Flight from the Reich by Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan Van Pelt

June 6, 2012 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. W.W. Norton, 2009. 496 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. Subtitled “Refugee Jews, 1933 – 1946”, this work attempts to answer the persistent question asked by those studying and learning about the Holocaust: Why didn’t more Jews flee Nazi Europe? Those able to flee were largely children and young adults “recused” because of their age and/or ability to assimilate into a new culture. For millions of other Jews — young and old — their options were severely limited. The […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Genocide, Germany, Holocaust, Nonfiction • Tags: Debórah Dwork, Robert Jan Van Pelt

Ten (Nonfiction) Books I Read For School and Loved

October 27, 2011 by Christina

Last week I shared a list of Ten (Fiction) Books I Read For School and Loved. This week I’m back with a list of nonfiction books I feel the same way about. It was much harder to compile this list simply because I didn’t read much accessible nonfiction (i.e. not math textbooks) until I reached college. Therefore, it’s fairly college-centric. All But Life (Gerda Weissmann Klein) – Easily one of my favorite Holocaust memoirs, I read Klein’s book my first […]

Categories: Bookish Notes • Tags: Debórah Dwork, N. Gregory Mankiw

The Terezín Album of Mariánka Zadikow by Mariánka Zadikow May and Debórah Dwork

April 6, 2011 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Translated from the Czech and the German by Mariánka Zadikow May. University of Chicago Press, 2008. 280 pgs. Library copy. Secretly crafted from pilfered materials at the Terezín (known as Theresienstadt by the Germans) concentration camp in September 1944, twenty-one-year-old Zadikow’s autograph book is a collection of signatures, poems, and drawings by her fellow inmates. In several instances, people signed her book the day before their deportation from Terezín to Auschwitz. Many of them did not serve. This […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Czech, Europe, Genocide, German, Holocaust, Nonfiction, Textbook, Translated • Tags: Debórah Dwork, Mariánka Zadikow May

Children With a Star by Debórah Dwork

January 24, 2011 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Yale University Press, 1991. 354 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe”, Dwork’s book focuses on the plight of Jewish children as they transitioned from the world they knew (at home with their family) to life in hiding, transit camps, concentration camps, and death camps. Using oral histories, archives, and those diaries and letters left behind, this book is often referenced as the first time the history of children during the Nazi’s reign of terror was […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Germany, Holocaust, Nonfiction, Textbook • Tags: Debórah Dwork

Auschwitz by Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan Van Pelt

December 28, 2009 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. W. W. Norton & Company, 2002. 445 pgs. Library copy. I was lucky enough to have Debórah Dwork, a world-renowned Holocaust historian,  as one of my professors this past semester. She was quite possibly my best professor as she told stories that illustrated history instead of lecturing on the facts. Her two-day lecture on the development of Auschwitz, why Auschwitz was chosen as a place for a concentration camp, and how it became the location of mass […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Nonfiction, Poland • Tags: Debórah Dwork, Robert Jan Van Pelt

Professors’ Books

September 10, 2009 by Christina

I tend to have great admiration and respect for authors, unless you’re this guy. I may wholly dislike their book and may not have enjoyed reading it, but I admire those that can put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and turn those plot bunnies hopping around in their head into a (usually) coherent story.All four of my college professors have written books. Though this goes hand in hand with academia, some of them aren’t bad. In fact, they’re […]

Categories: Bookish Notes, Textbook • Tags: Debórah Dwork, Paul W. Posner, Richard Peet, Valerie Sperling