Survivor: Auschwitz, the Death March and my fight for freedom

On 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. The following day, his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels also killed himself and the crumbling Third Reich passed to Admiral Karl D?nitz. The Nazis' position seemed hopeless. Yet remarkably, the war in the rest of Europe went on for another ten days. After Hitler looks at these days as a narrative day-by-day countdown but also as a broader global history of a European war that had seen some of the most savage battles in history. Relations between the 'Big Three'- the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union - suddenly plunged to near breaking point. This book reveals that tumultuous story.After Hitler also looks at the wider canvas of the war and the terrible humanitarian catastrophe uncovered in Europe. It describes those who felt the joy of freedom, but also those who faced a highly uncertain future. As Red Army soldiers joined forces with their British and American allies, Stalin's East finally came face to face with Churchill's and Truman's West. After Hitler tells of their growing mistrust, but also of moments of remarkable goodwill and co-operation - the brief but poignant hope that these great nations could together fashion a new and safer future. This is a fascinating exploration of the brief but crucial period that shaped the emerging post-war world.

The Franco-German armistice, signed in June 1940 following the German invasion of France, called on the Vichy government to surrender on demand all refugees considered enemies of the Third Reich. Suddenly, thousands of artists, scientists and other intellectuals feared for their lives. The Emergency Rescue Committee, based in New York, compiled a list of two hundred people it considered the most endangered, including artists and writers André Breton, Max Ernst and Benjamin Péret. The committee sent Varian Fry to set up its headquarters in Marseilles, with the aim of helping these artists to escape. A number of them were sheltered at the Villa Air-Bel. Amidst the chaos and terror of wartime France, the villa became an oasis of calm, and a centre of creativity. Rosemary Sullivan explores the diaries, memoirs and letters of the individuals involved as she uncovers their private worlds and the web of relationships they developed. Central to her task is to understand what it must feel like to move from freedom to occupation: to feel threatened, administered, restrained. Villa Air-Bel brilliantly dramatizes the slow, relentless process by which ordinary lives were turned into lives lived in terror. In the end every artist in the house, as well as two thousand others, found asylum outside of France through the courageous intervention of Fry and his committee.

In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist defied the SS and risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. His name was Oskar Schindler.Thomas Keneally's unforgettable novel recreates the story of this unlikely angel of mercy, and of the people he saved. Winner of the Booker Prize in 1982, it was subsequently dramatised as the Oscar-winning film Schindler's List.'Keneally has done marvellous justice to a marvellous story' THE SUNDAY TIMES'Brilliantly detailed, moving, powerful and gripping' THE TIMES

WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2012NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTAN AMAZON EDITOR'S PICK: BEST BOOKS OF 2012 A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEARA TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARAN INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR A TLS BOOK OF THE YEARAN EVENING STANDARD BOOK OF THE YEARA SUNDAY EXPRESS BOOK OF THE YEARA GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARA SCOTSMAN BOOK OF THE YEARA SUNDAY HERALD BOOK OF THE YEARAN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR An unforgettable depiction of the psychological impact of war, by a young Iraq veteran and poet, THE YELLOW BIRDS is already being hailed as a modern classic.Everywhere John looks, he sees Murph.He flinches when cars drive past. His fingers clasp around the rifle he hasn't held for months. Wide-eyed strangers praise him as a hero, but he can feel himself disappearing. Back home after a year in Iraq, memories swarm around him: bodies burning in the crisp morning air. Sunlight falling through branches; bullets kicking up dust; ripples on a pond wavering like plucked strings. The promise he made, to a young man's mother, that her son would be brought home safely.With THE YELLOW BIRDS, poet and veteran Kevin Powers has composed an unforgettable account of friendship and loss. It vividly captures the desperation and brutality of war, and its terrible after-effects. But it is also a story of love, of great courage, and of extraordinary human survival. Written with profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on families at home, THE YELLOW BIRDS is one of the most haunting, true and powerful novels of our time.'THE YELLOW BIRDS is the All Quiet on the Western Front of America's Arab Wars.'(Tom Wolfe, author of The Bonfire of the Vanities )'Kevin Powers has conjured a poetic and devastating account of war's effect on the individual.'(Damian Lewis, star of Homeland and Band of Brothers )'Inexplicably beautiful'.(Ann Patchett, Orange Prize-winning author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder)