by Laura M. Cornell (2009)
"Laura M. Cornell, a diabetic since early childhood and a triple transplant recipient, offers hope to those who face similar crises."--Page 4 of cover.
Susan Gold
The Eyes are the Same, a memoir of the Holocaust, describes a child's consciousness with great fidelity and a poet's eye. Drawn into a vortex of deception, denial, and lies, her privileged childhood is torn apart -- replaced by two harrowing years spent in a hole in the ground beneath a stable, and a long subsequent recovery.
as told to Geoffrey Brooks by Wolfgang Hirschfeld
Whilst there have been many memoirs written by U-boat commanders of the Second World War, a book such as this, based upon the diaries of a senior Petty Officer telegraphist, written in 'real time' is something very special. Wolfgang Hirschfeld, whose diaries Geoffrey Brooks has translated is a born story teller. The principal chapters describe his experiences during six war patrols in U-109, in which he served as the senior telegraphist. His is a tale which covers the whole kaleidescope of emotions shared by men at war - a story of immense courage and fortitude, of remarkable comradeship born of the dangers, frustrations and privations shared and of transitory moments of triumph. Throughout runs a vein of humour, without which resistance to stress would have been virtually impossible. We get to know one of Germany's great U-boat aces, 'Ajax' Bleichrodt, holder of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and, in a special biographical appendix, learn how he finally cracked under the strain. . The role of Admiral Karl Donitz, the dynamic commander of the U-boat service, so fascinatingly described by Hirschfeld, is of special interest - not least because even this dedicated Nazi had clearly realized by September, 1942, that the war was fast being lost. In 1944 Hirschfeld was promoted Warrant Officer and found himself on a large, schnorkel-equipped boat (U-234) heading for Japan with a load of high technology equipment and, in addition, a quantity of uranium ore. The possible significance of that uranium has been deeply researched by Geoffrey Brooks and is discussed in a second appendix.
Agathe Lenoël
"Personne ne peut soupçonner que je suis bipolaire. Un matin, j'ai surgi de mon lit, comme un ressort, mue par un désir irrésistible de raconter mon histoire, pour dire au monde cette détresse et cette joie mêlées que procure la bipolarité. Voici donc un témoignage, le mien, qui se situe au plus intime de l'être, au plus près des pensées quand elles s'encombrent et deviennent folles. Voici un récit intime pour dire, du point de vue de la personne souffrante et bien vivante, combien la lutte vaut la peine, combien la route est belle. Aujourd'hui, j'ai envie de raconter ce qui se cache derrière ce "moi" qui me joue des tours. Qui suis-je quand je ne suis pas moi? Cette question me hante depuis maintenant plus de quinze ans et j'ai décidé d'aller vers cette personne, avec vous."
Michał Grynberg
"In the history of the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto stands as the enduring symbol of Jewish suffering and heroism. This collective memoir - a mosaic of individual diaries, journals, and reports - follows the fate of the Warsaw Jews from the first bombardments of the Polish capital to the razing of the Jewish district. The life of the ghetto appears here in striking detail: the frantic exchange of apartments as the walls first go up; the daily battle against starvation and disease; the moral ambiguities confronting Jewish bureaucracies under Nazi rule; the ingenuity of smugglers; the acts of resistance.". "Written inside the ghetto or in hiding outside its walls, these testimonies preserve voices otherwise consigned to oblivion: a woman doctor whose four-year-old son is deemed a threat to the hideout; a painter determined to complete a mural of Job and his trials; an eleven-year-old girl barely eluding blackmailers on the Aryan side of the city. The range of witnesses reflects the diversity of the ghetto itself, from engineers to shopkeepers, from smugglers to members of the Jewish police."--BOOK JACKET.