The Apprentice of Buchenwald by Oren Schneider

In 1943, when Alex Rosenberg was a teenager, he left his life of privilege and his identity behind when his family lost everything during the War. He was thrust into a reality of hiding and horrors, for which nothing could have prepared him.  However, his selfless acts and a determination to survive saved his father, and the lives of Allies on the battlefield.  Alex’s story is now immortalized in a new book The Apprentice of Buchenwald (Amsterdam Publishers; January 27, 2023; Hardcover; $23.95) by his grandson, Oren Schneider.

Using their last reserves of wealth and influence to escape extermination, the Rosenbergs fled their hometown and went underground to avoid the Gestapo. Eventually exposed, captured, and taken to Buchenwald, the largest concentration camp in Germany, Alex and his father collaborated to survive one day at a time.

A chaotic chain of events put Alex, an entrepreneurial trader’s son with the hands of a gifted mechanic, now a forced laborer, at the heart of a massive armament sabotage scheme. When his father is gravely injured and disappears after an air bombing, it is up to industrious Alex to create leverage and use wartime machinations and raw talent to save his father’s life.

Oren Schneider spent a lifetime documenting his grandfather’s story, and complemented it with genealogical information researched with the help of www.myhertiage.com to write The Apprentice of Buchenwald.  His photos, audio recordings, and transcripts made it possible to recreate Alex’s story; a young man who rose to the occasion to fight back and leave a footprint on the history of World War II and The Holocaust.

About the Author

Oren Schneider was born in Israel, a third generation to holocaust survivors and seventh generation to farmers from the Galilee.  He is an entrepreneur and business owner who enjoys music, cooking, travel, people and especially the combination of all four. He lives with his family in Brooklyn.

The Apprentice of Buchenwald:
The True Story of the Teenage Boy Who Sabotaged Hitler’s War Machine
By Oren Schneider
Amsterdam Publishers
Publication Date: January 27, 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-9493276536
Page Count: 232
Author Website: www.ApprenticeOfBuchenwald.com

The Girl Who Counted Numbers by Roslyn Bernstein

“‘I’ve found the perfect solution,’ he said, reading the headline aloud: ‘How American Jews Claim Their Jewish Heritage in Israel.’ Beneath the headline, there was a photo of a group of young people standing in front of the SS Jerusalem II, a ship that sailed from New York to Haifa for the Zim Lines. ‘That could be you,’ he said, pointing to the picture. For the first time in a week, he was actually smiling. Her father had come up with a new plan, one that he approved of. ‘I’ll send you to Israel.’”

Susan Reich has spent her whole childhood in a small neighborhood near New York City, living comfortably with her father. At seventeen, she decides to turn away from the neatly plotted out life ahead of her and confronts her father about taking a gap year. The two are at odds until he proposes a way for them to both get what they want: Susan can postpone college so long as she spends her gap year abroad in Israel searching for her long-lost uncle.

The Girl Who Counted Numbers (Amsterdam Publishers, October 12th 2022, 978-9493276360) is the story of an independent, Jewish-American girl who leaves for Israel to solve a family mystery. The hunt for any evidence of her uncle takes her to unexpected places where she must confront parts of the past she never knew. With the infamous Adolf Eichmann trial happening in the backdrop of The Girl Who Counted Numbers, Susan begins unraveling these complex layers of history and is drawn into the tense political climate of a post-Holocaust Israel. As she gets more and more involved in the struggles of her Israeli and Jewish-Moroccan friends, she explores awakening emotions and discovers her own interest in truth, justice, and activism.

