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Your search for the Topic: Partisan activity.

Volume 1 Book Title: And the Sun Kept Shining . . . Book Author: Bertha Ferderber-Salz Number of Pages: (233) Original Publication Date (in English): 1980 Book Focus: A woman survives in Poland and reclaims her two young daughters from hiding; the events take place between September 1939 and 22 October 1946. Reference: In the woods they meet two partisans: "Our encounter with the partisans had encouraged us. We had seen for ourselves that there were people fighting our oppressors, trying to destroy them with every weapon they had." She is able to pass on helpful information to them.




Volume 1 Book Title: I Cannot Forgive Book Author: Rudolf Vrba, with Alan Bestic Number of Pages: (261) Original Publication Date (in English): 1964 Book Focus: A young Slovak survives Majdanek, and Auschwitz, escaping with the news that the "unknown destination in the east" was in reality a death factory, Auschwitz; the Vrba-Wetzler report was the first to reach the West; the events described take place from March 1942 to September 1944. Reference: June 1944: "I went to members of the underground . . . 'My friends, I need a pistol. Some day a bright SS man is going to see through my false papers; and, when that happens, I don't want the argument to be one sided.' To my amazement and fury, they said sternly: 'We don't issue pistols to lads like you.' They grinned and added: 'We issue sub-machine guns!' " Rudi fights with the partisans under Sergeant Milan Uher in a successful attack on the SS in Stara Tura.




Volume 2 Book Title: Love in a World of Sorrow Book Author: Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Number of Pages: (282) Original Publication Date (in English): 2005 Book Focus: Fanya, a young teen-aged girl in the Ukraine (who is fifteen in 1939) survives with her parents and younger brother in hiding in their home town; her father is killed after liberation. The memoir takes place between her birth in 1924, and her engagement to another survivor in July 1945. Reference: "When I mentioned to my father the possibility of finding a partisan group, I touched off an explosion. 'In the forest,' he said, 'the partisans themselves are the greatest menace.' Frustrated by lack of supplies and limited military success, the avowedly anti-Semitic partisans massacred fleeing Jews. When I asked Jan about fighters in the forest he said my father was right."




Volume 2 Book Title: Strange and Unexpected Love Book Author: Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Number of Pages: (282) Original Publication Date (in English): 1993 Book Focus: Fanya, a young teen-aged girl in the Ukraine (who is fifteen in 1939) survives with her parents and younger brother in hiding in their home town; her father is killed after liberation. The memoir takes place between her birth in 1924, and her engagement to another survivor in July 1945. Reference: "When I mentioned to my father the possibility of finding a partisan group, I touched off an explosion. 'In the forest,' he said, 'the partisans themselves are the greatest menace.' Frustrated by lack of supplies and limited military success, the avowedly anti-Semitic partisans massacred fleeing Jews. When I asked Jan about fighters in the forest he said my father was right."




Volume 3 Book Title: Survival in Auschwitz, the Nazi Assault on Humanity Book Author: Primo Levi Number of Pages: (157) Original Publication Date (in English): 1959 Book Focus: Primo, a young Italian, who was twenty in 1939, is deported from Italy to Auschwitz where he survives for almost a year; the events recorded take place between his arrest on 13 December 1943 and his liberation by Soviet forces in Auschwitz on 27 January 1945. Reference: Captured as a partisan, arrested as: "a suspect person" on 13 December 1943, aged twenty-four, in Italy: "During the interrogations that followed, I preferred to admit my status of 'Italian citizen of Jewish race'. I felt that otherwise I would be unable to justify my presence in places too secluded even for an evacuee; while I believed (wrongly as was subsequently seen) that the admission of my political activity would have meant torture and certain death."




Volume 3 Book Title: The Janowska Road Book Author: Leon Weliczker Wells Number of Pages: (320) Original Publication Date (in English): 1963 Book Focus: Leon, from Lvov in Poland, who was fourteen in 1939, survives Soviet occupation and two internments in the Janowska Camp, and in hiding in Lvov. The events described take place between his birth in 1925, and his emigration to the United States in 1949. Reference: The dangers for Jews of hiding in the woods amid the Polish and Ukrainian partisans: ". . . though both were enemies of the Germans, they fought against each other as well. . . . The Ukrainians were fighting for a . . . national state, whereas the Poles were fighting for their fatherland, the ancient Poland, to which part of the Ukraine belonged. They were implacable enemies of each other. Both, however, hated the Jews just as much as they hated the Germans."