In early 1942, during the darkest months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a group of 29 Navajo Marines, young and fresh out of boot camp, were taken into a room with bars on the windows and a guard at the door. Their task: devise a top-secret code that would thwart the sharpest cryptanalytic minds in Imperial Japan. And they succeeded.
World War II
Seeking Refuge
Eleven-year-old Marianne is fourntunate. She is one of the first two hundred Jewish children in the heroic rescue operation known as the Kindertransport, which arrived in London, England in December 1938.
Witnesses To War
For millions of children, living in Europe during World War II was a terrifying experience. Here, eight of those children share their true stories — of living in the Warsaw Ghetto, of being sent to concentration camps, of being selected for “Germanization”. Each story is different, but each represents the stories of millions of innocent victims of the Holocaust. B&W photos.
My Hiroshima
Miraculously, Junko Morimoto survived the Hiroshima bomb in 1945, but was eye-witness to the incredible suffering of others, including the fate of her school friends.
My Secret Camera: Life In The Lodz Ghetto
Photographs taken secretly by a young Jewish boy document the fear, hardship, generosity, and humanity woven through the daily lives of the Jews forced to live in the Lodz ghetto during the Holocaust.
Smoke And Ashes
An account of the tragic fate of the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust is set against a chronicle of the roots of Nazi anti-Semitism, Hitler’s rise to power, World War II, and the Nazi program of extermination. Simultaneous.
Leaving China
James McMullan was born in Tsingtao, North China, in 1934, the grandson of missionaries who settled there. As a little boy, Jim took for granted a privileged life of household servants, rickshaw rides, and picnics on the shore—until World War II erupted and life changed drastically. Jim’s father, a British citizen fluent in several Chinese dialects, joined the Allied forces. For the next several years, Jim and his mother moved from one place to another—Shanghai, San Francisco, Vancouver, Darjeeling—first escaping Japanese occupation then trying to find security, with no clear destination except the unpredictable end of the war. For Jim, those ever-changing years took on the quality of a dream, sometimes a nightmare, a feeling that persists in the stunning full-page, full-color paintings that along with their accompanying text tell the story of Leaving China.
Auschwitz: The Story Of A Nazi Death Camp
Startling first-person narratives, rare photographs, and a well-researched history describe what happened at Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Poland used during World War II by the Nazis to gather and murder many people, mostly Jews.
Gifts From The Enemy
Gifts from the Enemy is the powerful and moving story based on From a Name to a Number: A Holocaust Survivor’s Autobiography by Alter Wiener, in which Alter recalls his loss of family at the hands of the Nazis and his internment in five prison camps during World War II. This picture book tells one moving episode during Alter’s imprisonment, when an unexpected person demonstrates moral courage in repeated acts of kindness to young Alter during his imprisonment.
The Pact
Peter Gruber is a ten year old German boy who, in May of 1939, is dealing with the drowning death of his closest friend, living with his mother in Hamburg.
The Pact is a WOW Recommends: Book of the Month for September 2016.