Showing results for "life-" in 20th Century

As her mother, Mira, nears the end of her life, journalist Rachelle Unreich wants to find out more about how Mira survived four concentration camps, including Auschwitz. There was a mystery to her survival, it seemed - which perhaps had something to do with the strange things that always happened around her. Incredibly, when she gave testimony about the Holocaust decades later, Mira said that it was during this time that she learned about 'the goodness of people'.

During World War II, Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, organized a rescue network of fellow social workers to save 2,500 Jewish children from certain death in the Warsaw ghetto. Incredibly, after the war her heroism, like that of many others, was suppressed by communist Poland and remained virtually unknown for 60 years.

The Victorian era has dominated the popular imagination like no other period, but these myths and stories also give a very distorted view of the 19th century. The early Victorians were much stranger than we usually imagine, and their world would have felt very different from our own. It was only during the long reign of the Queen that a modern society emerged in unexpected ways.

Marking the centenary of the Titanic, A Shape of Ice is an utterly compelling exploration of the lives on board the most famous ship in history. The RMS Titanic was built as one of the world's largest and most luxurious liners. A marine Ritz, it was a 45,000 ton hotel of thin steel plates, travelling at a speed of 21 knots across the unforgiving ocean.On the night of 14 April 1912, the seemingly unsinkable ship hit an iceberg. It sustained a 300 feet gash and six compartments were wrenched open to the sea.

In 1943, with Lvov's 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of Polish Jews daringly sought refuge in the city's sewer system. The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, shares one of the most intimate, harrowing, and ultimately triumphant tales of survival to emerge from the Holocaust. The Girl in the Green Sweater is Chiger's harrowing first-person account of the 14 months she spent with her family in the fetid, underground sewers of Lvov.

In A Thousand Lives, the New York Times best-selling memoirist Julia Scheeres traces the fates of five individuals who followed Jim Jones to South America as they struggled to first build their paradise, and then survive it. Each went for different reasons - some were drawn to Jones for his progressive attitudes towards racial equality, others were dazzled by his claims to be a faith healer. But once in Guyana, Jones' drug addiction, mental decay, and sexual depredations quickly eroded the idealistic community.

An intimate and expertly researched biography of little-known early CIA leader Frank Wisner, whose behind-the-scenes influence on Cold War policy—and hundreds of highly secret anti-Soviet missions—resonates with the international crises we see today.

By the time of her execution at thirty-six, Maria Mandl had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the Third Reich. As Head Overseer of the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was personally responsible for the murders of thousands, and for the torture and suffering of countless more. Susan J. Eischeid explores how Mandl, regarded locally as “a nice girl from a good family,” came to embody the very worst of humanity. Her life mirrors the period in which she lived: turbulent, violent, and suffused with paradoxes.

In 1940, the German sons and daughters of infamous Nazi dignitaries Himmler, Göring, Hess, Frank, Bormann, Speer, and Mengele were children of privilege at four, five, or 10 years old, surrounded by affectionate, all-powerful parents. Although innocent and unaware of what was happening at the time, they eventually discovered the extent of their fathers' occupations: These men were leaders of the Third Reich and would later be convicted as monstrous war criminals.

Anne Frank is the most well-known victim of the Holocaust. In 1945, at the age of 15, she died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, becoming one of the six million Jews who were murdered in Europe under the Nazi regime. But through her writing, her memory lives on. Jemma Saunders goes beyond Anne Frank's diary to fill in the gaps about her family history, her life before she went into hiding, and her final months at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. A sobering tale, Anne Frank's story is one that will continue to inspire for decades to come.

In this gripping memoir by the chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg trials, Richard Sonnenfeldt recounts a remarkable life. By age 22 he had fought in the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp, when he was appointed chief interpreter for the American prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials.

During his service, he spent pretrial time with Hermann Göering as well as other top Nazi leaders.

The British Secret Service has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created 100 years ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of James Bond and John le Carre. MI6 provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.

Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world’s imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century.

Set against the backdrop of the Nazi occupation of World War II, The Hôtel on Place Vendôme is the captivating history of Paris' world-famous Hôtel Ritz - a breathtaking tale of glamour, opulence, and celebrity and of dangerous liaisons, espionage, and resistance.

In the end, it's not what happens to us that matters most - it's what we choose to do with it. We all face suffering - sadness, loss, despair, fear, anxiety, failure. But we also have a choice; to give in and give up in the face of trauma or difficulties or to live every moment as a gift. Celebrated therapist and Holocaust survivor Dr Edith Eger provides a hands-on guide that gently encourages us to change the imprisoning thoughts and destructive behaviours that may be holding us back.

This classic book is the whole unruly story of dance music in one volume. It recreates the dance floors that made history, conjuring their atmosphere with loving detail and bringing you the voices of the DJs and clubbers at their heart—from grime, garage, house, hip hop and disco, to techno, soul, reggae, rock 'n' roll and EDM. Whether musical outlaw, obsessive crate-digger or overpaid superstar, the DJ has been at the spinning centre of nightlife for a century, making parties wilder, pushing clubbers harder and driving music into completely new shapes and styles.

In August 1948, 545 passengers boarded an overcrowded, clapped-out vessel in Marseilles to face an uncertain future in Australia and New Zealand. They came from displaced persons camps in Germany, death camps in Poland, labour camps in Hungary, gulags in Siberia and stony Aegean islands. There were those who had been hunted by the Nazis and those who had welcomed them; those who had followed the Communists and those who had fled them.

Eleven months after his liberation from Auschwitz, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychologist, who was to become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity. Published for the very first time, Frankl’s words resonate as strongly today as they did in 1946. He offers an insightful exploration of the maxim ‘live as if you were living for the second time’ and unfolds his basic conviction that every crisis also includes an opportunity.

This is the story of Germany after the Nazis, a time when two separate states rose from the ashes to face each other across the Iron Curtain. Meanwhile, the people struggled to come to terms with both the physical and psychological impact of defeat, as well as guilt for the monstrous acts that had been committed under Hitler's regime.

In six weeks in 1940, France was overrun by German troops and surrendered. One junior French general, refusing to accept defeat, made his way to England. On 18 June he spoke to his compatriots over the BBC, urging them to rally to him in London. At that moment, Charles de Gaulle entered into history. For the rest of the war, de Gaulle frequently bit the hand that fed him. He insisted on being treated as the true embodiment of France, and quarrelled violently with Churchill and Roosevelt. But he managed to have France recognised as one of the victorious Allies.