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The island of extraordinary captives : a painter, a poet, an heiress, and a spy in a World War II British internment camp / by Parkin, Simon,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Following the events of Kristallnacht in 1938, Peter Fleischmann evaded the Gestapo's midnight roundups in Berlin by way of a perilous journey to England via the Kindertransport train. But he could not escape the British police, who came for him in the early hours and shipped him off to Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man, under suspicion of being a spy for the very regime he had fled. Peter's story was no isolated incident. During Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s, tens of thousands of German and Austrian Jews escaped and found refuge in Britain. Once war broke out in 1939, the nation turned against them, fearing that Nazis had planted spies posing as refugees. Innocent asylum seekers thus were labeled "enemy aliens" and ultimately sentenced to an indefinite period of internment. When Peter arrived at Hutchinson Camp, he found one of history's most astounding prison populations: renowned professors, composers, journalists, and artists. Together, they created a thriving cultural community, complete with art exhibitions, lectures, musical performances, and poetry readings. The artists welcomed Peter as their pupil and forever changed the course of his life. Meanwhile, suspicions grew that a real spy was hiding among them--one connected to a vivacious heiress from Peter's past. Drawing from unpublished first-person accounts and newly declassified documents from the British government, award-winning journalist Simon Parkin tells the story of this unlikely group of internees. The Island of Extraordinary Captives brings history to life in vivid detail, revealing the hidden truth of Britain's grave wartime mistake and showcasing how hope and creativity can flourish in even the darkest of circumstances"--
Subjects: Midgley, Peter, 1921-1991.; Hutchinson Internment Camp (Douglas, Isle of Man); Germans; Jewish refugees; Noncitizens; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Traitor's Daughter Captured by Nazis, Pursued by the KGB, My Mother's Odyssey to Freedom from Her Secret Past [electronic resource] : by Spicer, Roxana.aut; cloudLibrary;
The masterful narration of a daughter's decades-long quest to understand her extraordinary mother, who was born in Lenin's Soviet Union, served as a combat soldier in the Red Army, and endured three years of Nazi captivity—but never revealed her darkest secrets. As a child, Roxana Spicer would sometimes wake to the sound of the Red Army choir. She would tip-toe downstairs to find her mother, cigarette in one hand and Black Russian in the other, singing along. Roxana would keep her company, and wonder.... Everyone in their village knew Agnes Spicer was Russian, that she had been a captive of the Nazis. And that was all they knew, because Agnes kept her secrets close: how she managed to escape Germany, what the tattoo on her arm meant, even her real name.  Discovering the truth about her beloved, charismatic, volatile mother became Roxana's obsession. Throughout her career as a journalist and documentarian, between investigations across Canada and around the world, she always went home to ask her mother more questions, often while filming.  Roxana also took every chance to visit the few places that she did know played a role in her mother's story: Bad Salzuflen, Germany, home to POW slave labourers during the war; notorious concentration camps; and Russia. Under Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the early years of Putin, she was able to find people, places, and documents that are now—perhaps forever—lost again.  The Traitor's Daughter is intimate and exhaustively researched, vividly conversational, and shot through with Agnes Spicer's irrepressible, fiery personality. It is a true labour of love as well as a triumph of blending personal biography with sweeping history.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Historical; Women;
© 2024., Penguin Canada,
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The Holocaust Codes The Untold Story of Decrypting the Final Solution [electronic resource] : by Jennings, Christian.aut; cloudLibrary;
The first dedicated study of the cat-and-mouse struggle between a British cryptographer at Bletchley Park, and an Austrian SS officer responsible for the mass killings of thousands of Russian and Polish Jews. The account of how Nigel de Grey cracked the Enigma-coded signals of SS Major Hermann Höfle is one of the greatest untold stories of the Second World War Never told in detail before, this is the account of how, for four years, British and Allied codebreakers decrypted secret SS and Gestapo messages detailing the mass killings of the Holocaust, and how the Germans in turn deployed cryptanalysis to try to conceal their persecution of Europe's Jews. The compelling and fast-paced narrative is told from the perspectives of two central and opposing characters, who never meet. At Bletchley Park, there is the legendary but unsung British codebreaker Nigel de Grey, shy, determined, nicknamed 'the Dormouse' by his colleagues. In Nazi-occupied Poland, SS Major Hermann Höfle, a former taxi driver from Salzburg, and one of the Third Reich's ruthless bureaucrats of mass death, oversees the operations of five concentration camps, including Treblinka. De Grey fought hard to make sure the vital intelligence from decrypted signals reached Allied leaders and was acted on. Höfle, meanwhile, used complex coded messages to try to conceal the mass killings. De Grey worked with his American counterparts, as well as codebreakers and intelligence agents from the Soviet Union, France, the Vatican, Switzerland and Poland. Yet he had dangerous enemies closer to home: a cabal of senior British government and intelligence officials disbelieved or ignored repeated intelligence reports about the ongoing Holocaust. Flawlessly researched, this is the story of a battle between good and evil, between life and mass death, a cat-and-mouse war of electronic wits. More than eighty years on, as Russian leaders face war crimes charges in international courts, the words 'Never again' seem more pertinent than ever.
