Bookshop
(NEW PUBLICATION, 6th May 2009)
No Going Back: Letters to Pope Benedict XVI on the Holocaust, Jewish-Christian Relations & Israel
Pope Benedict XVI is not the first pope to visit Israel and the Holy Land. In January 1964, Pope Paul VI visited Jordan and Israel, and in March 2000, Pope John Paul II visited Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Nine years on, another pope is going to the Holy Land as a pilgrim. But much has changed in the last 45 years. Vatican II and the late Pope John Paul II did much to impact positively on Christian-Jewish relations and the recent archival information about the actions of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust has also contributed to good feelings. But these days Christians and Jews face new challenges. The rise of radical Islamic fundamentalism, the war in Lebanon and the invasion of Gaza, the re-wording of the Good Friday prayer by Pope Benedict XVI and the lifting of the excommunications of four traditionalist Roman Catholic bishops, one of whom denies the Holocaust, have aroused consternation among Jews and Catholics, as well as among other Christians. The visit of Pope Benedict XVI will be of great significance for all people of good will in the region − indeed, in the world.
More than 35 women and men – from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions and from various places around the world – accepted an invitation to write an essay-letter responding to the question: If you had five minutes with Pope Benedict XVI, what would you to say to him? Their contributions are challenging and insightful, spanning a range of views and opinions.
Carol Rittner, RSM, an American Roman Catholic nun, is co-editor of No Going Back: Letters to Pope Benedict XVI on the Holocaust, Jewish-Christian Relations and Israel. Dr Rittner is Distinguished Professor of Holocaust & Genocide Studies at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey (USA) and has published numerous books, including The Courage to Care, Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust, The Holocaust and the Christian World, Pius XII and the Holocaust, Will Genocide Ever End? and Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches?
Stephen Smith, Chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust in the UK, Director of the UK Holocaust Centre and co-founder of the Aegis Trust for the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity, is co-editor of No Going Back: Letters to Pope Benedict XVI on the Holocaust, Jewish-Christian Relations and Israel. Dr Smith was also Project Director responsible for the creation of the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda. His publications include Making Memory: Creating Britain’s First Holocaust Centre, Forgotten Places: The Holocaust and the Remnants of Destruction and The Holocaust and the Christian World.
Paperback
Price: £10.00
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The Holocaust and Genocide: Why Does It Happen? (eLc eligible)
In association with Hodder Murray
This fully interactive, networkable CD-ROM offers an innovative approach to teaching and learning about the Holocaust and modern-day genocide to students aged 11–16. It draws on a rich selection of source material, including audio files and video clips containing archive footage and survivors’ testimony. It provides extensive coverage of the Holocaust, and draws comparisons with events in Rwanda and the Balkans, enabling effective integration of the resource into RE and Citizenship lessons. It encourages meaningful historical investigation as well as the exploration of human rights and the relevance of past events to today’s society. The resource also includes adaptable student activities designed to stimulate thinking skills and understanding.
“This remarkable educational software allows teachers and learners to bring survivors into the classroom to share their experiences of genocide… Many department heads within UK secondary schools have lauded the approach of the content, which aims not only to explain what happened, but to encourage students to explore for themselves and reach their own conclusions.”
Steve Connolly, Digital and ICT Publisher, Hodder Murray
Price: £199.00 plus VAT (includes one network licence)
Survival
Holocaust Survivors Tell Their Story
Edited by Wendy Whitworth
Foreword by Sir Martin Gilbert
A collection of 46 brief testimonies by Holocaust survivors closely connected with the Holocaust Centre, Beth Shalom. A unique volume covering the whole range of survivors’ experiences: concentration and death camps, death marches, ghettos, resistance, hidden children, refugees and Kindertransportees. The testimonies are short, accessible and provide important opportunities for discussion and follow-up work in schools.
“The testimonies carefully gathered here are about more than survival. They beckon their readers to stand up for what is right and good.”
John K. Roth, Director, Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College, USA
426 pp., paperback
Price: £10.00 (£7.50 for students)
Return to Auschwitz
Kitty Hart-Moxon
New, updated edition with full index
Kitty Hart-Moxon was just twelve years old at the outbreak of the Second World War and fifteen when she and her mother were deported to Auschwitz. Amazingly, she managed to survive the daily terror that she faced, and was eventually freed from Salzwedel camp by American troops in 1945. Return to Auschwitz is an eyewitness account of Kitty’s experiences, telling of the calculated humiliation of camp inmates, the constant hunger, the ruthless SS guards, and the regular deportations to the gas chambers of millions of Jews. Remarkably, it also tells of Kitty’s struggle for survival – and her return many years later to the site of her persecution.
“A heroic story of survival, moving in its compassion”
Daily Express
254pp., paperback
Price: £7.50
We Survived
Genocide in Rwanda: 28 Personal Testimonies
Edited by Wendy Whitworth
In association with Kigali Memorial Centre, Rwanda
These personal testimonies of survivors of the Rwandan genocide remind us above all that the cost of genocide is a human one. Those who share their painful stories with us are some of the few who slipped through the net of total destruction in Rwanda. They were ordinary people, caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Years later, the void of loss is not filled, but they look ahead to the future and strive towards unity and reconciliation.
“These moving accounts by survivors of the Rwandan genocide… should be read by everyone. Each one reminds us intensely of the human loss from genocide – men, women and children who are of equal value to people anywhere else, but were not considered important enough to be saved.”
Lt Gen the Hon. Roméo A. Dallaire, Senator, Commander of UN forces in Rwanda, 1994
279 pp., paperback
Price: £10.00
If The Stars Could Only Speak
Batsheva Dagan
Translated by Ziona Schaffer
Illustrations by Avi Katz
A moving and sensitively written children’s book by Holocaust survivor and educationalist Batsheva Dagan. If The Stars Could Only Speak tells the story of a Jewish mother and her children torn apart – but eventually reunited – by the events of the Holocaust. Specially written for use in schools with children aged ten upwards and an excellent introduction to the difficult issues of the Holocaust.
“The children were enthralled by the story and great discussions followed around the characters – prisoners and perpetrators… Each child could access and understand the pain and challenges of the victims…
I shall definitely use this book each time when Year 6 try to make sense of the atrocity which was the Holocaust.”
Jackie Lunan, Year 6 teacher, St. John the Evangelist Catholic Primary School, Bradford
24 pp., hardback
Price: £4.99
A Detail of History
Arek Hersh
Arek Hersh was a child in the Lodz ghetto and survived Auschwitz as a 14-year-old orphan. He tells his story simply and honestly, the moving account of a young Polish boy who made his own luck and survived.
“A truly inspirational story.”
Amazon reader’s review
163 pp., paperback
Price: £7.50
From Belsen to Buckingham Palace
Paul Oppenheimer
Paul Oppenheimer and his brother and sister were taken to Bergen-Belsen as children. This unsentimental and very readable book gives readers personal insights into the real lives of three young survivors, their hopes and fears, their lives and fates.
“Good writing, good information, very interesting; in other words, A GOOD BOOK.”
Leon Greenman, OBE, Auschwitz survivor
182 pp., paperback
Price: £7.50
The Odyssey of John Chillag,
a Hungarian Jew Born in Vienna
From Györ in Hungary to Australia and England
via Auschwitz and Buchenwald
John Chillag interviewed in Bochum, Germany, by Hubert Schneider
John, the only survivor of a large family of 60, enquired in the early 1950s through the Red Cross International Tracing Service whether there was any information on the fate of any of his family members. The Red Cross could only trace two people, John and his father – all the others had perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The certificate on John’s father ended with the words, “and he is buried in Bochum Wiemelhausen Jewish cemetery”. It was a most improbable story, but it was true, and unravelling the full facts took over half a century.
“It is so helpful to students’ understanding to have a personal story to focus upon. The whole topic of the Holocaust is so vast, and the numbers involved so huge, that it takes an individual’s journey through the horror to enable them to fully make the connection that this was happening to real people, still alive today.”
Helen Snelson, History Department, Harrogate Grammar School
60pp., spiral bound Price: £4.99
One of the Lucky Ones
Rescued by the Kindertransport
Bob Rosner interviewed by David Turner
Born in Vienna, Bob Rosner was nearly nine when his parents made the agonizing decision to send him and his sister to safety in England via the Kindertransport organization. Bob describes his journey into the unknown, his early experiences as a boy in Hull, and the three ‘miracles’ that happened in 1947 – his discovery that his parents had survived the Holocaust; becoming a British citizen; and obtaining a university scholarship.
“On one level this is a gripping story, with twists and turns of a kind that might seem improbable in a work of fiction; on another level, it is a telling document of perhaps the darkest period in twentieth-century European history; and on a third level it is a testimony to human nature both at its most despicable and at its most courageous. Yet one of the most remarkable things is that the central character, who speaks without self-pity, emerges with such a positive outlook.”
David Turner, Reader Emeritus, German, University of Hull
50 pp., spiral bound
Price: £4.99
…and Kovno Wept
Waldemar Ginsburg
During the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, over 90 per cent of the Jewish population were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. Among them were the family and friends of Waldemar Ginsburg. This powerfully written and moving story describes the struggle for survival in the Kovno ghetto. Waldemar is one of the few remaining survivors of the ghetto, where he lived and worked until its final liquidation in 1944.
