Surviving The Warsaw Ghetto

This story of a Jewish family's survival in Nazi-occupied Poland by assuming "Aryan" identities shows the Starkopf family's courage and tremendous will to live. The book documents their journey from Warsaw to the immediate vicinity of one of the most frightful places on earth—the Treblinka death camp. The Starkopfs survive on false papers and false identities as they witness the tragedy of millions.

The bestselling memoir of a Jewish pianist who survived the war in Warsaw against all odds. 'We are drawn in to share his surprise and then disbelief at the horrifying progress of events, all conveyed with an understated intimacy and dailiness that render them painfully close... riveting' OBSERVER On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside - so loudly that he couldn't hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air. Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, THE PIANIST is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling. 'The images drawn are unusually sharp and clear... but its moral tone is even more striking: Szpilman refuses to make a hero or a demon out of anyone' LITERARY REVIEW

Aliza Vitis-Shomron was born in Warsaw into a wealthy merchant family, where Jewish tradition mixed with Polish culture. In September 1939, when the Nazis began their reign of terror in Europe and invaded Poland, Aliza was eleven years old. In her diaries-furtively written on scraps of precious paper that she kept throughout the war-she described the history of her family, struggling to survive in the occupied Warsaw Ghetto. Those diaries and later writings formed the basis for this memoir. Becoming a member of Hashomer Hatzair, the noted youth movement in the Warsaw Ghetto, gave Aliza hope and encouraged her to fight for survival. As a result of an extraordinary series of "miracles," Aliza managed to survive after being sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She was among those liberated by American troops, and she has continued to tell the story throughout her life. Aliza is among the last of the Warsaw Ghetto survivors. She has been passionately lecturing around the world about the revolt, and she has escorted numerous youth groups on their visits to Poland. This book has been previously translated and published in Hungarian, Polish, and Hebrew.

Memoirs of a Jew who was born in Warsaw. A teenager when the war broke out, he lived with his family in the Warsaw ghetto. His sister was killed there, but his parents survived the ghetto due to his smuggling of food from the "Aryan side". He was a member of the Żydowski Związek Wojskowy (Jewish Military Union), and took part in the ghetto uprising. After the fall of the ghetto Eisner's family was transported to Majdanek, where his father died. Eisner escaped from the camp and joined a Home Army group, but was obliged to leave it because he was a Jew. He was arrested and sent to the camps of Budzyń and Flossenbürg. After the war he was reunited with his mother, and they emigrated to the USA.

The German invasion of Poland in 1939 gave the Nazis the opportunity to implement their master plan to eliminate Europe's Jews. Part of the plan encompassed confining the Jews in a restricted area of Warsaw to make their survival difficult, followed by mass transportation of survivors to concentration camps, where they were killed. The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto did not go quietly to their deaths but engaged in armed resistance. This riveting volume describes the ghetto's daily life--the people's extraordinary efforts to survive under horrendous circumstances--and the events that led to the uprising and the ghetto's 1943 destruction.

Recounts the struggle against the Nazi takeover of Warsaw and provides an account of the author's activities as head courier for the ZOB, the Jewish Fighting Organization.