NCW Libraries

The classic novel of a boy's struggle for survival in WWII Poland, from the National Book Award–winning author of Steps and Being There. Originally published in 1965, The Painted Bird established Jerzy Kosinski as a major literary figure. With sparse prose and vivid imagery, it is a story of mythic proportion and timeless human relevance.

In early 1940s Poland, ten-year-old Felix and his friend Zelda escape from a cattle car headed to the Nazi death camps and struggle to survive, first on their own and then with Genia, a farmer with her own reasons for hating Germans.

At the beginning of World War II, Karolina's spirit magically travels from the war-torn Land of the Dolls to the Krakow, Poland, shop of the Dollmaker, Cyryl, and together they take great risks to save their Jewish friends.

"In the spring of 1942, young Elzbieta Rabinek is aware of the swiftly growing discord just beyond the courtyard of her comfortable Warsaw home. She has no fondness for the Germans who patrol her streets and impose their curfews, but has never given much thought to what goes on behind the walls that contain her Jewish neighbors. She knows all too well about German brutality--and that it's the reason she must conceal her true identity. But in befriending...

"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,...

An American Jewish teenager dreams that she has been transported through time to a Polish concentration camp.

"The gripping tale about two boys, once as close as brothers, who find themselves on opposite sides of the Holocaust. Elliot Rosenzweig, a respected civic leader and wealthy philanthropist, is attending a fundraiser when he is suddenly accosted and accused of being a former Nazi SS officer named Otto Piatek, "the butcher of Zamosc." Although the charges are denounced as preposterous, his accuser, Ben Solomon, is convinced he is right. Solomon persuades...

"A 'fixer' in a Polish town during World War II, his betrayal of a Jewish family, and a search for justice 25 years later. Eli's Promise spans three eras--Nazi-occupied Poland, the American Zone of post-war Germany, and Chicago at the height of the Vietnam War. 1939: Eli Rosen lives with his wife Esther and their young son in the Polish town of Lublin, where his family owns a construction company. As a consequence of the Nazi occupation, Eli's company...