“I was really inspired by your words… I thought to myself, ‘Why did no one help you?’”
Danny Smith, Tong School, Bradford
134 pp., paperback
Price: £7.50
Let One Go Free
Hannah Hickman
In June 1939, a Jewish family in Würzburg, Germany, sent their 11-year-old daughter Hannah to school in England to escape the effects of Nazi rule. She never saw her parents or brother and sister again.
“Let One Go Free…[is] not simply the story of one child who escaped with the Kindertransport to England, but an evocative family portrait with vivid recollections of the life of an assimilated German-Jewish family in Würzburg in the 1930s.”
Professor Edward Timms, Director, Centre for German-Jewish Studies, University of Sussex
120 pp., paperback
Price: £4.99
Beyond Imagination
Victoria Ancona-Vincent
From an early childhood in Jerusalem, Victoria Ancona-Vincent describes her experiences in Brussels, Alexandria, Milan and ultimately Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was a prisoner for over eight months. She spent four months on the move in treacherous conditions during the death marches, and a further four months recuperating before she could return to Milan. Her marriage to a British soldier soon followed and Victoria moved to Nottingham, England, over 50 years ago.
“Victoria Ancona-Vincent has condensed her experiences into a short, but highly informative autobiographical account. Her attention to detail goes back to the period of her captivity, when she realised the importance of remembering things accurately.”
Stephen D. Smith, Founder and Director, The Holocaust Centre
80 pp., paperback Price: £3.99
Did You Ever Meet Hitler, Miss?
A Holocaust Survivor Talks to Young People
Trude Levi
In association with Vallentine Mitchell
Trude Levi answers questions asked by schoolchildren and students about her experiences in the Holocaust, and the consequences for her life thereafter. Her book deals with personal history and the questions it poses.
“Trude Levi’s straightforward and honest approach to the questions she has been asked ensures that this is a book that every school library should have.”
Fiona Assersohn, former Head of History, John Smeaton Community High School, Leeds
126 pp., paperback
Price: £7.50
The Krakow Diary of Julius Feldman
Translated by William Brand
After the war, Polish workers restoring a Krakow building which had been part of Plaszow forced labour camp discovered a manuscript, hidden in the wall. It was a diary, written during the Holocaust by one of its victims. “How terribly I feel the lack of my beloved father, whom everyone knew…”, Julius Feldman concludes mid-sentence, 11 April 1943. He was 19 years old. This is his story, with its extraordinary insights into the daily life and tragedy of the Krakow ghetto and Plaszow concentration camp.
“Julius Feldman’s record, part memoir and part diary, brings to life the constant fears and desperate hopes, the daily grind and the appalling personal tragedies of life in the Krakow ghetto in ways that only an eyewitness account written in the heart of those events possibly could.”
Stephen D. Smith, Founder and Director, The Holocaust Centre
112 pp., paperback
Price: £4.00
The Disappearance of Goldie Rapaport
Gina Schwarzmann with Evelyn Julia Kent
Many stories of courage have been told about the sacrifices made by individuals and families during the Second World War, but this one will stir the emotions of all who read it. It is the true and moving account of the Jewish Polish childhood of Goldie (Gina), separated from her family at the age of seven and sent to a Christian family for safety.
“Goldie’s peaceful childhood world is torn apart by Nazi brutality. The sadness is relieved by the courage and kindness of so many people and by the spirit of integrity that shines like a guiding light throughout.”
John O’Toole
219 pp., paperback
Price: £4.99
Holocaust Poetry
Compiled and introduced by Hilda Schiff
Long recognised as a standard work by students of Holocaust literature, Hilda Schiff’s volume Holocaust Poetry is a lasting and solemn tribute to the memory of those killed in the Holocaust, and an expression of shared hope for the future. The volume includes 119 poems by 59 poets.
“The power of verse to encompass a topic of mammoth scope and render it into painstakingly personal detail is keenly demonstrated in this absorbing and well thought-out anthology of grief.”
Publishers Weekly
258 pp., paperback
Price: £4.99
Holocaust Literature
Unshed Tears
Edith Hofmann
A novel, but not a fiction. Originally from Prague, Edith Hofmann was a schoolgirl survivor of Auschwitz and Belsen and is now known as an artist of the Holocaust. It was more than 50 years before this novel describing her experience was discovered and published. Filled with tragedy and extraordinary hope, it is eminently accessible to young people.
“It is a raw and aching testimony both to her survival, and to her bid to survive survival. Although written in the third person, this is a personal account of the author’s wartime experiences.”
