The Lemberg Mosaic by Jakob Weiss brings to light the little-known story of the total and tragic destruction of Jewish Lemberg. In pre-war days, the city once known as Lwów was the third largest in Poland with the third largest Jewish population (after Warsaw and Lódz). While some call it the "Holocaust by Bullets," or the "Shoah of Jewish Galicia" or even the "Ukrainian Holocaust," what we now know for certain is that over one million Jews were systematically murdered during World War II in the eastern-most area of Poland, also known as Galicia, today's west Ukraine. Lemberg, dubbed the "Soul of Galicia," was a vibrant Jewish cultural center for hundreds of towns, villages, and "shtetls" in the surrounding region; south to the Carpathian Mountains of Hungary and Rumania, east to the Soviet Union, west as far as Kraków, and north to areas populated by the Lithuanian Jews. In the wake of Hitler's "final solution," all eastern Galicia was rendered Judenrein. The late Simon Wiesenthal, who had escaped from Lemberg's Janowska - a death and transit camp, now the mass grave of over 200,000 Jewish martyrs and in 1942 the re-routing point for another 500,000 sent to Belzec, the Nazi's infamous death factory - lamented that so little had been written about this important aspect of the Holocaust. He stated, "[t]here are only about a dozen accounts of the Janowska concentration camp," and concluded, "my heart bleeds when I read them, but I also feel a certain satisfaction, because after all, there are some lucky ones who survived." In fact, only 200 did, and only about 500 others survived the demise of Lemberg's Jewish community. Today, Lemberg is called L'viv and Janowska is a lonely patch of woods in Ukraine. The Lemberg Mosaic is the story of four families with deep roots and strong ties to Galicia. It details their struggle for survival - against all odds. It is one part history book, one part genealogy & forensic research, one part adventure story, and all true.

The battle of Stalingrad was the turning point of World War II. The German capture of the city, their encirclement by Soviet forces shortly afterwards, and the hard-fought but futile attempts to relieve them, saw bitter attritional fighting and extremes of human misery inflicted on both sides. The surrender of General Friedrich von Paulus's army left Germany's eastern armies severely weakened, but the Red Army had suffered enormous losses as it overreached itself in trying to exploit its great victory. The war was not over. Germany would continue the fight, and the battles that took place in the winter of 1942/43 would show the tactical and operational skill of Erich von Manstein and the Wehrmacht as they attempted to avert total disaster. In this title, now available in paperback, a renowned expert on warfare on the Eastern Front reveals the often-overlooked German counteroffensive post-Stalingrad, and how it prevented the whole Axis front line from collapsing. Drawing on first-hand accounts, On a Knife's Edge is a story of brilliant generalship, lost opportunities and survival in the harshest theatre of war.

A profound, important book, a moving personal detective story and an uncovering of secret pasts, set in Europe’s center, the city of bright colors—Lviv, Ukraine, dividing east from west, north from south, in what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A book that explores the development of the world-changing legal concepts of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” that came about as a result of the unprecedented atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich. It is also a spellbinding family memoir, as the author traces the mysterious story of his grandfather as he maneuvered through Europe in the face of Nazi atrocities. This is “a monumental achievement ... told with love, anger and precision” (John le Carré, acclaimed internationally bestselling author). East West Street looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of the two men who simultaneously originated the ideas of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university with the same professors, in “the Paris of Ukraine,” a major cultural center of Europe, a city variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, or Lviv. Phillipe Sands changes the way we look at the world, at our understanding of history and how civilization has tried to cope with mass murder

When Austria annexed Galicia during the first partition of Poland in 1772, the province's capital, Lemberg, was a decaying Baroque town. By the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Lemberg had become a booming city with a modern urban and, at the same time, distinctly Habsburg flavor. In the process of the "long" nineteenth century, both Lemberg's appearance and the use of public space changed remarkably. The city center was transformed into a showcase of modernity and a site of conflicting symbolic representations, while other areas were left decrepit, overcrowded, and neglected. Habsburg Lemberg: Architecture, Public Space, and Politics in the Galician Capital, 1772–1914 reveals that behind a variety of national and positivist historical narratives of Lemberg and of its architecture, there always existed a city that was labeled cosmopolitan yet provincial; and a Vienna, but still of the East. Buildings, streets, parks, and monuments became part and parcel of a complex set of culturally driven politics.

From critically acclaimed Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar comes this paperback edition of his detailed and engrossing account of the World War II's Eastern Front as German forces were driven back following the Battle of Kursk. Making use of the extensive memoirs of German and Russian soldiers to bring this story to life, Retribution follows on from On A Knife's Edge, which described the encirclement and destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad and the offensives and counteroffensives that followed throughout the winter of 1942–43. Beginning towards the end of the Battle of Kursk, Retribution tells the story of the massive Soviet offensive that followed the end of Operation Zitadelle, which saw depleted and desperate German troops forced out of Western Ukraine. This title describes in detail the little-known series of near-constant battles that saw a weakened German army confronted by a tactically sophisticated force of over six million Soviet troops. As a result, the Wehrmacht was driven back to the Dnepr and German forces remaining in the Kuban Peninsula south of Rostov were forced back into the Crimea, a retreat which would become one of many in the months that followed.