2 Memoirs about the Holocaust

by Susan Roberts

Amsterdam Publishers is specialized in Holocaust memoirs & WW2 historical fiction. Every year survivors with unique testimonies are passing away. Their stories need to be kept alive. Especially today, these accounts seem more important than ever. As a publisher, it is my task to publish Holocaust testimonies with gratitude and become the witness of witnesses. – Liesbeth Heenk

I have recently read two memoirs published by Amsterdam Publishers.  Here is a quote from one of them:

"This narrative will assure that her descendants will know about her family members, her history, her indomitable spirit, her courage, determination and pluck and her ability to move forward and live a productive and fruitful life despite the traumas.  it is an attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible - the horrors of history's largest act of genocide and of inhumanity itself.  Almost as important, it is an act of defiance against the revisionists and Holocaust deniers who shamelessly defile the memories of all those millions who were killed and the surviving souls who experienced indescribable torture and abuse."  (A Holocaust Memoir loc 148)

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A Holocaust Memoir of Love & Resilience: Mama's Survival from Lithuania to America by Ettie Zilber

January 2019; Amsterdam Publishers; 978-9493056022
ebook, print (222 pages); biography

As the second world war recedes further into history and so many of the people involved in it are at advanced ages or dead, the question needs to be asked if it is important that we remember what happened 70 years ago. In this new book, Ettie Zibler answers that question with a resounding YES.

This narrative is divided into two sections. In the first section, we get the story of Zlata Santocki Sidrer who was a teenager when the war broke out. She lived in Lithuania with her parents and sisters and their lives changed drastically when the war broke out. The family ended up in different concentration camps and she lost most of her family. She describes not only her time in the camps but also the time after the liberation when people were looking for family. It is amazing that they were able to find loved ones since things were so confusing at that time. The second part of the book is told by Ettie Zilber, one of the daughters of Zlata who went to Europe and visited the places that her mother had lived both before and after the war and visited the concentration camps. She is not only able to tell the story of her family's survival but is also able to look at it from the present day.

This is an important record of the horrors of war and these books need to be read so that the same mistakes aren't made again.

Buy A Holocaust Memoir of Love and Resilience at Amazon

Holocaust Memoirs of a Bergen-Belsen Survivor & Classmate of Anne Frank by Nanette Blitz Konig

January 2018; Amsterdam Publishers; 978-9492371614
ebook, print (168 pages); memoir

What was so disturbing about this book is that it is a memory of a very ordinary family. The dad worked at a bank, the kids went to school and they all led a very normal life....Until the disruption and horror brought to Holland by the Third Reich. Even then, the family thought that they would be safe until they were sent to a temporary camp where they started having their dignity gradually stripped away. Minimal food, poor hygiene and constant orders from the SS soldiers. The temporary camp was bad enough but when the family was moved to Bergen-Belsen, they lost all vestiges of their earlier life. Once they were there, it was a daily struggle to stay alive. The author presented the horror of the camp in such a way that it was even more horrific. I am so glad that the book continued to the author's years after her time in Bergen-Belsen and we were truly able to see what a strong determined woman she is.

Thank you, Nanette, for sharing your story and continuing to share it with future generations so that this never happens again.

Buy Holocaust Memoirs of a Bergen-Belsen Survivor at Amazon

Susan Roberts lives in North Carolina when she isn't traveling. She and her husband enjoy traveling, gardening and spending time with their family and friends. She reads almost anything (and the piles of books in her house prove that) but her favorite genres are Southern fiction, women's fiction, and thrillers. Susan is a top 1% Goodreads Reviewer. You can connect with Susan on Facebook, Goodreads, or Twitter.

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