World War II
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DramaStand by for action
War / Drama1942 / 109 minutesRating: 6/10 When the US entered World War II in December of ’41, they needed every ship they could get…
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Book ReviewsRun and Hide: How Jewish youth escaped the Holocaust
by Don Brown 2023 / 190 pages Rating: Great Don Brown gives us a new wrinkle on a story we thought we already knew. When…
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Book ReviewsThe Little Ships: the Heroic Rescue at Dunkirk in World War II
by Louise Borden illustrated by Michael Foreman 1997 / 32 pages Rating: Good In May of 1940, half a million British and French soldiers were…
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DramaSands of Iwo Jima
Drama / War 1949 / 100 minutes RATING: 7/10 John Wayne stars in this loosely accurate recounting of the lead-up to, and battle for, Iwo…
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DramaThey were expendable
Drama / War 1945 / 135 minutes RATING: 7/10 John Wayne stars as one of the WWII naval officers intent on proving that small, fast…
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HistoryThe case against the draft
Across the Western world, military recruiting is sputtering. In 2022 and 2023, the United States Army missed its enlistment targets by tens of thousands, prompting…
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FamilySnuf de Hond in Oorlogstijd (Sniff the Dog in Wartime)
Drama / Family 2008 / 95 minutes RATING: 8/10 If you came to this review as a huge fan of the Piet Prins’ Scout series,…
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DramaBad Day at Black Rock
Drama 1955 / 81 minutes Rating: 8/10 John J. Macreedy wasn’t looking to start anything. But when he steps off the train into a one-road…
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Book excerptsA passage from “The Hiding Place” I can’t manage to read out loud…
Corrie Ten Boom’s autobiographical The Hiding Place is best known for its account of her war time experiences. But one of the many powerful sections in the…
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Book ReviewsThe Little Riders
by Margaretha Shemin illustrated by Peter Spier 1963 / 76 pages Rating: Good/GREAT/Give This is a Dutch World War II story with a difference: one…
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Book ReviewsPearl
by Sherri L. Smith and Christine Norrie 2024 / 144 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This is a very different slice of World War II history. Amy is…
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AnimatedChicken Run
Animated 2000 / 84 minutes RATING: 8/10 Sometimes whether you love or hate a film can be entirely about the expectations you come to it…
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FamilyBelle and Sebastian
Drama 2013 / 99 minutes Rating: 8/10 In the middle of World War II, Sebastian, a seven-year-old orphan, lives with a grandfather figure, César, high…
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DramaSaboteur
Drama / Mystery 1942 / 109 minutes RATING: 7/10 This is World War II as seen from the other side of the ocean. Barry Kane…
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AnimatedThe Corrie ten Boom Story
Animated / Biography / Drama 2013 / 34 minutes Rating: 7/10 What’s an appropriate age to expose our children to the truth about Nazis, concentration…
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DramaRun Silent, Run Deep
Drama 1958 / 93 minutes RATING: 8/10 After a Japanese destroyer, the Akrikaze, sinks his submarine, Commander P.J. Richardson is assigned desk duty, giving him plenty of…
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Book ReviewsBaseball saved us
by Ken Mochizuki 1993 / 32 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This is the story of a chapter of World War II that I didn’t know anything about…
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Adult non-fictionOrdinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
by Christopher R. Browning 1992 / 384 pages This is a really horrifying book. Ordinary Men tells the World War II story of German Reserve…
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Book ReviewsStealing Home
by J. Torres and David Namisato 2021 / 112 pages Rating: Good/GREAT/Gift During World War II, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Canada rounded up Japanese…
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Adult biographiesThe Watchmaker’s Daughter
The true story of World War II heroine Corrie Ten Boom by Larry Loftis 2023 / 384 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Larry Loftis is an international bestselling…
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Adult biographiesChiune Sugihara (1900-1986): a Japanese bureaucrat who saved Jews
In the mid- to late-1800s, Japan ended its long centuries of isolationism and opened to the outside world. Knowing the de facto loss of sovereignty…
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DramaThe Great Dictator
Drama / War / Black and White 1940 / 125 minutes Rating: 8/10 Long before Hitler adopted it, Charlie Chaplin made the “toothbrush mustache” famous….
