Survivor Biography

Henny had just graduated from high school when the Germans invaded Lithuania. Her care-free life rapidly changed from a life of privilege to a living hell. Simply because she was Jewish. The horrors inflicted upon the Jews of Kovno, taken place in the old forts built during Czarist Russia, are not as well known as what happened in the German Nazi camps during World War II. Henny recounts her beautiful life in Kovno before the invasion by the Nazis when she and 35,000 other Jews were put in the ghetto. We hear about the acts of cruelty done to her family and friends.

This is a survivors guide to a chronic illness. The book isn't full of, or contain medical advice. However, there is common sense advice on how to face it and keep your dignity intact.

Mais do que judeu, Eddie Jaku sempre se considerou alemão. Ele sentia orgulho do seu país natal. Mas, em novembro de 1938, tudo mudou: dez nazistas invadiram sua casa e o espancaram quase até a morte. Naquela noite, que ficou conhecida para sempre na história como a Noite dos Cristais, Eddie foi preso e levado a um campo de concentração.

Paul Weigel’s life always felt hard. Throughout his isolated childhood, with distant and detached parents, losing his college sweetheart in a horrible tragedy, and enduring the unexpected death of his father, Weigel spent his life in despair. It all just hurt. Everything changed when his daughter was born. From day one, Weigel and his daughter shared an incredible bond. She was a constant source of peace and inspiration to him, and he was determined to give her the love and security he’d never had.

Kati and her younger sister, Ilonka, arrive in Canada with painful memories from the Holocaust, which has taken both of their parents. Their harrowing time alone in the Budapest ghetto is fresh in their minds, as are their fragile hopes to be adopted. But their lives in Toronto are far from what they expected, and full of broken promises. As the sisters navigate their new surroundings, they each grow fiercely strong and independent, while holding onto the comfort that they will be Never Far Apart.

Gidon Lev’s life can be, in some ways, expressed through numbers, symbols and dates. He was born in 1935, an only child. He was put on Transport M as number 885 and imprisoned in the Terezin (or Theresienstadt) Nazi concentration camp from the ages of six to ten. Gidon is one of two thousand children estimated to have survived the camp. His father was sent to Auschwitz, where he was tattooed as prisoner B12156. Gidon has lost twenty-six family members to the Holocaust. He was liberated in 1945. And, as of 2023, he has lived 87 years.

Much has been written about the brutal crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and - 35 years after he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 13 women - scarcely a week goes by without some mention of him in the media. In any story featuring Sutcliffe, however, his victims are incidental, often reduced to a tableau of nameless faces. But each woman was much more than the manner of her death, and in Somebody’s Mother, Somebody’s Daughter, Carol Ann Lee tells, for the first time, the stories of those women who came into Sutcliffe’s murderous orbit.

She charmed America with her smart, likable, down-to-earth personality as she campaigned for her husband, then vice-presidential candidate John Edwards. She inspired millions as she valiantly fought advanced breast cancer after being diagnosed only days before the 2004 election. She touched hundreds of similarly grieving families when her own son, Wade, died tragically at age 16 in 1996.

Born a German Jew in 1915, Rudy Baum was 86 years old when he sealed the garage door of his Dallas home, turned on the car ignition, and tried to end his life. After confronting her father's attempted suicide, Karen Baum Gordon, Rudy's daughter, began a sincere effort to understand the sequence of events that led her father to that dreadful day in 2002. What she found were hidden scars of generational struggles reaching back to the camps and ghettos of the Third Reich.

Imagine having your innocence stolen at an early age by someone you trust, or struggling financially before even knowing the meaning of the word “struggling.” Ebony Canion has had her share of tumultuous events, yet even she was stunned when a speeding car hit her intentionally, dragging her through the streets with her body folded underneath the vehicle. In a coma for nearly two months, Ebony had no idea her tongue and face had to be sewn back on, or the list of thirty other life-threatening injuries she had sustained. Ebony didn’t know she’d been Left for Dead.

In 2010, at the age of 37, he began feeling a constant ticking inside his body, not knowing that what he was feeling was a virtual time-bomb that could explode at any moment. Seven months later, he was diagnosed with a rare and malignant form of cancer. In From Fear to Faith, author Matt Talford takes you on a journey through his personal war on cancer and shares the physical, mental, and spiritual tools that inspired him to reverse what he referred to as “a slow death”.

From the recent sad loss of her father, to her experiences as a judge on numbe-one hit shows The X Factor and America's Got Talent, to the further jaw-dropping adventures and dramas in the Osbourne family, Sharon tells it like it really is - with wit, honesty, and style. Set to be a huge best seller this autumn, Survivor is as astonishing, big-hearted, and fascinating as Mrs O herself.

Brian Johnson is a man who went looking for gold and found so much more-a soulmate for life, the child he had always dreamed of, and the joy of working alongside people who loved him. Brian Johnson lived his life in unexpected ways, choosing adventure over the predictable day-to-day. Working side-by-side with his brother, Loren, he struck gold repeatedly in the wilderness of Alaska and the Yukon as a modern-day goldminer for more than forty years.

At twenty-six, Gaby felt like her life was just beginning. Newly married and pregnant with her first child, she was on top of the world. But that joy was shattered when a routine blood test led to a diagnosis of AML Leukemia—and the treatment she needed could harm her baby or save them both.

Laura Johnston Kohl was born in Washington, D.C. She actively fought for civil rights and free speech, and against the Vietnam War throughout the 1960s. After trying to effect change single-handedly, she found she needed more hands. She joined Peoples Temple in 1970, living and working in the progressive religious movement in both California and Guyana. A fluke saved her from the mass murders and suicides on November 18, 1978, when 913 of her beloved friends died in Jonestown.

Gary Lee Veale's memoir, "I Survived A Thousand Times", is a heart-wrenching and ultimately triumphant account of his journey from childhood abuse to successful adulthood. With unflinching honesty, Veale shares his story of physical and mental abuse, and the long and difficult path to recovery and healing.

In April 2018, seasoned adventurer Ben Fogle and Olympic cycling gold medallist Victoria Pendleton, along with mountaineer Kenton Cool, took on their most exhausting challenge yet – climbing Everest for the British Red Cross to highlight the environmental challenges mountains face. It would be harrowing and exhilarating in equal measure as they walked the fine line between life and death 8,000 metres above sea level.

This is the true story of my childhood and the experiences I survived. When I, as a Holocaust survivor, tell of what happened, the brutality is always obvious. It is true that the most horrendous and cruel crimes were perpetrated on the Jewish people and others during the war, but I want to remind everyone that not all Germans or Polish or Ukrainians were bad people. There are, and always have been, many people in every nation who are good. We should always strive to find the good in everyone, to find ways to love and not to hate. That is the message of my story.

As a young political geek, Matt Latimer dreamed of one day heading to Washington to work for a conservative president and usher in another Reagan Revolution. With the support of his slightly mortified liberal parents, he tried to do just that - but his youthful exuberance began to cool as he moved up the rungs of power.

The life story of a Holocaust survivor: his prewar childhood in Czechoslovakia, his experiences in eight Nazi concentration camps, his liberation and emigration to the US, and his career as a General Motors engineer, a Christian minister, and a consummate teacher. For Walter Ziffer, who today considers himself a Jewish secular humanist, life has always been a search for meaning. His compelling and insightful memoir distills the experiences of a remarkable man.