The Marcel Network

Moussa Abadi and Odette Rosenstock, after becoming trapped in Nazi-occupied Paris, formed the Marcel Network, which was able to shelter over five hundred Jewish children in Catholic schools and convents and with Protestant families during World War II.

A groundbreaking reexamination of the Holocaust and how Germans understood their genocidal project: “Insightful [and] chilling.” —Kirkus Reviews Why exactly did the Nazis burn the Hebrew Bible everywhere in Germany on November 9, 1938? The perplexing event has not been adequately accounted for by historians in their large-scale assessments of how and why the Holocaust occurred. In this gripping new analysis, Alon Confino draws on an array of archives across three continents to propose a penetrating new assessment of one of the central moral problems of the twentieth century. To a surprising extent, Confino demonstrates, the mass murder of Jews during the war years was powerfully anticipated in the culture of the prewar years. The author shifts his focus away from the debates over what the Germans did or did not know about the Holocaust and explores instead how Germans came to conceive of the idea of a Germany without Jews. He traces the stories the Nazis told themselves—where they came from and where they were heading—and how those stories led to the conclusion that Jews must be eradicated in order for the new Nazi civilization to arise. The creation of this new empire required that Jews and Judaism be erased from Christian history, and this was the inspiration—and justification—for Kristallnacht. As Germans entertained the idea of a future world without Jews, the unimaginable became imaginable, and the unthinkable became real. “At once so disturbing and so hypnotic to read . . . Deserves the widest possible audience.” —Open Letters Monthly

The Sonderkommando—the “special squad” of enslaved Jewish laborers who were forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau—comprise one of the most fascinating and troubling topics within Holocaust history. As eyewitnesses to and unwilling abettors of the murder of their fellow Jews, they are the object of fierce condemnation even today. Yet it was a group of these seemingly compromised men who carried out the revolt of October 7, 1944, one of the most celebrated acts of Holocaust resistance. This interdisciplinary collection assembles careful investigations into how the Sonderkommando have been represented—by themselves and by others—both during and after the Holocaust.

The Holocaust in Vichy France in 1944 is the culmination of this study. For readers of World War II.

In her first contemporary novel since Room, bestselling author Emma Donoghue returns with a brilliant tale of love, loss and family. The life of a retired New York professor is thrown into chaos when he takes his great-nephew to the French Riviera in the hopes of uncovering his own mother’s wartime secrets. Noah is only days away from his first trip back to Nice since he was a child when he receives an unexpected request. A social worker is looking for a temporary home for Michael, his eleven-year-old great-nephew. Although he has never met the boy, Noah is convinced to take Michael with him to France. Suffering from jet lag and culture shock, the odd couple argue about everything from steak haché to screen time, and the trip shows every sign of being a disaster. But Michael’s skill with tech and his sharp eye help Noah unearth troubling details about their family’s past. Eventually they both come to understand that people of all eras run risks on behalf of their loved ones. In learning this they discover that they are more akin than they knew. Written with all the tenderness and psychological intensity that made Room a huge bestseller, Akin is a funny, heart-wrenching tale of an old man and a boy who unpick the threads of their painful stories and start to write a new one together.

Dorestad was the largest town of the Low Countries in the Carolingian era. This book presents new research into the Vikings at Dorestad, assemblages of jewelry, playing pieces and weaponry from the town, recent excavations at other Carolingian sites in the Low Countries, and the use and trade of glassware and broadswords.

An authority on pilot evasion, escape, and survival recounts extraordinary adventures that took place in Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Albania, and Greece during World War II.

Social networking is a concept that has existed for a long time; however, with the explosion of the Internet, social networking has become a tool for people to connect and communicate in ways that were impossible in the past. The recent development of Web 2.0 has provided many new applications, such as Myspace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The purpose of Handbook of Social Network Technologies and Applications is to provide comprehensive guidelines on the current and future trends in social network technologies and applications in the field of Web-based Social Networks. This handbook includes contributions from world experts in the field of social networks from both academia and private industry. A number of crucial topics are covered including Web and software technologies and communication technologies for social networks. Web-mining techniques, visualization techniques, intelligent social networks, Semantic Web, and many other topics are covered. Standards for social networks, case studies, and a variety of applications are covered as well.