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The great escape: the untold story
By Ted Barris. 2014
On the night of March 24, 1944, eighty airmen crawled through a 400-foot-long tunnel, code-named "Harry," and dashed from Stalag…
Luft III, the infamous WWII German POW camp. It became known as The Great Escape. The breakout had taken a year to plan, involved 2,000 POWs, and prompted a massive manhunt across occupied Europe. All but three escapees were recaptured, and on Hitler’s orders, fifty were murdered. The author recounts this battle of wits and determination through the voices of those involved, assembles original interviews, memoirs, letters and diaries to reconstruct the Great Escape’s untold story. Bestseller. 2014.The girl in the green sweater: a life in Holocaust's shadow
By Daniel Paisner, Krystyna Chiger. 2008
In 1943, with Lvov's 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of…
Polish Jews sought refuge in the city's sewer system. The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, provides a first-person account of those fourteen months with her family. Also describes Leopold Socha, a Polish Catholic and former thief, who risked his life to help Chiger's underground family survive, bringing them food and supplies. 2009, c2008.The fog of war: censorship of Canada's media in World War Two
By Mark Bourrie. 2011
The Canadian government censored the news during World War II for two main reasons: to keep military and economic secrets…
out of enemy hands and to prevent civilian morale from breaking down. But in those tumultuous times - with Nazi spies landing on our shores by raft, U-boat attacks in the St. Lawrence, army mutinies in British Columbia and Ontario, and pro-Hitler propaganda in the mainstream Quebec press - censors had a hard time keeping news events contained. Now, with freshly unsealed World War II press-censor files, many of the undocumented events that occurred in wartime Canada are finally revealed. c2011.The damned: the Canadians at the battle of Hong Kong and the POW experience, 1941-45
By Nathan M Greenfield. 2010
Fall, 1941. Almost 2,000 members of the Royal Rifles and Winnipeg Grenadiers were sent to bolster the British garrison at…
Hong Kong, but in the seventeen day battle for the colony following the attack on December 8, the Canadians suffered grievous losses. The second part of their story describes how the Canadians survived the horrendous conditions of Japanese POW camps. Some descriptions of sex, explicit descriptions of violence and strong language. 2010.The heirs of the prophet Muhammad: Islam's first century and the origins of the Sunni-Shia schism
By Barnaby Rogerson. 2006
Within a generation of Muhammad's death, his followers exploded out of Arabia to confront the two great superpowers of the…
seventh-century and establish Islam and a new civilization. Coming from small oasis communities of central Arabia, their achievements were immense. Rogerson also identifies the seeds of discord that destroyed the unity of Islam, and traces the roots of the schism between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Some descriptions of violence. 2006. Uniform title: Heirs of the prophet MuhammadSun in winter: a Toronto wartime journal, 1942 to 1945
By Gunda Lambton. 2003
In 1942 Gunda Lambton was a "war guest," a single mother sent from England to Toronto to avoid the war.…
While insanity raged throughout Europe she struggled to keep herself and her two small children going in a strange new home. While many people then were engaged in dramatic, heroic war work, her diary is a tribute to the quiet areas of endurance and pleasures of discovery that also distinguished those years. 2003.Satanic purses: money, myth, and misinformation in the war on terror
By R. T Naylor. 2006
Naylor exposes the post 9/11 global War on Islamic Terror as based on myth, misinformation, and even deliberate disinformation -…
all of it premised on misguided notions about the nature of terrorist financing and the structure and organization of terrorist groups. Naylor believes that the secret agendas behind, and the private interests that profit from, an illusory War on Terror may be far more dangerous than the events that led to it. Some descriptions of violence. 2006.The Liberation Campaign for Holland, a series of fierce battles during the last three months of the war, was bittersweet…
- a nation's freedom was won and the war concluded, but the fighting cost Canada over 6,000 casualties. Drawing upon official records and veteran memories, Zuehlke brings to life this concluding chapter in the story of Canada in World War II. Explicit descriptions of violence and strong language. Bestseller. 2010. (Canadian Battle Series)Les disparus