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Book ReviewsI survived the Nazi invasion, 1944 (8 books recommended)
by Lauren Tarshis art by Alvaro Sarraseca 2021 / 158 pages Rating: Good/GREAT/Gift Max and Zena are two Polish Jewish children who, at the time…
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DramaTwelve O’Clock High
Drama / War 1949 / 132 minutes RATING: 8/10 When the Americans first entered WWII they did so with a small air force – it…
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DramaCasablanca
Drama 103 min / 1943 Rating: 10/10 When Ilsa Lund hears that the Nazis have killed her husband she is inconsolable…until she meets Rick Blaine….
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DramaForeign Correspondent
Thriller / Mystery / Drama 1940 / 120 minutes RATING: 7/10 In 1939 rumors of war were constant, but real news, the real facts, were hard to…
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Adult fictionThe White Rose Resists: a novel of the German students who defied Hitler
by Amanda Barratt 2020 / 320 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give In Amanda Barratt’s novel The White Rose Resists, a candle is being lit in the midst of…
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Amazing stories from times pastRev. Alfred Sadd (1909-1942): a great man, and a faint shadow
The December 8, 1942 issue of The Times, the British daily newspaper based in London, published a small but complimentary obituary/article on the death of…
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Adult biographiesUnbroken: A World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand 2010, 497 pages Rating: Good/Great/GIFT One of the least amazing things about Louis Zamperini is that he took up skateboarding in his…
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DocumentaryHidden Heroes
Documentary / WWII 50 min / 1999 Rating: 8/10 Among the “hidden heroes” of World War II were the thousands of Dutchmen who opened their…
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Book ReviewsAfterwards I Knew: stories from the First and Second World Wars
by Christine Farenhorst 2010, 208 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give When it comes to this author, I am not an objective reviewer – I love every story Christine…
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DramaBasil Rathbone’s classic 14-film (1939-1946) go as Sherlock Holmes
If there’s any one film that deserves credit as the inspiration for the innumerable cinematic Holmesian interpretations that followed, it’d be Basil Rathbone’s 1939 performance…
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Book ReviewsSnow Treasure
by Marie McSwigan 1942 / 196 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give In 1940, shortly after the Germans invaded Norway, a Norwegian freighter arrived in the US city of…
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Book ReviewsThe New Has Come
by Christine Farenhorst 2022 / 262 pages Rating: Good/GREAT/Give I’ve seen another reviewer suggest that this might be Christine Farenhorst’s best book yet, and I…
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Book ReviewsScout: The Mystery of the Abandoned Mill
by Piet Prins 1982 / 127 pages Rating: Good/GREAT/Give Piet Prins’ Scout: The Mystery of the Abandoned Mill is a book for all ages. It’s the…
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Book ReviewsWe Hereby Refuse: Japanese American resistance to wartime incarceration
by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura 2021 / 160 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, tens of thousands of Americans of Japanese…
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Book ReviewsNicky & Vera: a Quiet Hero of the Holocaust…
by Peter Sís 2021 / 64 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Nicholas Winston never set out to be a hero but he also knew what needed to be…
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Book ReviewsJourney Through the Night
by Anne De Vries 372 pages / 1951 Rating: Good/Great/GIFT Christian writers these days, they just don’t know subtlety. They write miraculous stories where the…
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Remembrance DayOperation Manna
**** You can download or listen to the podcast version (6 minutes) here. It was a bad time to be Dutch. The winter of 1944-1945 was…
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Adult biographiesOut of the depths
An Unforgettable WWII Story of Survival, Courage, and the Sinking of the USS Indianapolis 208 pages / 2016 by Edgar Harrel, USMC Rating: GOOD/Great/Give In 1944…
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Book ReviewsCanada at War: a graphic history of World War II
by Paul Keery, illustrated by Michael Wyatt 176 pages, 2012 Rating: Good/Great/GIFT Halfway through Canada at War, I realized it was filling in an odd…
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Adult fictionChasing Shadows
432 pages / 2021 by Lynn Austin Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Chasing Shadows takes place in WWII Holland and is a novel about choices and consequences. Miriam, a…
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Book ReviewsA Family Secret (2 books)
by Eric Heuvel 2009 / 64 pages Rating: Good/Great/GIFT It’s Queen’s Day in the Netherlands, and the celebrations include nationwide rummage sales. So young Jeroen…
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Book excerptsPrayer and comfort in Sachsenhausen
This is the story of my paternal grandfather’s last year on earth. He was a man of unwavering faith despite suffering arrest, incarceration, indignity, illness,…
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Book ReviewsGutsy Girls Book Two: Sisters, Corrie & Betsie ten Boom
by Amy L. Sullivan 2016 / 36 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This is the true story of two Dutch sisters who knew that God could be trusted…
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AnimatedTorchlighters: the Eric Liddell Story
Animated / Family 2007 / 31 minutes Rating: 6/10 Eric Liddell is best known for the stand he took to not compete in the 1924…
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People we should knowBetsie, the watchmaker’s daughter
Extraordinary stories of extraordinary men and women make up the fabric of history books: men and women who by some incident in their lives have…
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Book ReviewsFreiheit! The White Rose graphic novel
by Andrea Grosso Ciponte 110 pages / 2020 Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift I grew up reading stories about the Dutch resistance during World War II, and it was…
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Adult biographiesWinston Churchill
by John Perry 158 pages / 2010 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Though the man himself has been gone 50 + years now, the myth is enjoying a revival….
