Karen Kirsten
Karen Kirsten is the author of Irena's Gift, a 2025 National Jewish Book Award finalist, winner of Zibby Awards for Best Family Drama & Best Story of Overcoming, an Australian Jewish Book Award finalist, and described by Pulitzer prize winning author Geraldine Brooks as, “a disturbing investigation into the power of secrets to harm and to haunt.”
Karen is an Australian-American writer and Holocaust educator who speaks on the topics of hatred and reconciliation around the world. Her essay, “Searching for the Nazi Who Saved My Mother’s Life” was selected by Narratively as one of their Best Ever stories and nominated for The Best American Essays. Karen’s writing has also appeared in Salon, Huffington Post, The Week, The Jerusalem Post, WIEZ in
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Roma Ligocka
A Polish costume designer, writer, and painter and the cousin of Roman Polański.
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She was born in a Jewish family in Cracow a few years before the WWII. During the German occupation of Poland her family was persecuted by the Nazis - her father was incarcerated, first in the Płaszów and then Auschwitz concentration camps. In 1940 she was taken with her mother to the Kraków Ghetto but before the end of the ghetto in 1943 they fled and hid with a Polish family.
In 1965 she and her husband Jan Biczycki left the Communist Poland and moved to Munich, Germany where she continued with her set design assignments.
The traumatic war experiences are reflected in her personal life. For some time in her life she was addicted to various drugs but she recovere -
Theo Coster
Theo Coster is the author of the forthcoming WE ALL WORE STARS (Palgrave Macmillan, 9/27/11).
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Coster was a classmate and friend of Anne Frank at the Amsterdam Jewish Lyceum. A toymaker and game designer (he created the universally loved board game Guess Who?), he is executive producer of the documentary film The Classmates of Anne Frank.
Coster has lived in Tel Aviv since 1955. -
Eva Schloss
From Wikipedia: "People Associated with Anne Frank" -
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Eva Geiringer shared a remarkably similar history with Anne. The Geiringers lived on the opposite side of Merwedeplein, the square where the Frank's apartment was located, and Eva and Anne were almost exactly the same age. Eva was also a close friend of Sanne Ledermann, and she knew both Anne and Margot.
Eva described herself as an out-and-out tomboy, and hence she was in awe of Anne's fashion sense and worldliness, but she was somewhat puzzled by Anne's fascination with boys. "I had a brother, so boys were no big thing to me" Eva wrote. But Anne had introduced Eva to her father when the Geiringers first came to Amsterdam "so you can speak German with someone" as Anne had said, and Eva n -
Tony Bernard
Tony Bernard is an emergency doctor at Northern Beaches Hospital and Mona Vale Hospital in Sydney. His father Henry was his hero, and it was natural that he followed him into the medical profession. Yet it was one thing to idolise Henry and another to understand who he was and what he had gone through. Over decades and during multiple trips to Europe, Tony found himself on a path of discovery, eventually writing his father's memoirs shortly before his death in 2016. What began as a journey to understand his father became the uncovering of an extraordinary holocaust survival story.
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Kate Birkin
Kate Birkin is the #1 Bestselling author of The Consequence of Anna and Ava and Shalom. With degrees in English Literature and History, she is an accomplished author and ghostwriter of a dozen novels and two original screenplays. Her co-author and dear friend, Mark Bornz, has a Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering with a minor in Psychology. Together they enjoy working on their projects and writing as a team, thrilled that their stories have entertained millions of readers around the world.
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Kate lives in Carmel, California, in her refurbished Victorian home overlooking the sea, where vintage oil painting portraits adorn the walls and their eyes seemingly follow you, stairs creak and doors mysteriously open by themselves, a fire is alwa -
Bonnie Suchman
Bonnie is a lawyer who used her legal skills to research the Heppenheimer family. Bonnie has two adult children and lives in Maryland with her husband, Bruce Heppen.
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Julie Ryan McGue
JULIE RYAN Mc GUE is an American writer. Her award-winning memoir, Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging released in May 2021. It is about the five-year search that she and her twin sister undertook to find their birth relatives. On her weekly blog, “That Girl This Life,” Julie writes about finding out who you are, where you come from, and making sense of it. Her work has appeared in the Story Circle Network Journal, Brevity, Imprint, Adoption.com, Lifetime Adoption, Adoption & Beyond, and Severance Magazine. Personal essays appear in several anthologies: REAL WOMEN WRITE: Seeing Through Her Eyes, and Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis.
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Alex Amit
Alex Amit is a historical fiction writer and author of the novel The Girl Under the Flag.
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After dedicating more than a decade to learning the history of WW2 and armed with a BSc in Psychology, Alex's writing focuses on woman's bravery during those dark days.
Today he is writing his second novel, The Girl in the White Uniform
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When Alex was a child, he would lie in his bed at night, reading history books, imagining himself traveling in a time machine to all those great moments. Many years have passed, and finally, he built his time machine, using his words and imagination. -
Carly Schabowski
Carly Schabowski worked as a journalist in both North Cyprus and Australia before returning to Oxford, where she studied for an MA and then a PhD in creative writing at Oxford Brookes University.