Subjects: Electronic books.; World War II;
© 2024., HarperCollins Canada,
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Avenue of spies [sound recording] : a true story of terror, espionage, and one American family's heroic resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris / by Kershaw, Alex,author.; Deakins, Mark,narrator.; Random House Audio Publishing,publisher.;
Read by Mark Deakins."The best-selling author of The Liberator brings to life the incredible true story of an American doctor in Paris, and his heroic espionage efforts during the Second World War. The leafy Avenue de Foch, one of the most exclusive residential streets in Nazi-occupied France, was Paris's hotbed of daring spies, murderous secret police, amoral informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when American physician Sumner Jackson, who lived with his wife and young son Phillip at Number 11, found himself drawn into the Liberation network of the French resistance, he knew the stakes were impossibly high. Just down the road at Number 31 was the 'mad sadist' Theodor Dannecker, an Eichmann protege charged with deporting French Jews to concentration camps. And Number 84 housed the Parisian headquarters of the Gestapo, run by the most effective spy hunter in Nazi Germany. From his office at the American Hospital, itself an epicenter of Allied and Axis intrigue, Jackson smuggled fallen Allied fighter pilots safely out of France, a job complicated by the hospital director's close ties to collaborationist Vichy. After witnessing the brutal round-up of his Jewish friends, Jackson invited Liberation to officially operate out of his home at Number 11--but the noose soon began to tighten. When his secret life was discovered by his Nazi neighbors, he and his family were forced to undertake a journey into the dark heart of the war-torn continent from which there was little chance of return. Drawing upon a wealth of primary source material and extensive interviews with Phillip Jackson, Alex Kershaw recreates the City of Light during its darkest days. The untold story of the Jackson family anchors the suspenseful narrative, and Kershaw dazzles readers with the vivid immediacy of the best spy thrillers. Awash with the tense atmosphere of World War II's Europe, Avenue of Spies introduces us to the brave doctor who risked everything to defy Hitler"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Jackson, Sumner Waldron; Jackson, Sumner Waldron.; Americans; Audiobooks.; Physicians; Spies; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The last million : Europe's displaced persons from World War to Cold War / by Nasaw, David,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In May of 1945, German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, effectively putting an end to World War II in Europe. But the aftershocks of this global military conflict did not cease with the signing of truces and peace treaties. Millions of lost and homeless POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and concentration camp survivors overwhelmed Germany, a country in complete disarray. British and American soldiers gathered the malnourished and desperate foreigners, and attempted to repatriate them to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and the USSR. But after exhaustive efforts, there remained over a million displaced persons who either refused to go home or, in the case of many, had no home to which to return. They would spend the next three to five years in displaced persons camps, divided by nationalities, temporary homelands in exile, with their own police forces, churches, schools, newspapers, and medical facilities. The international community couldn't agree on the fate of the Last Million, and after a year of fruitless debate and inaction, an International Refugee Organization was created to resettle them in lands suffering from labor shortages. But no nations were willing to accept the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany. In 1948, the United States, among the last countries to accept anyone for resettlement, finally passed a Displaced Persons Bill - but as Cold War fears supplanted memories of WWII atrocities, the bill only granted visas to those who were reliably anti-communist, including thousands of former Nazi collaborators, Waffen-SS members, and war criminals, while barring the Jews who were suspected of being Communist sympathizers or agents because they had been recent residents of Soviet-dominated Poland. Only after the passage of the controversial UN resolution for the partition of Palestine and Israel's declaration of independence were the remaining Jewish survivors finally able to leave their displaced persons camps in Germany."--
Subjects: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.; International Refugee Organization.; World War, 1939-1945; Refugees; Refugees; Jewish refugees; Political refugees; Jews; Humanitarianism; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The golden doves : a novel / by Kelly, Martha Hall,author.;
