CHICAGO, Sept. 18, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 'A Few Leaves' is a collection of pictures and poems of child victims of the ghetto and concentration camps. They were first displayed to the public in the months following the May 1945 Liberation of Prague. The book is dedicated to remembrance.
In Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, a component of the regime's 'Final Solution', the Holocaust, was the gathering and documentation of objects representing the history, the worship, the philosophical, artistic and literary creation, the public and domestic lives of Jewish communities. For the Nazis, this collection, housed in the historic Jewish quarter of Prague, was intended to be the sole legacy of a people wiped from the face of the earth.
Brought to the city at the war's end were the paintings and poems of children who had lived and died in the ghetto of Terezin (Therezienstadt) and the concentration camp of Osvetim (Auschwitz).Their 'few leaves' were as they were found, after the children went away.
Believing it impossible to comprehend the scale of such crimes, the sum of individual tragedy encompassed in the deaths of millions, the author has thought it better (as the book asks) to recall and identify more intimately with the few whose words and images so vividly depict the lives they hoped for and the lives they endured.
About the Author
Among the author's close wartime friends were children attending an endowed school for Czech and Slovak refugees, situated in Hampstead, London. Six months after the liberation of Prague, he was able to join them on their journey home. At that time, he began to acquire the photos, post-cards, brochures and books which have contributed to the 'few leaves.' Following the Velvet Revolution in Prague, he again visited old friends and was assisted by one of them in the literal translation of the poems.
A Few Leaves * by Tom Vaughan
Children's Poems and Pictures from Terezin and Osvetim
Publication Date: January 14, 2008
Picture Book; $34.99; 104 pages; 978-1-4257-0692-0
Picture Book Hardcover; $44.99; 104 pages; 978-1-4257-0693-7
To request a complimentary paperback review copy, contact the publisher at (888) 795-4274 x. 7479. Tear sheets may be sent by regular or electronic mail to Marketing Services. To purchase copies of the book for resale, please fax Xlibris at (610) 915-0294 or call (888) 795-4274 x. 7876.
The books are now available to bookshops and libraries on a three year sale or return basis.
For more information, contact Xlibris at (888) 795-4274 or on the web at www.Xlibris.com.