Kristen M.

Everyday cruelty is everywhere there are people. We experience its effects in our bodies, minds, emotions, spirits, and in our response. Author Helen Kobek guides listeners through the process of understanding how to deal with everyday cruelty while being fully aware of its power. By defining cruelty, examining how it affects us, delving into what makes it so painful, and then offering hundreds of strategies for dealing with it, Kobek offers this promise: You can deal with the effects of everyday cruelty without pretending it is not happening, becoming resentful, or giving up.

In the early 1940s, countless Jewish families were imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto before being led to their deaths by the Nazis. Amidst this horror, one young Jewish girl is smuggled out of the ghetto, sent to live on the other side of Warsaw with Helen Dobinski, a friend of her mother. Helen's Catholic faith and her friendship with the girl's mother compels her to keep the young child safe from harm. But Helen's heroism comes at a cost. Because harboring a Jewish person is a crime to the Nazis, with severe punishment - even death - as the penalty.

Hitler has surrendered. The Nazi flags, which once hung throughout the city, striking terror in the hearts of Polish citizens, have been torn down. It seems that Warsaw should be rejoicing in its new-found freedom. But Warsaw is not free. Instead it is occupied by the Soviet Union, held tightly in Stalin’s iron grip.

When Jewish Holocaust survivors Eidel and Dovid Levi arrive in the United States, they believe that their struggles are finally over. Both have suffered greatly under the Nazi reign and are ready to leave the past behind. They arrive in this new and different land filled with optimism for their future. However, acclimating into a new way of life can be challenging for immigrants. And, not only are they immigrants but they are Jewish.

In the final book in the Eidel's Story series the children of Holocaust survivors Eidel and Dovid Levi have grown to adulthood. They each face hard trials and tribulations of their own, many of which stem from growing up as children of Holocaust survivors. Haley is a peacemaker who yearns to please even at the expense of her own happiness. Abby is an angry rebel on the road to self-destruction. And, Mark, Dovid’s only son, carries a heavy burden of guilt and secrets. He wants to please his father, but he cannot.