The Ticket Collector from Belarus tells the remarkable story of two interwoven journeys. Ben-Zion Blustein and Andrei Sawoniuk were childhood companions in 1930s Domachevo, once a holiday and health resort in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and then a struggling township in Belarus. During the events which followed its Nazi occupation in 1942, they became the bitterest of enemies. After the war, Ben-Zion made his way to Israel, and ‘Andrusha the bastard’ found work as a London Transport ticket collector.

Ileana, Princess of Romania and Archduchess of Austria who in later life became Mother Alexandra, founder of the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Pennsylvania wrote this memoir shortly after relocating to the US in the 1950s. It tells the story of a life full of suffering, tragedy, and exile, but all is suffused with the author's deep faith, hope, love, and even joy. 

In August 1939, just days before World War II broke out in Europe, a Jewish man in Vienna named Alfred Berger mailed a desperate letter to a stranger in America who shared his last name. Decades later, journalist Faris Cassell stumbled upon the stunning letter and became determined to uncover the story behind it. How did the American Bergers respond? Did Alfred and his family escape Nazi Germany?

In the spring of 1933, more than 8,000 Jewish musicians, actors, and other artists were expelled from their positions with German orchestras, opera companies, and theater groups. Later that year, the Jüdische Kulturbund, or Jewish Culture Association, was created to allow Jewish artists to perform for Jewish audiences.

The GIs called her Joey. Hundreds owed their lives to the tiny Filipina who stashed explosives in spare tires, tracked Japanese troop movements, and smuggled maps of fortifications across enemy lines. As the Battle of Manila raged, Josefina Guerrero walked through gunfire to bandage wounds and close the eyes of the dead. Her valor earned her the Medal of Freedom, but what made her a good spy was also destroying her: leprosy, which so horrified the Japanese they refused to search her.

Horace 'Jim' Greasley was 20 years of age in the spring of 1939 when Adolf Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and latterly Poland. There had been whispers and murmurs of discontent from certain quarters, and the British government began to prepare for the inevitable war. After seven weeks training with the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicester, he found himself facing the might of the German army in a muddy field south of Cherbourg, in Northern France, with just 30 rounds of ammunition in his weapon pouch. Horace's war didn't last long. He was taken prisoner on 25th May 1940. 

On a freezing night in January 1941, a little Jewish girl is found on the steps of an apartment building in Bucharest. With Romania recently allied with the Nazis, the Jewish population is in grave danger, undergoing increasingly violent persecution. The girl is placed in an orphanage and eventually adopted by a wealthy, childless couple who name her Natalia. As she assimilates into her new life, she all but forgets the parents who were forced to leave her behind. They are even further from her mind when Romania falls under Soviet occupation. 

Olga Lengyel tells, frankly and without compromise, one of the most horrifying stories of all time. This true, documented chronicle is the intimate, day-to-day record of a beautiful woman who survived the nightmare of Auschwitz and Birchenau. This book is a necessary reminder of one of the ugliest chapters in the history of human civilization. 

In Facing the Mountain, Daniel James Brown tells the unforgettable story of the Japanese-American men who volunteered for the US army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team and displayed incredible courage on the brutal battlefields of Europe. Achieving the impossible in often near-suicidal missions, including rescuing a 'lost battalion' surrounded by Nazis in the French mountains, the 442nd went on to become one of the most decorated units in US history. Yet at the same time, their parents were put in camps and stripped of their livelihoods.

Ten concentration camps. Ten different places where you are starved, tortured, and worked mercilessly. It's something no one could imagine surviving. But it is what Yanek Gruener has to face. As a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland, Yanek is at the mercy of the Nazis, who have taken over. Everything he has and everyone he loves have been snatched brutally from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner - his arm tattooed with the words Prisoner B-3087.

April 7, 1944 - This date marks the successful escape of two Slovak prisoners from one of the most heavily-guarded and notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, fled over 100 miles to be the first to give the graphic and detailed descriptions of the atrocities of Auschwitz. Originally published in the early 1960s, I Escaped from Auschwitz is the striking autobiography of none other than Rudolf Vrba himself. Vrba details his life leading up to, during, and after his escape from his 21-month internment in Auschwitz.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is based on the true story of Lale and Gita Sokolov, two Slovakian Jews who survived Auschwitz and eventually made their home in Australia. In that terrible place, Lale was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - literally scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust.

Few books have had such an impact as Wild Swans: a popular best seller and a critically acclaimed history of China that opened up the country to the world. Through the story of three generations of women in her own family - the grandmother given to the warlord as a concubine, the Communist mother, and the daughter herself - Jung Chang reveals the epic history of China's 20th century. Breathtaking in its scope, unforgettable in its descriptions, this is a masterpiece that is extraordinary in every way.

Born into a loving family, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) pursued a life as a pastor, teacher, theologian - and spy. He spoke out about the trouble in Germany when Adolph Hitler came to power, urging the Christian church to rescue disparaged people groups and resist Hitler’s evil empire. Accused of being a troublemaker, Dietrich continued on fearlessly in the midst of wickedness. His work as a spy in the German resistance and participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler led to imprisonment and eventual execution.

What would life be like for a Black boy growing up in Nazi Germany? This unprecedented autobiography answers that question with the spellbinding true story of Hans J. Massaquoi’s life in Hamburg during the height of Hitler’s regime. Hans is the son of a Black Liberian diplomat father and a white German mother. His father returns to Africa at the beginning of the war, leaving them behind in poverty without the means to flee. Within this tense atmosphere, increasingly violent Nazi policies and Allied bombing raids make Hans and his mother’s lives a day-to-day survival struggle.