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Carly now teaches at Oxford Brookes University as an associate lecturer in Creative Writing for first and second-year English literature students.
The Ringmaster’s Daughter is Carly’s debut novel and will be published by Bookouture in July 2020, with her second novel, The Watchmaker of Dachau coming out later that year. These texts are both true, epic, moving historical novels centred around survival, human suffering, and the finding of love within the backdrop of the desperate and uncertain times of 1940s Europe -
Tony Bernard
Tony Bernard is an emergency doctor at Northern Beaches Hospital and Mona Vale Hospital in Sydney. His father Henry was his hero, and it was natural that he followed him into the medical profession. Yet it was one thing to idolise Henry and another to understand who he was and what he had gone through. Over decades and during multiple trips to Europe, Tony found himself on a path of discovery, eventually writing his father's memoirs shortly before his death in 2016. What began as a journey to understand his father became the uncovering of an extraordinary holocaust survival story.
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Debbie Rix
I started writing novels after a long career in broadcasting and journalism. My first novel - The Girl with Emerald Eyes (originally published as 'Secrets of the Tower' in March 2015), is set in two time zones - the modern day and 12th century. It explores the extraordinary woman who left the money to build the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
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My second novel: Daughters of the Silk Road follows the journey of a family of merchant explorers who return to Venice from China with a Ming Vase. The book again straddles two time zones.
The Silk Weaver's Wife was published in 2017 and is set in the world of the Italian silk industry. The period story follows the journey of a young Veronese woman who is forced into an abusive marriage. The modern heroine unco -
Ellie Midwood
Ellie Midwood is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning historical fiction author, whose works have been translated into 20 languages. She owes her interest in the history of the Second World War to her grandfather, Junior Sergeant in the 2nd Guards Tank Army of the First Belorussian Front, who began telling her about his experiences on the frontline when she was a young girl. Growing up, her interest in history only deepened and transformed from reading about the war to writing about it. After obtaining her BA in Linguistics, Ellie decided to make writing her full-time career and began working on her first full-length historical novel, "The Girl from Berlin." Ellie is continuously enriching her library with new research material and fee
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Shari J. Ryan
Shari J. Ryan is a USA Today and International Bestselling Author of over 40 novels, with more than 700,000 copies sold and translations in 13 languages. She writes emotionally evocative WWII fiction inspired by true stories that have resonated with readers around the globe. Her work has earned Top 100, Top 10, and #1 chart rankings, as well as two Rone Awards.
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As the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Shari brings a deeply personal connection to her work. Her stories are rooted in truth and remembrance, written to ensure history is never forgotten.
For Shari, writing is more than a passion; it is her way of expressing herself and connecting with others. She strives to share every emotion she experiences with each -
Marion Kummerow
Marion Kummerow was born and raised in Germany, before she set out to "discover the world" and lived in various countries. In 1999 she returned to Germany and settled down in Munich where she's now living with her family.
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After dipping her toes with non-fiction books, she finally tackled the project dear to her heart. UNRELENTING is the story about her grandparents, who belonged to the German resistance and fought against the Nazi regime.
It's a book about resilience, love and the courage to stand up and do the right thing. -
Michael Brissenden
Michael Brissenden is an author and journalist. His first book of fiction – ‘The List’ was published in 2017 and ‘Dead Letters’ 2021 also features the Federal investigator Sidney Allen.
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'Smoke' was published in June 2024 and his new book 'Dust' is published in September 2025.
Michael was a journalist with the ABC for 35 years. He was posted to Moscow, Brussels and Washington and worked in Canberra for many years in various roles – including as the Political Editor for the daily television current affairs program – the 7.30 Report, as the ABC’s defence and security correspondent and as the presenter of the ‘AM’ Current Affairs program on ABC radio. From 2017 to 2021 he was a reporter with the ABC’s investigative television documentary program -
Roberta Kagan
I’m an American writer of Jewish and Romany decent. I write Historical Fiction and Historical Romance, most of which is set during the holocaust. Although I never discount the horrors of the time period, the main focus of my work is on ordinary people who prove to be strong heroic characters in unfathomable circumstances.
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Facebook Author page:
http://www.facebook.com/Rkagan4
Facebook Book Club:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/14942...
Instagram:
RobertaKaganAuthor -
Erika Hayasaki
The Death Class: A True Story About Life
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COMING IN JANUARY 2014 FROM SIMON & SCHUSTER
When nurse and professor Norma Bowe decided to teach a course on death at a college in New Jersey, she never expected it to be popular. But year after year, students crowd into her classroom and the reason why is clear: Norma's "death class" is really about how to make the most of what poet Mary Oliver famously called our "one wild and precious life."
Under the guise of discussions about last wills and last breaths and visits to cemeteries and crematoriums, Norma teaches her students to find grace in one another.
By following her over three years, award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki shows how Norma steers a group of extraordinary students from their torme -
Ariel Leve
Ariel Leve is an author and award-winning journalist. Born in New York City, Ariel grew up with her mother, a poet, in Manhattan. At the age of five, she began traveling to Southeast Asia, where she spent part of the year living in Bangkok, Thailand, with her father, a lawyer.
