The defining event of twentieth-century Europe - the extermination of millions of Jews - has been commemorated, institutionalised and embedded in our collective consciousness. But in this nuanced and perceptive new history, Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute, contends that the true dimension of the horror wrought by the Nazis is inadvertently brushed aside in our current culture of commemoration. This is due in part to practical or conceptual challenges, such as the continent-wide scale of the crime and the multiplicity of sources in many languages; and in part to an unwillingness to confront the reality that the Holocaust could not have happened without the assistance of numerous non-Nazi states and agents. Structured around four themes - trauma, collaboration, genocidal fantasy and post-war consequences - The Holocaust demonstrates the genocidal logic of much European thinking in the wake of WWI, explores how the Holocaust's effects unfolded even after the liberation of the camps in 1945, and stresses the ways in which Europeans continue, even now, to draw on a reservoir of fascist vocabulary and imagery in times of crisis. It is a deeply researched and indispensable examination of a trauma that still reverberates today.

GENERAL & LITERARY FICTION. The first word of this haunting novel is 'no'. It is how the narrator, a middle-aged Hungarian Jewish writer, answers an acquaintance who asks if he has a child and it is how he answered his, now ex-, wife when she told him she wanted a baby. The loss, longing, and regret that haunt the years between those two 'no's' give rise to one of the most eloquent meditations ever written on the Holocaust. As Kertesz's narrator addresses the child he couldn't bear to bring into the world, he takes readers on a mesmerizing, lyrical journey through his life, from his childhood to Auschwitz to his failed marriage.

Codename Suzette is one of the untold stories of the Holocaust, an account of outstanding courage in the face of evil. Suzanne Spaak was born into an affluent Belgian Catholic family, and married into the country's leading political dynasty. Her brother-in-law was the Foreign Minister and her husband Claude was a playwright and patron of the painter Rene Magritte. In occupied Paris she moved among the cultural elite. Her neighbour was Colette, France's most famous living writer, and Jean Cocteau was part of her circle of intimates. But Suzanne was living a double life. Her friendship with a Polish Jewish refugee led her to her life's purpose. When France fell and the Nazis occupied Paris, she joined the Resistance. She used her fortune and social status to enlist allies among wealthy Parisians and church groups.Under the eyes of the Gestapo, Suzanne and women from the Jewish and Christian resistance groups 'kidnapped' hundreds of Jewish children to save them from the gas chambers.Codename Suzette is a masterpiece of research and narrative, bringing to life a truly remarkable woman, and painting a vivid and unforgettable picture of wartime Paris.

"A photograph with faint writing on the back. A traveling chess set. A silver pin. These objects and the memories they evoke are among the threads that scholar and writer Susan Rubin Suleiman uses to weave back together the story of her early life as a Holocaust refugee and American immigrant. In this coming-of-age story that probes the hopes parents have for their children and the inevitability of loss, Susan looks to her own life as a case study of how historical events are always at work in our private lives. As a young girl growing up in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Budapest, Susan learned to call herself by a new name--the name on the false papers her father had obtained to keep their family safe. When the Nazis marched into Hungary in the spring of 1944, Susan's relatives in northeast Hungary would be among the 450,000 Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz, but her immediate family survived undercover in Budapest; later on, they would emigrate to Chicago by way of Vienna, Paris, Haiti and New York. In her adult life as a prominent feminist professor, Susan rarely allowed herself to think about this chapter of her past--but eventually, when she had children of her own, she found herself called back to Budapest, unlocking memories that would change the perspective of her scholarship and the trajectory of her career. In this poignant memoir, Susan returns to her childhood in Budapest and adolescence and young womanhood in the United States, negotiating the expectations of her parents and her own desire to be "truly American." At once an intellectual autobiography and a reflection on the nature of memory, identity, and family, Daughter of History invites us to consider how the objects that underpin our own lives are gateways to the past"--

In 1942, in Nazi-occupied Poland, a Jewish child was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in a backpack. That child was Karen Kirsten's mother, but she knew nothing about this extraordinary event until one day a letter arrived from a stranger. After Karen eventually discovered the grandparents she loved dearly were in fact not her biological grandparents, she travelled the globe to uncover her family's past and to find the answers to baffling questions- why did her adoptive grandmother treat Karen's mother so unkindly? Why did she hide the truth that she was her mother's aunt? And why, if she appeared to dislike Karen's mother, did she risk her life to save her and bring her to Australia?

One man's struggle with memory and prejudice on the way to recovering his past. Mark Kurzem was happily ensconced in his academic life at Oxford when his father, Alex, showed up on his doorstep with a terrible secret to tell. As a five-year-old during the Second World War, Alex Kurzem had watched from a tree as the entire Jewish population of his village, including his family, were murdered by a German-led execution squad. He scavenged in the forests of Russia for several months before falling into the hands of a Latvian police brigade that later became an SS company. After one soldier discovered this young boy was actually Jewish, Alex was made to promise never to reveal his true identity - to forget his old life, his family, and even his name. The young boy became the company's mascot and part of the Nazi propaganda machine responsible for killing his own people. Fearful of being discovered-as either a Jew or a Nazi-Alex kept the secret of his childhood, even from his loving wife and children. But he grew increasingly tormented and became determined to uncover his Jewish roots and the story of his past. Shunned by a local Holocaust organization, he reached out to his son Mark for help in reclaiming his identity. The Mascot is a survival story, a grim fairy-tale, and a psychological drama. It's a remarkable and highly readable memoir that asks provocative questions about identity, complicity, and forgiveness.

"Part contemporary detective story, part World War II historical narrative, No Surrender is the inspiring true story of Roddie Edmonds, a Knoxville-born enlistee who risked his life during the final days of World War II to save others from murderous Nazis, and the lasting effects his actions had on thousands of lives--then and now. Captured in the Battle of the Bulge, Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds was the highest-ranking American soldier at Stalag IXA, a prisoner of war camp near Ziegenhain, Germany. A native of Knoxville, Tennessee, Roddie was a simple, soft-spoken man of deep inner strength and unwavering Christian faith. Though he was driven to the limits of endurance, Roddie refused to succumb to Nazi brutality toward the Jewish-American GIs with whom he was serving. Through his inspiring leadership and bravery Roddie saved the lives of hundreds of U.S. infantrymen in those perilous final days of the Second World War. His fearless actions continue to reverberate today. Growing up, Pastor Chris Edmonds knew little of his father's actions in the war. To learn the truth, he followed a trail of clues, a journey that spanned seven decades and linked a sprawling cast of heroes, both known and unknown, from every corner of the country. In No Surrender, Pastor Chris, joined by New York Times bestselling co-author Douglas Century, chronicles his odyssey to tell the unforgettable story of his father and his remarkable valour."--