“All families must deal with the past in order to move forward, but for some families that is harder than for others. Roslyn Bernstein’s beautiful new novel chronicles one family’s difficult quest for peace. Moving, nuanced and inspiring, this gripping book rings achingly true.” —Gish Jen, Author, Thank You, Mr. Nixon

In 1961, author Roslyn Bernstein spent 7 months in Jerusalem. She was present during part of the Adolf Eichmann Trial—often cited as the event that sparked public awareness of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust— and listened to the stories of immigrants and survivors and daydreamed about their meanings. Her trip was a source of inspiration for The Girl Who Counted Numbers. Susan’s story, while fictional, is heavily influenced by real issues of politics, history, and identity that permeated Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust and even today. The Girl Who Counted Numbers is a nuanced, thrilling tale about discovering a past and confronting one’s identity.

The Girl Who Counted Numbers
By Rosyln Bernstein
Amsterdam Publishers
ISBN: 978-9493276369
Publication Date: October 12, 2022
Original Trade Paperback
Price: $19.95
Pages: 284

Where the Angels Lived by Margaret McMullan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

“Someone should write a book,” my mother says, sipping iced coffee. “Not about the drama of that time, during the war, but about what it does to the person who’s left with all of it, the person who feels it but doesn’t quite know it all.”

Where The Angels Lived
One Family’s Story of Exile, Loss, and Return

By Margaret McMullan

__________________________________________

The moment she discovers the existence of Richard, a long-lost relative, at Israel’s Holocaust Museum, Margaret McMullan begins an unexpected journey of revelation and connectivity as she tirelessly researches the history of her ancestors, the Engel de Jánosis. Propelled by a Fulbright cultural exchange that sends her to teach at a Hungarian University, Margaret, her husband and teenage son all eagerly travel to Pécs, the land of her mother’s Jewish lineage. After reaching Pécs, a Hungarian town both small and primarily Christian, Margaret realizes right then and there how difficult hergoing to be. Heart-wrenching, passionate and insightful, WHERE THE ANGELS LIVED (Calypso Editions, 13: 978-1-944593-08-7, $17.95, Original Trade Paperback) by Margaret McMullan beautifully documents the relentless determination of a woman picking up the pieces of her family’s fragmented history throughout the Hungarian Holocaust.

“The destruction of the Jews in the country districts of Hungary was a simple business. The Germans made good use of their experience gained annihilating between three to four million Polish, German and Austrian Jews.”

In WHERE THE ANGELS LIVED, Margaret quickly discovers just how distinguished and influential her relatives appear to have been before the Holocaust. However, no one seems to recall the man whose name she saw that day in Israel: Richard Engel de Jánosi. With the help of students, strangers, and long-lost relatives, Margaret slowly pieces together bits of information about Richard’s past she never would have found without venturing to her family’s homeland.

While Margaret’s research starts to reap its own rewards, the road to discovery still comes at a price.  Back in the United States, Margaret’s father is sick and her mother is looking frailer every time they Skype. Despite her parents’ deteriorating health, there is much more work to be done abroad.

 “Remembering the dead, especially family members is important. I know this.”

As Margaret struggles to discover why Richard’s existence is wiped from Pécs history, her journey soon becomes her mother’s journey, a nation’s journey, and even perhaps, all of our journeys to reconnect with an inexplicable past.

Sitting there in the pew carved of Moravian oak, I start to shake. I curse every last Hungarian who deported or murdered my family. See? Look at me. My mother got out and she had me and I had a son. You didn’t end us.”

Historical, authentic and family-oriented, WHERE THE ANGELS LIVED tells the tale of a somewhat parallel universe that exists even in the 21st century—dealings with Soviet-style bureaucracy; skepticism; anti-Semitism; and ironically the same sort of isolation and rejection Margaret’s Jewish Hungarian family experienced in 1944 before they were forced into concentration camps. Straddling memoir and reportage, past and present, this story reminds us all that we can escape a country, but we can never escape history.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Margaret McMullan is the author of eight award-winning books including the novel, In My Mother’s House and the anthology, Every Father’s Daughter. Her work has appeared in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, among others. She received a NEA Fellowship and a Fulbright in Hungary to research her new book, Where The Angels Lived: One Family’s Story of Loss, Exile, and Return.