The majority of European Yiddish speaking Jews was murdered by Hitler's National Socialists, their cultural realm was destroyed. After the war, the Communist regimes suppressed Jewish culture, but despite emigration of Jewish survivors, small Jewish communities continued to exist and made efforts to revive their culture in most of the Communist countries. Jewish organizations, clubs, cultural societies and theatres were founded, and a great number of Yiddish books, newspapers and periodicals were printed, despite political pressure, hostility and persecution. The cultural activity which developed "under the red banner" cannot of course be compared to the immense impact the Yiddish culture experienced before the Second World War but it was an important phenomenon in Jewish history which remained uninvestigated for a long time and has not been described in a proper way until today. This volume of seventeen essays is a collection of papers delivered by scholars from the USA, Sweden, Israel, Germany and Poland at the conference on Yiddish Culture in the Communists Countries in the Postwar Era which was organized at the Jagiellonian University Cracow in cooperation with the University of Potsdam in November 2006.

Over 500,000 Jews fought under the Soviet banner in World War Two, of which an approximate 40 percent gave their lives - the highest percentage of all the nations of the Soviet Union and among all the other nations that fought in the Second World War. Dr. Arad now sets the record straight on the immense contribution of Soviet Jewry in the battle against Nazi Germany, a part of history long concealed by the Soviet government. After outlining the military progress of the war, the book documents the contributions of Soviet Jewry on the battlefronts and in the weapons development industry, in the ghetto undergrounds and in partisan warfare. In addition, the book records the Soviet government's deliberate attempts to downplay the Jewish effort and the anti-Semitism that Jewish soldiers and partisan groups suffered at the hands of the Soviet establishment, even while giving their lives for their country. Replete with the stories of individual heroes of all ranks, the book pays a debt of gratitude to those who paid the ultimate price to achieve our victory.

A captivating account that narrates, month by month, the events of 1917. This is popular Catholic history at its finest. The drama of the Great War and the Russian Revolution are juxtaposed with the spiritual dimension of the Age: the diabolism of Rasputin, the Apparition of the Virgin at Fatima, the malignancy of Lenin, the saintly courage of (the now blessed) Charles of Austria. Few standard histories have ever given such a high degree of consideration to the supernatural and the Christian interpretation of history as 1917 does.

The Citadel It stands unconquered, the last great summit of the Alps. Only one man has ever dared to approach the top, and that man died in his pursuit. He was Josef Matt, Rudi Matt's father. At sixteen, Rudi is determined to pay tribute to the man he never knew, and complete the quest that claimed his father's life. And so, taking his father's red shirt as a flag, he heads off to face the earth's most challenging peak. But before Rudi can reach the top, he must pass through the forbidden Fortress, the gaping chasm in the high reaches of teh Citadel where his father met his end. Rudi has followed Josef's footsteps as far as they will take him. Now he must search deep within himself to find the strength for the final ascent to the summit -- to plant his banner in the sky. His father died while trying to climb Switzerland's greatest mountain -- the Citadel -- and young Rudi knows he must make the assault himself.