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An American heiress turned Prussian countess defies the Nazis and risks everything to protect her children and save others during World War II Muriel White was a descendant of several of America’s Gilded Age “first families.” Her father, who signed the Versailles Peace Treaty on behalf of the United States, was among the most brilliant and respected diplomats of his day, and Muriel grew up in the courts of Europe, learning to speak six languages fluently and socializing among the era’s social elite. Ultimately, Muriel married a Prussian count whose family held extensive estates and a hereditary seat in the Prussian House of Lords. The new Countess Seherr-Thoss gave birth to three children, but the gathering clouds of World War II strained her relationship with her husband. He seemed to care only about protecting his family’s extensive estates, while Muriel plainly saw what Germany’s future was becoming. As she found solace in mentoring her husband’s cousin, the future Queen Geraldine of Albania, through courtship, marriage, and the birth of the crown prince, Muriel ended up witnessing firsthand the Italian Fascist invasion of Albania in 1939 and the royal family’s narrow escape from capture. As war descended on Europe and her marriage failed, Muriel sent her children to safety abroad. Cut off from her funds in the United States, she and her husband divorced—but it was too late. The Germans had already confiscated her U.S. passport, leaving Muriel virtually a prisoner. Nevertheless, she resisted the Nazis (in several verified incidents) and secured funding to save a Jewish family before she was forced to make the ultimate sacrifice rather than reveal the location of her sons to the Nazis.
Autumn 1945 saw the start of the Nuremberg trials, in which high ranking representatives of the Nazi government were called to account for their war crimes. In a curious yet fascinating twist, witnesses for the prosecution and the defense were housed together in a villa on the outskirts of town. In this so-called Witness House, perpetrators and victims confronted each other in a microcosm that reflected the events of the high court. Presiding over the affair was the beautiful Countess Ingeborg Kálnoky (a woman so blond and enticing that she was described as a Jean Harlowe look-alike) who took great pride in her ability to keep the household civil and the communal dinners pleasant. A comedy of manners arose among the guests as the urge to continue battle was checked by a sudden and uncomfortable return to civilized life. The trial atmosphere extends to the small group in the villa. Agitated victims confront and avoid perpetrators and sympathizers, and high-ranking officers in the German armed forces struggle to keep their composure. This highly explosive mixture is seasoned with vivid, often humorous, anecdotes of those who had basked in the glory of the inner circles of power. Christiane Kohl focuses on the guilty, the sympathizers, the undecided, and those who always manage to make themselves fit in. The Witness House reveals the social structures that allowed a cruel and unjust regime to flourish and serves as a symbol of the blurred boundaries between accuser and accused that would come to form the basis of postwar Germany.
In 1939, Countess Karolina Lanckoronska, professor and wealthy landowner, joined the Polish underground, was arrested, sentenced to death, and was held in Ravensbruck concentration camp. There she taught art history to other women who, like her, might be dead in a few days. This inspiring and beautifully written memoir records a neglected side of World War II: the mass murder of Poles, the serial horrors inflicted by both Russians and Nazis, and the immense courage of those who resisted.
In September of 1939, Countess Karolina Lanckoronska, wealthy landowner and professor of art history, watched the Soviet army march into Poland. After joining the resistance, she was arrested, sentenced to death, and held in Ravensbruck concentration camp. There she taught art history to other women who, like her, might be dead in a few days. This brilliantly written memoir records a neglected side of World War II: the mass murder of Poles, the serial horrors inflicted by both Russians and Nazis, and the immense courage of those who resisted.
Prelude to the Past is the remarkable story of a young Jewish girl growing up in Germany during the years leading up to the First World War. She experienced adulthood during the tumultuous years between the two World Wars, becoming one of the most important journalistic figures of the period. This tumultuous era comes to life through the eyes of a powerful, passionate, strong, yet vulnerable Jewish woman who not only recorded the events of the era but also helped to shape them.With an introduction by Dr. Ernest H. Latham, Jr., the foremost scholar on the life and work of Rosie Gr&äefenberg, aka R.G. Waldeck, Prelude to the Past is a must-read for anyone interested in European society in the years preceding Hitler's domination of Europe.
In this World War II military history, Rommel's army is a day from Cairo, a week from Tel Aviv, and the SS is ready for action. Espionage brought the Nazis this far, but espionage can stop them—if Washington wakes up to the danger. As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets. Yet the Axis powers were not the only ones with intelligence. Brilliant Allied cryptographers worked relentlessly at Bletchley Park, breaking down the extraordinarily complex Nazi code Enigma. From decoded German messages, they discovered that the enemy had a wealth of inside information. On the brink of disaster, a fevered and high-stakes search for the source began. War of Shadows is the cinematic story of the race for information in the North African theater of World War II, set against intrigues that spanned the Middle East. Years in the making, this book is a feat of historical research and storytelling, and a rethinking of the popular narrative of the war. It portrays the conflict not as an inevitable clash of heroes and villains but a spiraling series of failures, accidents, and desperate triumphs that decided the fate of the Middle East and quite possibly the outcome of the war.
Between 1941 and 1945, thousands of German Jews, in fear for their lives, made the choice to flee their impending deportations and live submerged in the shadows of the Nazi capital. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence and interviews with survivors, this book reconstructs the daily lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin during the war years. Contrary to the received wisdom that “hidden” Jews stayed in attics and cellars and had minimal contact with the outside world, the author reveals a cohort of remarkable individuals who were constantly on the move and actively fought to ensure their own survival.
A memoir of brutality, heroism, and personal discovery from Europe's dark heart, revealing one of the most extraordinary untold stories of World War II One night in March of 1945, on the Austrian-Hungarian border, a local countess hosted a party in her mansion, where guests and local Nazi leaders mingled. The war was almost over and the German aristocrats and SS officers dancing and drinking knew it was lost. Around midnight, some of the guests were asked to "take care" of 180 Jewish enslaved laborers at the train station; they made them strip naked and shot them all before returning to the bright lights of the party. It was another one of the war's countless atrocities buried in secrecy for decades--until Sacha Batthyany started investigating what happened that night at the party his great aunt hosted. A Crime in the Family is the author's memoir of confronting his family's past, the questions he raised and the answers he found that took him far beyond his great aunt's party: through the dark past of Nazi Germany to the gulags of Siberia, the bleak streets of Cold War Budapest, and to Argentina, where he finds an Auschwitz survivor whose past intersects with his family's. It is the story of executioners and victims, villains and heroes. Told partly through the surviving family journals, A Crime in the Family is a disquieting and moving memoir, a powerful true story told by an extraordinary writer confronting the dark past of his family--and humanity.