with an extraordinary legacy. In each, she found shades of herself.
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, this engaging, insightful portrayal of Emily Dickinson sheds new light on one of American literature’s most enigmatic figures. On August 3, 1845, young Emily Dickinson declared, “All things are ready” and with this resolute statement, her life as a poet began. Despite spending her days almost entirely “at home” (the occupation listed on her death certificate), Dickinson’s interior world was extraordinary. She loved passionately, was hesitant about publication, embraced seclusion, and created 1,789 poems that she tucked into a dresser drawer. In These Fevered Days, Martha Ackmann unravels the mysteries of Dickinson’s life through t...
Irene's first person Holocaust memoir, Shores Beyond Shores, is an account of how the heart keeps its common humanity in the most inhumane and turbulent of times. Irene's childhood is cut short when she and her family are deported to Nazi-controlled prison camps and finally Bergen-Belsen, where she is a fellow prisoner with Anne Frank. Later forbidden from speaking about her experiences by the American relatives who cared for her, Irene is now making up for lost time. Irene has shared the stage with peacemakers such as the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Elie Wiesel, and she considers it her duty to tell her story now and on behalf of the six million other Jews who have been permanently silenc...
A luminous new memoir from the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller After Long Silence, The Escape Artist has been lauded by New York Times bestselling author Mary Karr as “beautifully written, honest, and psychologically astute. A must-read.” In the tradition of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and George Hodgman’s Bettyville, Fremont writes with wit and candor about growing up in a household held together by a powerful glue: secrets. Her parents, profoundly affected by their memories of the Holocaust, pass on to both Helen and her older sister a zealous determination to protect themselves from what they see as danger from the outside world. Fremont delves deeply into the...
The final book in a thrilling fantasy trilogy starring one of the animal kingdom's most hunted heroes. Foxcraft is full of excitement and heart, and a touch of magic Isla has arrived at the frigid Snowlands to find her lost brother, Pirie. The tundra is a harsh place -- and the wolves who live within its icy kingdoms are harsher still -- but Isla's flair for the mysterious arts of foxcraft has grown tremendously.The young fox is on a mission of grave importance. A cruel and powerful fox known as the Mage is using his own mastery of foxcraft to summon an ancient threat. If he succeeds, then more than just Pirie's life will be at stake.But Isla discovers the once-proud wolves are broken and wary. Their king is weak, struck by a peculiar madness, and a rival kingdom threatens their borders. If Isla can't find help amongst the wolves, then the whole world will burn.
'Just the thing to lose yourself in . . . tremendously good' Daily Mail Camp Chippewa, 1962. This is the summer that everything changes for lonely thirteen-year-old Nelson, marking the beginning of his uncertain friendship with a popular boy named Jonathan, and the discovery of his father's betrayal. As the years pass on, both Nelson and Jonathan find their notions of loyalty and bravery tested to the limit, and each will be forced to ask himself what it really means to be a good man . . .
Examines the lives of eight women who were a part of the Nazi regime or played a role in its ascendency.