Central Kansas Library System

First mentioned in the Book of Psalms in the Hebrew Bible, the golem is a character in an astonishing number of post-Holocaust Jewish-American novels and has served as inspiration for such varied figures as Mary Shelley's monster in her novel Frankenstein, a frightening character in the television series The X-Files, and comic book figures such as Superman and the Hulk. In The Golem Redux: From Prague to Post-Holocaust Fiction, author Elizabeth R....

Stephen Friedman is making a good living in good times. He's just an ordinary guy. Or so he thinks. But one day an extraordinary piece of information tells him differently. It's a clue from the grave of a Holocaust survivor. A clue that makes him heir to an incredible fortune . . . a clue that only he and one other man can possibly understand. That man is Roth Braun, a serial killer who has been waiting for Stephen for thirty years. Roth was stopped...

It is June 1941 and after the brutal rule of the Soviets the people of Krystia's small Ukrainian village are inclined to look on the German invaders as liberators; but soon the Nazis start rounding up Jewish Ukrainians, and Krystia is faced with a terrible choice--risk everything by helping her Jewish friends and neighbors to hide, or save herself and her family by doing nothing.

Six-year-old Gretl Schmidt is on a train bound for Aushwitz. Jakob Kowalski is planting a bomb on the tracks. As World War II draws to a close, Jakob fights with the Polish resistance against the crushing forces of Germany and Russia. They intend to destroy a German troop transport, but Gretl s unscheduled train reaches the bomb first. Gretl is the only survivor. Though spared from the concentration camp, the orphaned German Jew finds herself lost...

As France buckles under the Nazi regime, budding photographer Rachel Cohen must change her name, go into hiding, and bear witness to the atrocities of World War II.

My beautiful boy... Created in love... born into hatred. There were so many terrifying stories about the Jews. People called them useless vermin, filthy, dangerous. Before I met Abram, I was afraid of them too. But I am about to tell you a very different story - a forbidden story. My love for Abram defied all reason...as well as German law. Tonight our son giggles with excitement as he blows out the candles on his birthday cake. But our...

Ana Kaminski is pushed through the iron gates of Auschwitz beside her frightened young friend Ester Pasternak. As they reach the front of the line, Ana steps forward and quietly declares herself a midwife--and Ester her assistant. Their arms are tattooed and they're ordered to the maternity hut. Holding an innocent new-born baby, Ana knows the fate of so many are in her hands, and vows to do everything she can to save them. When two guards in their...

Tormented by feelings of loss and dispossession after spending his life fleeing first the Nazis and then the 1956 Russian invasion of Hungary, Gamaliel Friedman settles in New York, where he meets a fellow group of exiles.

Dieter has grown up in Germany during Hitler's rise to power, believing everything that he has been told, but as his involvement in the war increases, he finds himself questioning these beliefs as he fights for survival.

"Zofia, a teenage Holocaust survivor, travels across post-war Europe as she searches for her younger brother and seeks to rebuild her shattered life"-- Germany, 1945. The Gross-Rosen concentration camp have been liberated, but nothing feels over to Zofia Lederman. Three years ago she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else-- parents,...