By Daniel Mendelsohn, Pierre Guglielmina. 2007
Ce livre est le récit d'une enquête personnelle sur le drame familial inséparable de la plus grande tragédie du XXe…
siècle : l'extermination des juifs par les nazis. L'auteur raconte comment une partie de sa famille a disparu dans l'est de la Pologne au début des années 1940, sans laisser d'autres traces que quelques lettres, des photos et surtout un souvenir vivace chez les membres survivants. Il décrit aussi comment il s'est emparé des rares indices à sa disposition pour tenter de découvrir ce qu'ils étaient exactement devenus et les conclusions auxquelles il est finalement parvenu après avoir compulsé quantité d'ouvrages, traversé quatre continents, rencontré de multiples témoins et soulevé de réels tabous, y compris au sein de sa propre famille. 2007. Titre uniforme: Lost.Le retour du hooligan: une vie (Fiction & Cie)
By Norman Manea, Nicolas Véron. 2006
Né en Bucovine en 1936, Norman Manea a été déporté dans un camp de concentration en Transnistrie, en 1941, comme…
l'ensemble de la population juive de cette région. Ses grands-parents y périront. À son retour, en 1945, il est fasciné par l'utopie communiste, mais s'aperçoit très vite de la réalité cruelle, perverse et tragi-comique de ce régime totalitaire. Dès lors, la littérature se présente à lui comme un véritable refuge. Poussé à l'exil en 1986, d'abord à Berlin-Ouest, puis à New York, il se voit privé de son dernier asile et seul ancrage, sa langue. Ce somptueux roman évoque soixante ans de ténèbres, ce qui n'empêche pas un humour parfois burlesque. L'auteur explore un "je" aux multiples facettes pour faire revivre un destin individuel débarrassé des clichés de victimisation de la mémoire collective ; il offre un fulgurant autoportrait entre terreur et beauté, qui dévoile une époque chaotique et sanglante. 2006.Berlin at war: Life And Death In Hitler's Capital, 1939-45
By Roger Moorhouse. 2010
Berlin was the city at the very centre of World War Two - it was the launching pad for Hitler's…
empire, the embodiment of his vision of a "world metropolis", and it also suffered more air raids than any other German city and endured the full force of a Soviet siege. Moorhouse uses diaries, memoirs, and interviews to provide a first-hand account of life and death in the Nazi capital. Explicit descriptions of violence and some strong language. c2010.Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin
By Timothy Snyder. 2010
Even before the Second World War began, Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens - and kept killing…
them during and after the war - and before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving their history in darkness. Snyder presents these mass murders as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Descriptions of violence. 2010.In the upper reaches of the Loire lies an isolated plateau and the secluded village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Their whole…
village was honoured not just by the French state, but with the extremely rare distinction of Righteous Among Nations by the people of Israel. How they earned this is one of the great modern stories of heroism and courage. Right through the War the community pulled off the astonishing feat of saving the lives of 5000 men, women and children whose very existence was deemed to be unpalatable to the Nazi occupiers and their Vichy stooges. Of those saved approximately 3500 were of Jewish descent. This title tells the story of how one French community saved these lives. 2014.Villa Air-Bel: World War II, escape, and a house in Marseille
By Rosemary Sullivan. 2006
In France of the 1940s, the Nazis were hunting down artists and intellectuals, and many of them, including Max Ernst,…
Hannah Arendt, Heinrich Mann, and Marc Chagall, found temporary shelter in a house in a suburb of Marseille. There, members of the American Emergency Rescue Committee hid them and arranged the visas that would give them safe passage out of Vichy France. Harvard-educated scholar Varian Fry led the effort, eventually saving 2,000 artists and intellectuals. 2006.Monuments Men: Allied heroes, Nazi thieves, and the greatest treasure hunt in history
By Bret Witter, Robert M Edsel. 2010
From 1943 to 1951, 350 or so men and women from 13 Allied nations served in the Monuments, Fine Arts…
and Archives section of the Allied armed forces. This was the most ambitious effort in history to preserve the world's cultural heritage in times of war. They were known simply as 'Monuments Men'. This is their story. 2010.Le désir d'islam: essai
By Martine Gozlan. 2005
Des barbelés dans ma mémoire: récit
By Alain Stanké. 2009