Stephen D Smith, Founder and Director, The Holocaust Centre
468 pp., paperback Price: £4.99
Imagination: Blessed Be, Cursed Be
Reminiscences from there
Batsheva Dagan
Translation by Anna Sotto; illustrations by Yaakov Guterman
Batsheva Dagan is a survivor of Auschwitz. In this compilation she records in a cycle of original, documentary poems the experiences of a girl who reaches adolescence in the Nazi concentration camps. It is a voyage into a unique past, written partly in rhyme and in direct, understated language which is meaningful to young people. The design and illustrations by Yaakov Guterman add a special dimension to the text.
“Batsheva Dagan describes the existential issues in a concentration camp with which adolescents can identify and empathize. In her straightforward poems about the life of a group of young inmates, their humanity and faith in the future is palpable throughout. A useful aid for teachers and their young students.”
Ziona Schaffer, Lecturer, Oranim College of Education, Kiryat Tivon, Israel
96 pp., paperback
Price: £3.95
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
The Holocaust and the Christian World
Edited by Carol Rittner, Stephen D. Smith & Irena Steinfeldt
This comprehensive volume is one of the most wide-ranging works to confront the role of Christianity during the Nazi period, and contains articles by the foremost scholars in the field. An ideal starting point for Christians encountering the Holocaust, an essential text for students addressing the subject and a valuable reference work for seasoned scholars.
“How was it possible? The Nazi genocide of the Jews – the people of Jesus himself, the Virgin Mary and the first Christians – took place in the heartland of Christian civilization. To make sure nothing like it ever happens again is our plainest duty. Prepare to be challenged and moved.”
Clifford Longley, Columnist, The Tablet and Daily Telegraph, and author
282 pp., paperback and hardback
Price: £10.00 (paperback) £15.00 (hardback)
Forgotten Places
The Holocaust and the Remnants of Destruction
Stephen D. Smith
A photographic essay about sites of former Jewish life and the Holocaust in Poland, challenging the reader to reflect on their meaning and on memory. It pays respect to those who died and seeks to challenge the ways in which we remember their passing, two generations on.
“A poignant and invaluable reminder of what was left after the Holocaust of once-thriving communities.”
Arek Hersh, Survivor
86 pp., hardback
Price: £12.00
Rwandan Genocide
Jenoside
Kigali Memorial Centre Guidebook
In association with Kigali Memorial Centre, Rwanda
This is a full-colour, richly illustrated guidebook presenting the material from the Kigali Memorial Centre’s exhibition on the Rwandan genocide. The Centre was opened in 2004 to mark the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and contains three permanent exhibitions – a documentary history of the genocide, a children’s memorial and an exhibition on genocidal violence around the world. An excellent introduction to the genocide in Rwanda.
“Memorials such as the Kigali Memorial Centre help to keep the memory alive… Through its exhibition, it challenges prejudice and discrimination, and provides lessons which can have a positive impact in the everyday life of Rwandans.”
Franco K. Kanimba, Country Co-ordinator, Aegis Rwanda
46 pp., paperback
Price: £3.00
Genocide in Rwanda
Complicity of the Churches?
Edited by Carol Rittner, John K. Roth and Wendy Whitworth
In association with Paragon House, USA
This provocative volume of essays and resources raises disturbing but essential questions about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Were the Christian Churches complicit in the genocide? If so, how and why? If not, why is there such a strong perception that they were? If the Christian Churches were complicit, can they ever recover from such ethical and moral failure?
“… No book explores as well or as comprehensively the highly important question of the role of religion and the churches in that terrible series of events…”
Richard L. Rubenstein, President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Religion, University of Bridgeport, USA
318 pp., paperback Price: £10.00
Holocaust Centre History
Making Memory
Creating Britain’s First Holocaust Centre
Stephen D. Smith
In this thought-provoking introduction to the concept and creation of the Holocaust Centre, Beth Shalom, Stephen Smith eloquently describes the journey he and his family took in establishing the first Holocaust Centre in Britain.
“It shows what ingenuity, resourcefulness, determination, dedication, a sense of purpose and a belief in a cause can achieve.”
Ben Helfgott, Holocaust survivor
170 pp., hardback
Price: £10.00
Witness
The Holocaust Centre 10 Years on
A commemorative volume published in 2005 for the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Holocaust Centre. Over 400 pages record the highlights of the first ten years and over 400 voices bear witness to the Centre’s impact in so many national and international spheres.
“The Holocaust Centre, Beth Shalom, has performed an important role in educating a new generation to the memory of the Holocaust and all that implies for the fight for freedom, tolerance and mutual respect.”
The Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks
455 pp., paperback and hardback
Price: £25.00 paperback
£30.00 hardback
Of the Berlin street: “At this point, I felt things really clicked into place and the children began to understand day-to-day life for Jews.” The carriage was engaging and poignant; children really got to see what happened in reality, but in a sensitive way.” “The home was atmospheric and children got a real feel for life in Germany in the 1930s.”
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