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She was a columnist for The Guardian and subsequently for the Sunday Times Magazine. Her memoir An Abbreviated Life was published by HarperCollins in 2016. -
Helen Fry
Helen Fry has written numerous books on the Second World War with particular reference to the 10,000 Germans and Austrians who fought for Britain in the war.
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Other books by Helen include histories of various Anglo-Jewish communities, including The Lost Jews of Cornwall (with Keith Pearce); and The Jews of Exeter. Her titles also include books on Christian-Jewish Dialogue. Her textbook Christian-Jewish Dialogue: A Reader has been translated into Russian, Czech and Polish.
Helen has branched out into fiction with James Hamilton under the pseudonym JH Schryer. Together they have written two novels of historical fiction and been in development on scripts with Green Gaia Films for a TV drama based on their novels.
Helen is an Honorary Research Fel -
Wesley Adamczyk
In 1940, Wesley Adamczyk was deported at age 7 from his native Poland to Siberia with his family. He was among more than a million poles who were exiled, imprisoned, or enslaved at hard labor. His father was murdered by the soviets in the Katyn Massacre; his mother died of disease and starvation while leading her children to freedom. Adamczyk became the voice for the thousands who suffered a fate little known on the west side of the Iron Curtain. The testimony of survivors and the opening of the archives of the former Soviet Union following the collapse of communism in 1989 has led to a retelling of the history of World War II
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Roma Ligocka
A Polish costume designer, writer, and painter and the cousin of Roman Polański.
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She was born in a Jewish family in Cracow a few years before the WWII. During the German occupation of Poland her family was persecuted by the Nazis - her father was incarcerated, first in the Płaszów and then Auschwitz concentration camps. In 1940 she was taken with her mother to the Kraków Ghetto but before the end of the ghetto in 1943 they fled and hid with a Polish family.
In 1965 she and her husband Jan Biczycki left the Communist Poland and moved to Munich, Germany where she continued with her set design assignments.
The traumatic war experiences are reflected in her personal life. For some time in her life she was addicted to various drugs but she recovere -
Riley James
Riley James lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her partner and two children. She was born and raised in north-west Tasmania and trained as a journalist before becoming an academic. The Chilling is her first novel.
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Minu Cash
Minu Cash is an Arizona native born in 1958. She received her dental hygiene degree from Rio Salado College. When she’s not immersed in a good book, Minu enjoys traveling and delighting her friends with her culinary creations—her spicy salsa is a crowd pleaser. But her heart truly belongs to her family, especially her grandchildren, who bring endless joy to her life. She lives in Glendale, Arizona, just north of her childhood neighborhood.
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Wesley Adamczyk
In 1940, Wesley Adamczyk was deported at age 7 from his native Poland to Siberia with his family. He was among more than a million poles who were exiled, imprisoned, or enslaved at hard labor. His father was murdered by the soviets in the Katyn Massacre; his mother died of disease and starvation while leading her children to freedom. Adamczyk became the voice for the thousands who suffered a fate little known on the west side of the Iron Curtain. The testimony of survivors and the opening of the archives of the former Soviet Union following the collapse of communism in 1989 has led to a retelling of the history of World War II
Buy books on Amazon -
Erika Hayasaki
The Death Class: A True Story About Life
Buy books on Amazon
COMING IN JANUARY 2014 FROM SIMON & SCHUSTER
When nurse and professor Norma Bowe decided to teach a course on death at a college in New Jersey, she never expected it to be popular. But year after year, students crowd into her classroom and the reason why is clear: Norma's "death class" is really about how to make the most of what poet Mary Oliver famously called our "one wild and precious life."
Under the guise of discussions about last wills and last breaths and visits to cemeteries and crematoriums, Norma teaches her students to find grace in one another.
By following her over three years, award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki shows how Norma steers a group of extraordinary students from their torme -
Michael Bart
Michael Bart tells of his parents' resistance in the Vilna ghetto and their experiences as members of the Partisans of Vilna in Abba Kovner's Avengers group. This is a powerful account of heroic Jewish partisans fighting back.
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Winner of the 60th annual Christopher Award in the adult book category. For the past sixty years, this national award has been given in publishing, film, broadcast and cable TV. Past winners include Steven Spielberg for Schindler's List, and Elie Wiesel in the adult book category.
Nominated by the American Library Association for a Sophie Brody Award, for the most distinguished contribution to Jewish literature published in the United States.
Non-fiction/Biography, St. Martin's Press. -
Eva Neisser Echenberg
Born in Lima, educated in the USA, I have lived in Canada for most of my adult life.
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A global citizen, both my writing and my personal life has been dedicated to acceptance of the "Other". As an author of eight Spanish cultural workbooks, I have promoted diversity and cultural literacy in the Spanish language classroom. Written in response to the grammar based language teaching that was standard practice in my profession, I developed interdisciplinary units based on content which are now the norm in the field.
My own personal history is the subject of my latest work, Walter's Welcome. Through letters and pictures, it tells the story of my family's flight from Germany and life in Peru.