Né en Lituanie en 1934, Alain Stanké est déporté en 1944 dans un camp de concentration allemand. Victime de l'Histoire,…
il relate avec authenticité sa jeunesse brisée par l'horreur de la guerre et de la déportationThe Third Man: Churchill, Roosevelt, Mackenzie King, and the Untold Friendships that Won WWII
By Neville Thompson. 2021
"A welcome new bright spot in the vast literature of World War II." – DAVID SHRIBMAN The relationship between Winston…
Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt was among the most momentous - and mysterious - in history. The story of how these fiercely independent leaders worked together to defeat Hitler's Germany has been divined mainly from their cautious letters and the comments of staffers. Meanwhile, the detailed record of their fellow head of government, Canadian Prime Minister William L. Mackenzie King, who knew each of them better than they knew each other, has been largely overlooked. A sublime diplomat, King was determined, as leader of the largest British Dominion and America’s closest neighbour, to serve as a lynchpin between the great powers. Churchill and Roosevelt both came to rely upon him as their next most important ally, routinely confiding in him and never suspecting that he was meticulously recording every word, prayer, slight, and tic from their countless interactions in his voluminous unpublished diary. The Third Man offers us a truly unique look at the personalities, the strategies, and the epic relationship that won WWII.The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation
By Rosemary Sullivan. 2022
Less a mystery unsolved than a secret well kept...Using new technology, recently discovered documents and sophisticated investigative techniques, an international…
team—led by an obsessed retired FBI agent—has finally solved the mystery that has haunted generations since World War II: Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family? And why?Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. But despite the many works—journalism, books, plays and novels—devoted to Anne’s story, none has ever conclusively explained how these eight people managed to live in hiding undetected for over two years—and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.With painstaking care, retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke and a team of indefatigable investigators pored over tens of thousands of pages of documents—some never before seen—and interviewed scores of descendants of people familiar with the Franks. Utilizing methods developed by the FBI, the Cold Case Team painstakingly pieced together the months leading to the infamous arrest—and came to a shocking conclusion. The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation is the riveting story of their mission. Rosemary Sullivan introduces us to the investigators, explains the behavior of both the captives and their captors and profiles a group of suspects. All the while, she vividly brings to life wartime Amsterdam: a place where no matter how wealthy, educated, or careful you were, you never knew whom you could trust.The Volunteers: How Halifax Women Won the Second World War
By Lezlie Lowe. 2022
The long-awaited narrative history of the women who volunteered in Nova Scotia during the Second World War by award-winning journalist…
and author of No Place to Go. "I was home cooking carrots because my mother was off winning the war." -- Patricia Timbrell, whose mother, Amy Jones, along with her friend Una Smith, established and ran the Central Magazine Exchange, which distributed four million used magazines and 30,000 packs of cards by June 1942 alone for troop and merchant ships in Halifax Harbour. Halifax women won the Second World War -- but not in the ways you might have been told. We all know the stories of Canadian women during the war who trained as machinists, welders, and streetcar drivers to fill the shoes of men who answered the call. We know how women kept the home fires lit while their husbands, brothers, and fathers fought. This is not that story. The Volunteers: How Halifax Women Won the Second World War is the untold story of Halifax women who geared up in a flash to focus on the comfort, community connections, and mental health of Halifax?s exploding population of sailors, soldiers, airmen, and merchant mariners. They did a job no government could have organized or afforded. They did it without being asked. And they did it with no respite from their daily duties. Thoroughly researched and compellingly told, and with a dozen archival images, The Volunteers examines the untold stories of the hardworking women whose unpaid and unacknowledged labour won the Second World War.