Showing results for "Was" in Modern

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.

At the age of nine, Tomi Reichental, along with his mother, brother, grandmother, aunt and cousin, were incarcerated in the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Their crime: being Jews in Slovakia under Tiso’s regime which collaborated in the deportation of over 80 per cent of its Jewish population. He recalls the daily brutality, starvation and dehumanisation of the inmates.

*Winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize* 'Malala is an inspiration to girls and women all over the world' J K Rowling 'Inspirational and powerful' GRAZIA 'For sheer inspiration read I Am Malala' SUNDAY TIMES 'A tale of immense courage and conviction' INDEPENDENT 'She has the heart and courage of a...

Spring 1958: a mysterious individual believed to be high up in the Polish secret service began passing Soviet secrets to the West. His name was Michal Goleniewski, and he remains one of the most important yet least known and most misunderstood spies of the Cold War. Even his death is shrouded in mystery and he has been written out of the history of Cold War espionage - until now. 

After the Iraq War, when the reputation of Britain's spooks hit an all-time low, John le Carré's intellectual hero George Smiley came to be seen as the perfect spy, a man who would never allow intelligence to be misused for political purposes. Le Carré had revealed shortly before that the model for Smiley was the author and MI5 officer John Bingham, the 7th Baron Clanmorris. Michael Jago's brilliant account of Bingham's life is the story of an intelligence officer who had a deep influence on le Carré, then a junior colleague in MI5.

For the very first time, The War That Never Was tells the fascinating story of a secret war fought by British mercenaries in the Yemen in the early 1960s. In a covert operation organised over whisky and sodas in the clubs of Chelsea and Mayfair, a group of former SAS officers.

You might have forgotten (or wanted to forget) the storming of the Capitol, the Meghan and Harry interview with Oprah, Dominic Cummings turning on his former master and that bum squeeze by Matt Hancock - but James Felton is here to remind listeners of all of that and more using his usual razor-sharp wit and gleeful disdain.

What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization - in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics - that have transformed the way we live. 

In 1678, a handful of perjurers claimed that the Catholics of England planned to assassinate the king. Men like the "Reverend Doctor" Titus Oates and "Captain" William Bedloe parlayed their fantastical tales of Irish ruffians, medical poisoners, and silver bullets into public adulation and government pensions. The result was the trial and execution of over a dozen innocent Catholics, and the imprisonment of many more, some of whom died in custody. Victor Stater examines the Popish Plot in full, arguing that it had a profound and lasting significance on British politics. 

ONE OF THE NEW REPUBLIC'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR “Nothing I’ve read has cut to the heart of the ’00s like Y2K.” — Bustle Perfect for fans of Jia Tolentino and Chuck Klosterman, Y2K is a delightfully nostalgic and bitingly told exploration about how the early 2000s forever changed us...

Author Stewart Gordon has fashioned a fascinating and unique look at Asia from AD 700 to 1500, a time when Asia was the world, by describing the personal journeys of Asia's many travelers - the merchants who traded spices along the Silk Road, the apothecaries who exchanged medicine and knowledge from China to the Middle East, and the philosophers and holy men who crossed continents to explore and exchange ideas, books, science, and culture. 

By the close of World War II, six million Jews had been erased from the face of the earth. Those who eluded death had lost their homes, families, and entire way of life. Their response was quintessentially Jewish. From a people with a long-history of self-narration, survivors gathered in groups and wrote books, yizkor books, remembering all that had been destroyed. Jane Ziegelman’s Once There Was a Town takes listeners on a journey through this largely uncharted body of writing and the vanished world it depicts.

Imagine a time when Europe lay shrouded in tyranny—cities crumbled, millions displaced, and freedom silenced under Nazi rule. Yet from 1944 to 1945, a decisive series of Allied campaigns shattered the iron grip of oppression. The Final Push: How Europe Was Liberated! tells the story of that transformative moment—when ordinary people and extraordinary leaders joined across continents to bring an end to Hitler’s tyranny and restore freedom to a broken world.

A deathbed promise leads a daughter on an incredible journey to write about her grandfather who was a famous war hero. But this journey had a terrible destination: the discovery that he was a Nazi war criminal. 

En las últimas décadas la investigación histórica se ha renovado mucho en la Argentina, con preguntas nuevas y aproximaciones mucho más ricas y diversas que antes. Y sin embargo esos trabajos no han conseguido, en general, abrirse paso en el sentido común más o menos compartido por la sociedad. Al contrario: siguen muy vigentes, en esa "agenda pública", discursos históricos moralizadores, que no se proponen comprender sino juzgar y que simplifican nuestra perspectiva con anacronismos y visiones épicas que dificultan nuestra posibilidad de entender ese pasado colectivo.

Als der Journalist Sacha Batthyany zufällig erfährt, dass seine Großtante Margit in eines der schlimmsten Nazi-Verbrechen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges verwickelt war, ist er schockiert. Schnell merkt er, dass dem Schweigen über die Tat kaum beizukommen ist - die Familie hat sich arrangiert, es wird nach vorn geblickt und nicht zurück. Als er auf das Tagebuch seiner Großmutter stößt, verändert das seinen Blick auf die Familie und sich selbst radikal. Prägen vorangegangene Generationen die Art, wie wir leben? Sind wir doch alle Kriegsenkel?

A Washington Post style editor’s fascinating and irresistible look back on the Miss America pageant—unveiling the hidden world of this iconic institution. The sash. The tears. The glittering crown. And of course, that soaring song. For all its pomp and kitsch, the Miss America pageant is...

"Zu Fuß?" "Zu Fuß." "Allein?" "Allein." - Am 22. Januar 2020 macht sich Christiane Hoffmann in einem Dorf in Niederschlesien auf den Weg. Sie läuft 550 Kilometer nach Westen, es ist der Weg, auf dem ihr Vater im Winter 1945 vor der Roten Armee geflohen ist. Die Flucht und der Verlust der Heimat prägen die Kindheit der Autorin, es bleibt, wie bei so vielen Familien, eine Wunde. Nach dem Tod des Vaters kehrt die Tochter nach Rosenthal zurück, das jetzt Rózyna heißt. Sie sucht nach der Geschichte und ihren Narben.

It was a frigid night in February 2013 when the five young fishermen vanished. The crew of the Miss Ally - a 12-metre Cape Islander from Woods Harbour, Nova Scotia - was fishing for halibut far off the Nova Scotia coast when their boat’s spotlight malfunctioned. A vicious winter storm was approaching from her south, and all other boats at the fishing grounds were steaming for shore. Unable to locate his longlining gear, the Miss Ally’s young captain decided to stay an extra day to retrieve the gear and, hopefully, a big catch.

Helene Munson resurrects her father’s WWII journals and embarks on a meticulous investigation, exposing how the Nazis trained 300,000 impressionable children as soldiers. In 1937, Munson’s father, Hans, was enrolled in an elite German school whose students were destined to take leadership roles in the Reich. At fifteen, he was drafted—along with the rest of the Hitler Youth—and assigned to an SS unit. A personal lens into a nation’s shameful past, Hitler’s Boy Soldiers documents the history of the largest army of child soldiers in recent memory.