45 records matched your query       

Author:

Holden, Wendy, 1961- author

Title:

Born survivors : three young mothers and their extraordinary story of courage, defiance, and hope / Wendy Holden

Edition:

First U.S. edition

Publisher:

Harper Perennial

Copyright Date:

2015

Description:

385 pages, pbk. : illustrations, map ; 20 cm

Subject:

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Biography
Jewish women in the Holocaust--Biography
Prisoners of war
World War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons
Children of Holocaust survivors
Biographies.

Notes:

"Originally published in Great Britain in 2015 by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group"--Title-page verso Includes bibliographical references (pages [369]-375)

Contents:

Priska -- Rachel -- Anka -- Auschwitz II-Birkenau -- Freiberg -- The train -- Mauthausen -- Liberation -- Home -- Reunion -- Roll call

Summary:

Relates the true account of three pregnant women who met in Auschwitz, where they concealed their pregnancies from infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and fought for their survival as well as the survival of their newborns as they embarked on a treacherous journey to freedom
Among the millions of Holocaust victims sent to Auschwitz II-Birkenau in 1944, Priska, Rachel, and Anka each pass through its infamous gates with a secret. Strangers to one another, they are newly pregnant, and facing an uncertain fate without their husbands. Alone, scared, and with so many loved ones already lost to the Nazis, these young women are privately determined to hold on to all they have left: their lives and those of their unborn babies. That the gas chambers ran out of Zyklon B just after the babies were born, before they and their mothers could be exterminated, is just one of several miracles that allowed them all to survive and rebuild their lives after World War II. Born Survivors follows the mothers' incredible journey--first to Auschwitz, where they each came under the murderous scrutiny of Dr. Josef Mengele; then to a German slave-labor camp, where, half-starved and almost worked to death, they struggled to conceal their condition; and, finally, as the Allies closed in, their hellish seventeen-day train journey with thousands of other prisoners to the Mauthausen death camp in Austria. Biographer Wendy Holden details the courage and kindness of strangers, including guards and civilians, which helped save these women and their children. Sixty-five years later, the three "miracle babies" meet for the first time at Mauthausen for the anniversary of the American liberation. United by their remarkable experiences of survival against all odds, they come to consider each other "siblings of the heart." In Born Survivors, Holden brings all three stories together for the first time, to mark their seventieth birthdays and the seventieth anniversary of the ending of the war. A heart-stopping account of how three mothers and their newborns fought to survive the Holocaust, Born Survivors is also a life-affirming celebration of our capacity to care and love amid inconceivable cruelty

ISBN:

006237026X
9780062370266

OCLC:

(OCoLC)891610326

Locations:

EXPC755 -- Akron Public Library (Akron)

USUX851 -- Iowa State University - Parks Library (Ames)

GBPF771 -- Ankeny Kirkendall Public Library (Ankeny)

TZPC572 -- Center Point Public Library (Center Point)

JSPB572 -- Ely Public Library (Ely)

EGPB605 -- Larchwood Public Library (Larchwood) — 00052969

ZKPC437 -- Logan Public Library (Logan)

YEPF572 -- Marion Public Library (Marion)

GOPG641 -- Marshalltown Public Library (Marshalltown)

GVPC501 -- Monroe Public Library (Monroe)

BVPE851 -- Nevada Public Library (Nevada)

AAPF906 -- Ottumwa Public Library (Ottumwa)

GDPF771 -- Urbandale Public Library (Urbandale)

GEPG771 -- West Des Moines Public Library (West Des Moines)

BNPD611 -- Winterset Public Library (Winterset)

SSPB104 -- Winthrop Public Library (Winthrop)