In February 1945, 350 American POWs captured earlier at the Battle of the Bulge or elsewhere in Europe were singled out by the Nazis because they were Jews or were thought to resemble Jews. They were transported in cattle cars to Berga, a concentration camp in eastern Germany, and put to work as slave laborers, mining tunnels for a planned underground synthetic-fuel factory. This was the only incident of its kind during World War II. Starved and brutalized, the GIs were denied their rights as prisoners of war, their ordeal culminating in a death march that was halted by liberation near the Czech border. Twenty percent of these soldiers–more than seventy of them–perished. After t_he war, Berga was virtually forgotten, partly because it fell under Soviet domination and partly because America’s Cold War priorities quickly changed, and the experiences of these Americans were buried. Now, for the first time, their story is told in all its blistering detail. This is the story of hell in a small place over a period of nine weeks, at a time when Hitler’s Reich was crumbling but its killing machine still churned. It is a tale of madness and heroism, and of the failure to deliver justice for what the Nazis did to these Americans. Among those involved: William Shapiro, a young medic from the Bronx, hardened in Normandy battles but, as a prisoner, unable to help the Nazis’ wasted slaves, whose bodies became as insubstantial as ghosts; Hans Kasten, a defiant German-American who enraged his Nazi captors by demanding, in vain, that his fellow U.S. prisoners be treated with humanity, thus committing the unpardonable sin of betraying his German roots; Morton Goldstein, a garrulous GI from New Jersey, shot dead by the Nazi in charge of the American prisoners in an incident that would spark intense debate at a postwar trial; and Mordecai Hauer, the orphaned Hungarian Jew who, after surviving Auschwitz, stumbled on the GIs in the midst of the Holocaust at Berga and despaired at the sight of liberators become slaves. Roger Cohen uncovers exactly why the U.S. government did not aggressively prosecute the commandants of Berga, why there was no particular recognition for the POWs and their harsh treatment in the postwar years, and why it took decades for them to receive proper compensation. Soldiers and Slaves is an intimate, intensely dramatic story of war and of a largely forgotten chapter of the Holocaust.

Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble

History

ROGER COHEN

Military

KNOPF

Traces Schwarzkopf's life from his boyhood in New Jersey to his experiences during the Vietnam War and reveals his reactions to the post-war crisis in the Persian Gulf

In the Eye of the Storm: The Life of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Biographies & Memoirs

Claudio Gatti

Leaders & Notable People

BERKLEY

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Very Good, A very good, near fine copy in charcoal cloth boards, gilt title on spine with a very good dust jacket.

The Girl from Human Street: Ghosts of Memory in a Jewish Family

Bloomsbury Publishing

In his intimate and profoundly moving Jewish family history—a memoir of displacement, prejudice, hope, despair, and love—award-winning New York Times columnist Roger Cohen turns a compassionate and discerning eye on the legacy of his own forebears. Beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing through to the present day, Cohen tracks his family’s story of repeated upheaval, four generations of wandering from pre-Shoah Lithuania to apartheid-era South Africa, and then to England, the United States, and Israel. At the heart of Cohen’s story is the powerful bond he had with his mother, the “girl” forced to travel far from home. Tormented by a deep depression yet stoic in her struggle, she embodied her son’s complex inheritance. Graceful, honest, and sweeping, The Girl from Human Street is a remarkable chronicle of the quest for belonging across generations, a gripping saga, and a resonant portrait of identity and memory in the modern age.

Bloomsbury Publishing (UK)

Girl From Human Street

Children and sports can change the world.

Let the Children Play, Sport Can Change the World

EDUARDO GALEANO

Mercedes Abad

Tahar Ben Jalloun

Predrag Matvenjebic

Claudio Arrigoni

Massimiliano Carbonaro

Maruro Casadio

Massimo Dini

Stash Luczkiw

Verlag Niggli AG, sulgen/Zurich

Engineering & Transportation

Engineering

Natraj Publishers

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by ROGER COHEN. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by ROGER COHEN