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Adult fictionThe Auschwitz Escape
by Joel C. Rosenberg 2014 / 461 pages Rating: Good/GREAT/Give Joel Rosenberg is a fantastic writer, a New York Times best-seller, but his political thrillers…
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DocumentaryThe Reckoning: remembering the Dutch Resistance
Documentary 96 min / 2006 Rating: 7/10 My grandfather never talked about the war but I knew he had been involved in the Dutch Resistance….
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DramaDesperate Journey
Black and White / War / Drama 107 minutes / 1942 RATING: 8/10 Ronald Reagan and Errol Flynn are two members of an Allied bombing…
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Adult fictionHidden: Stories of War and Peace
by Christine Farenhorst 303 pages / 2020 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give “I was a Stranger” is reason enough to pick up Christine Farenhorst’s newest short story collection. The…
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Book ReviewsHunger Winter
by Rob Currie 2020 / 236 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Author Rob Currie drops his readers right into the action in the opening scene, with an anxious…
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DramaThe Silver Fleet
Drama / Black and White / War 1943 / 88 minutes RATING: 7/10 This is a well-done, almost unknown World War II film told from…
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DramaBataan
Drama / Black and White / War 1943 / 114 minutes RATING: 8/10 This is a movie unlike any other you will ever see. In…
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DramaFlying Tigers
Drama / War / Black and White 104 minutes / 1942 RATING: 7/10 On January 3, 1942, just one month after Japan’s sneak attack on…
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Remembrance DayWar through the eyes of a child: Alice Kuik shares her memories of World War II
“The horror and sacrifices of those who endured a war must be recorded and remembered. If we fail to do so, we will soon take…
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DramaSahara
Drama / War 1943 / 98 minutes Rating: 8/10 Tanks need gas and people need water, and American tank commander Joe Gunn (Humphrey Bogart) needs…
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Adult non-fictionThe Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the plot to kill Hitler
by John Hendrix 176 pages / 2018 Rating: Good/GREAT/Give The world “pastor” is not often paired with words like “plot” or “kill.” But when the…
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Remembrance DayForgive me!
The waiting room was full. I pulled a number – 135. I just knew it would be a long wait. Next to me sat a…
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Book lists5 books to help us never forget
Next week will mark Remembrance Day, and to help us remember these men and women – many in uniform, and also many who were not –…
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Remembrance DayWhy we remember
My grandfather was active in the Dutch resistance movement against Nazism and you can read more about him in my article “Prayers and Comfort in Sachsenhausen.”…
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Adult biographies
The Hiding Place
by Corrie Ten Boom 1971 / 225 pages Rating: Good/Great/GIFT This was such an encouraging story, and in so many ways. If you know only…
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FamilySwallows and Amazons
Drama / Family 2016 / 96 minutes RATING: 7/10 I remember my older brother reading Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons to me when I was very young,…
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DocumentaryGOODBYE HOLLAND: The destruction of Dutch Jewry
Documentary 90 minutes / 2004 RATING: 8/10 I grew up reading Piet Prins’ Scout books and Anne DeVries’ Journey Through the Night, learning about the…
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DramaThe Seahawk
Drama / Action 109 minutes / 1940 RATING: 8/10 While The Seahawk is set in 1585, and pitches Spain against England, this film was all…
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Book excerptsLiving through World War II
This an excerpt from Gerda Vandenhaak’s “Geertje: War Seen through the Eyes of a Child as an Adult” ***** I am lining up for food. I…
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Book ReviewsBlueberries for the Queen
by John and Katherine Paterson2004 / 32 pages I hate blueberries but I loved this book. In this true story set in Lee, Massachusetts in…