Witness by Whittaker Chambers
Witness is the true story of an American author, journalist and spy. He was born in 1901 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a young man he felt alienated from society. He struggled to find meaning and was disillusioned by the cruelty he had endured growing up. He tended to be self-destructive and depressed but was bright enough to attend Columbia University.
Little by little Chambers was drawn into groups discussing Communism and eventually he joined the Communist party in the 1920’s. He met with Alger Hiss and collaborated with him through the Communist underground to spy on various government members.
Over time Chambers came to see the violence and destruction of the Communist movement and rejected it. He eventually became the editor of Time magazine and testified against Alger Hiss in court during the years of the Cold War and the Red Scare.
All But My Life by Gerda W. Klein
In this memoir, Gerda Klein tells her story of survival in Nazi concentration camps from the age of eighteen until she turned twenty-one. Gerda was a member of a Jewish family living in Bielitz, Poland when the Nazis invaded her town. She was taken and all the members of her family were lost. Gerda endured life as a slave laborer with thousands of other young girls in the German concentration camps. She documents the details of the savage treatment they received in the camps but also has a gift for making the story come to life via wonderful description.
Gerda’s story has a happy ending. Her spirit was never broken and at the day of liberation she met her future husband, a German who had moved to America as a youngster. They married and moved to the U.S. Gerda lived a long and productive life, becoming a popular speaker and community leader. In 2011 she was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama. She died in 2022 at the age of 97.