"Two former female spies, bound by their past, risk everything to hunt down an infamous Nazi doctor in the aftermath of World War II-an extraordinary, propulsive historical novel inspired by true events from the New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls. The year is 1952. It's been over a decade since American Sofie Anderson and Frechwoman Arlette LaRue were imprisoned at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. As a pair of spies known as the Golden Doves, the two were arrested for working with the Resistance and were bound forever when they lost everything-including Arlette's son, Willie. It was here, in the darkest of places, that they created a makeshift family to endure: Sofie, Arlette, and a little orphan they took in as their own, Fleur. Now thirty and supposedly working for the U.S. Army to bring Nazi scientists to America in a quest to outpace the Russians, Sofie nurtures an undying ember of anger in her heart. She is searching for Dr. Snow: The infamous, enigmatic doctor who did unspeakable things to her mother. Arlette is trying to make ends meet in Paris. She's exhausted all of her finances to find her stolen son and works tirelessly to care for shellshocked Fleur. Then, the charming Luc Bouchard arrives in her cafe. The son of a famous philanthropic family, he invites her to their compound in French Guiana with the promised hope she might find Willie at the orphanage. And yet ... rumor is that it's also filled with absconding Nazis. When Arlette arrives at the secluded Cove House, she finds herself barred from the outside. Soon, she has to rely on her old techniques as a spy to uncover a deep deception that hits close to home. In the meantime, Sofie's quest for Dr. Snow leads her from Strasbourg to the Vatican to Brazil, and finally back to Arlette in French Guiana, where the two discover that their lives, and the ones they love, are in grave danger. Martha Hall Kelly has garnered acclaim for her stunning combination of empathy and research into terrors of Ravensbrück. With The Golden Doves, she has once again crafted an unforgettable story about the fates of the Nazi doctors in the wake of WWII, and the unsung females spies who risked it all to fight for justice"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Missing children; Nazi hunters; War criminals; Women spies;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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The golden doves [sound recording] : a novel / by Kelly, Martha Hall,author,narrator.; Maarleveld, Saskia,narrator.; Parker, Jeremy Carlisle,narrator.; Random House Audio Publishing,publisher.;
Read by Martha Hall Kelly, Jeremy Carlisle Parker, Saskia Maarleveld."Two former female spies, bound by their past, risk everything to hunt down an infamous Nazi doctor in the aftermath of World War II-an extraordinary, propulsive historical novel inspired by true events from the New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls. The year is 1952. It's been over a decade since American Sofie Anderson and Frechwoman Arlette LaRue were imprisoned at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. As a pair of spies known as the Golden Doves, the two were arrested for working with the Resistance and were bound forever when they lost everything-including Arlette's son, Willie. It was here, in the darkest of places, that they created a makeshift family to endure: Sofie, Arlette, and a little orphan they took in as their own, Fleur. Now thirty and supposedly working for the U.S. Army to bring Nazi scientists to America in a quest to outpace the Russians, Sofie nurtures an undying ember of anger in her heart. She is searching for Dr. Snow: The infamous, enigmatic doctor who did unspeakable things to her mother. Arlette is trying to make ends meet in Paris. She's exhausted all of her finances to find her stolen son and works tirelessly to care for shellshocked Fleur. Then, the charming Luc Bouchard arrives in her cafe. The son of a famous philanthropic family, he invites her to their compound in French Guiana with the promised hope she might find Willie at the orphanage. And yet ... rumor is that it's also filled with absconding Nazis. When Arlette arrives at the secluded Cove House, she finds herself barred from the outside. Soon, she has to rely on her old techniques as a spy to uncover a deep deception that hits close to home. In the meantime, Sofie's quest for Dr. Snow leads her from Strasbourg to the Vatican to Brazil, and finally back to Arlette in French Guiana, where the two discover that their lives, and the ones they love, are in grave danger. Martha Hall Kelly has garnered acclaim for her stunning combination of empathy and research into terrors of Ravensbrück. With The Golden Doves, she has once again crafted an unforgettable story about the fates of the Nazi doctors in the wake of WWII, and the unsung females spies who risked it all to fight for justice"--
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Historical fiction.; Novels.; Missing children; Nazi hunters; War criminals; Women spies;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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