Survivor Biography

This book details Alice’s struggles in navigating life and climbing up the ladder of success. It is about taking a step ahead from the fear of failure and conquering all the challenges that life lays in front of you with persistence. Remember, when struggling in life, you have a choice; you can either dwell on your miseries or you can use them as a stepping stone to be stronger.

Eastern Europe, 1944: Three women believe they are pregnant, but are torn from their husbands before they can be certain. Rachel is sent to Auschwitz, unaware that her husband has been shot. Priska and her husband travel there together, but are immediately separated. Also at Auschwitz, Anka hopes in vain to be reunited with her husband. With the rest of their families gassed, these young wives are determined to hold on to all they have left-their lives, and those of their unborn babies.

Four US Navy SEALS departed one clear night in early July 2005 for the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border for a reconnaissance mission. Their task was to document the activity of an al Qaeda leader rumored to have a small army in a Taliban stronghold. Five days later, only one of those Navy SEALS made it out alive. This is the story of the only survivor of Operation Redwing, SEAL team leader Marcus Luttrell, and the extraordinary firefight that led to the largest loss of life in American Navy SEAL history.

Gripping and inspiring, these true stories of bravery, terror, and hope chronicle nine different children's experiences during the Holocaust. These are the true-life accounts of nine Jewish boys and girls whose lives spiraled into danger and fear as the Holocaust overtook Europe. In a time of great horror, these children each found a way to make it through the nightmare of war. Their legacy of courage in the face of hatred will move you, captivate you, and ultimately, inspire you.

Holocaust survivor and licensed therapist Karmela Waldman shares brutally honest advice about life and death—often deploying brutally sharp wit—with her son and podcast co-host, Joel Waldman.

On August 28, 1997, just as she was starting her junior year of college at the University of Kentucky, Holly Dunn and her boyfriend, Chris Maier, were walking along railroad tracks on their way home from a party when they were attacked by notorious serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz, a.k.a. The Railroad Killer. After her boyfriend is beaten to death in front of her, Holly is stabbed, raped, and left for dead. In this memoir of survival and healing from a horrific true crime, Holly recounts how she lived through the vicious assault.

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.

Stolen is the true story of one survivor who escaped - more than once. First recruited while staying with her family at a hotel in Miami Beach, Katariina Rosenblatt was already a lonely and abused young girl who was yearning to be loved. She fell into the hands of a confident young woman who pretended friendship but slowly lured her into a child prostitution ring. For years afterward, a cycle of false friendship, threats, drugs, and violence kept her trapped.

The diary of a young Jewish housewife who, together with her husband and five-month-old baby, fled the Warsaw ghetto at the last possible moment, and survived the Holocaust hidden on the "Aryan" side of town in the loft of a run-down tinsmith's shed. Rescued from the Ashes documents the incredible life story of Leokadia Schmidt and her small family and their daily struggle to survive the Warsaw Ghetto.

This is the memoir written by Bella Kuligowska Zucker, the only person in her family to survive the Holocaust. In September 1939, Bella was a carefree teenager living in Poland when the German army struck. She was rounded up with her friends and family and sent to a series of grim Jewish ghettos. After loved ones were separated and lost through the war years, Bella survived by changing her identity. After finding the birth certificate of a Catholic girl five years her senior, she became Sabina Mazurek. Then she went into the eye of the storm, Germany.

"In the summer of 1991 I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother who loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen. For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse. For eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name. I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I survived an impossible situation. On August 26, 2009, I took my name back. My name is Jaycee Lee Dugard. I dont think of myself as a victim. I survived...."

My Mother's War is a gripping memoir about one woman's unflinching courage and cunning in the face of horrific evil. This compelling true story follows author and Holocaust survivor Michael Fryd's larger-than-life mother who outsmarted the Nazis and saved her family. Michael Fryd was only three years old when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, triggering World War II and one of humanity’s darkest chapters. Forced to leave their home and everything they knew, Fryd's mother went to near impossible lengths to keep her family safe from Hitler’s clutches, including crafting clever lies, dealing in...

Our Crime Was Being Jewish contains 576 vivid memories of 358 Holocaust survivors. These are the true, insider stories of victims, told in their own words. They include the experiences of teenagers who saw their parents and siblings sent to the gas chambers; of starving children beaten for trying to steal a morsel of food; of people who saw their friends commit suicide to save themselves from the daily agony they endured.

In September 1921, four young men and Ada Blackjack, a diminutive 25-year-old Eskimo woman, ventured deep into the Arctic in a secret attempt to colonize desolate Wrangel Island for Great Britain. Two years later, Ada Blackjack emerged as the sole survivor of this ambitious polar expedition. This young, unskilled woman - who had headed to the Arctic in search of money and a husband - conquered the seemingly unconquerable north and survived all alone after her male companions had perished.

The sound of snapping twigs closed in on the five teenagers enjoying an evening around a glowing campfire at Gitchie Manitou State Park. The night of music and laughter had taken a dark turn. Evil loomed just beyond the tree line, and before the night was over, one of the Midwest's most horrific mass murders had left its bloodstains spewed across the campsite. One managed to survive and would come to be known as the "Gitchie Girl".

Keith Morris is a true punk icon. No one else embodies the sound of Southern Californian hardcore. Short and sporting waist-length dreadlocks, Morris is known the world over for his take-no-prisoners approach on the stage and his integrity off of it. Over the course of his 40-year career, he's battled diabetes, drug and alcohol addiction, and the record industry. My Damage is more than a book about the highs and lows of a punk rock legend, however.

Born in Leipzig, Germany, into a Jewish family, Eddie Jaku was a teenager when his world was turned upside-down. On November 9, 1938, during the terrifying violence of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Eddie was beaten by SS thugs, arrested, and sent to a concentration camp with thousands of other Jews across Germany. Every day of the next seven years of his life, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors in Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and finally on a forced death march during the Third Reich’s final days.

Quickly becoming a cornerstone of Holocaust historiography, this is a devastatingly stark memoir from one of the lone survivors of Treblinka. Why do some live while so many others perish? Tiny children, old men, beautiful girls - in the gas chambers of Treblinka, all are equal. The Nazis kept the fires of Treblinka burning night and day, a central cog in the wheel of the Final Solution.

No one expected the Nazis to arrive with such speed, and without a shot being fired. But when they entered Kraków in 1939, Josef Lewkowicz’s life was obliterated as he and his family were sent to concentration camps across the continent. Josef—after surviving the horrors of six separate concentration camps during World War II—became a relentless Nazi hunter in the aftermath of the war. The Survivor is a captivating record of one man’s survival against all odds—but it is also an optimistic chronicle of such a pivotal moment in history, offering wisdom and hope despite the crushing darkness.

In The Survivors, award-winning true-crime writer Steve Braunias retells twelve mysteries of human nature—unusual stories of how people choose to survive their own lives, and their decisions, desires, impulses... and failings.