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In 2009, historian Wendy Lower discovered this photo in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. It depicts the actual moment of the murder of a Jewish family in 1941. Over a 10-year period, Lower conducted extensive research to identify the location and date of the mass executions, the German and Ukrainian soldiers who pulled the triggers, the Slovakian photographer who snapped the photo —and the identities of the woman and her children. #antifabookclub

Hard to type through my emotions. This is a middle grade nonfiction of Gerta and Rudi's heartwrenching escapes from Slovakia. Rudi's escape from Auschwitz resulted in FDR demanding Hungary to stop transports to the death camp. They may have saved a 1/3 of the JewishHungarians. Gerta and her mother crossed Hungary's and Slovakia's borders several times to keep ahead of imprisonment. When asked how to make sure it won't happen again, BE VIGILANT.

I'm in the middle of two incredible books that are equally tearing me apart.

Promise Me Tomorrow needs to be added to the database. I'm reading it, thanks to LibraryThing.

#JuneSpecials Day 29: As a young child, Yaffa loved playing and spending time with her friends and also helping out Grandma Alte who was considered to be one of the town‘s photographers, after bringing home a #camera during one of her trips to America. A lovely picturebook biography of how Eishyshok was rebuilt through photographs and memories of precious lives cherished and lived. My review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-pMY

Over the last few years I have stopped reading about WWII because it‘s been so overwhelming. This one was interesting but a hard read. The author discusses some of the early history that lead to the Holocaust, the propaganda, the acceptance of many as the Nazi party pushed its agenda forward. He discusses that it‘s impossible for any one person to be an expert in the Holocaust because it covers so many areas, regions, counties of Europe.

This book is part author‘s memoir,intermingled with discussions & interviews with her grandmother,Helga, archival material from Nazi &Jewish organizations,family mementos,letters,files,& journals her father kept.She writes,”For…Helga, remembering has become a sport– race against oblivion”(21).The author‘s great grandparents & one son perished in a concentration camp.The other son Hans,hides in plain site with his later adopted grandfather,Pepi.⬇️

Starting this before dinner. Have had this on my shelf several years. “
“Why would you return to a city that tried to murder you?” ( cover,Kirkus Review).Anna, the author of this book,is the granddaughter of two Jewish doctors who came to the U.S in the early 1950s. Her grandfather lost his entire family in a concentration camp,while her grandmother was a concentration camp survivor. #porchlife

Part memoir, part history tracing the kids whose parents advertised their children to be taken in by British households in 1938. They originated in Vienna, and each of the stories told had such different paths throughout their lives. It‘s heartbreaking, but the biggest impact is thinking of the parents who knew that sending their children to complete strangers in a different country was the best decision they could make to keep them safe.