Donald H. Harrison

A Jewish detective imprisoned in Auschwitz is drafted by the camp commandant to determine who has stolen the ledger in which there is an accounting of the gold extracted from the bodies of murdered prisoners.  Shimon Divko knows that he will be sent to the gas chamber whether he solves the mystery or doesn’t — the first alternative because he would then know too much; the second as punishment for failure.  [Donald H. Harrison]

Following a chance meeting aboard an airplane, a doctor simply identified as “J.” is invited to give a lecture at Nevergreen College, which was built on an island that formerly housed an insane asylum.  When the time for the lecture arrives, no one is there to attend it, not even the woman who invited him.  He delivers it nevertheless.  The following morning, he tours the campus, noticing at a student club expo that there are  tables for almost every kind of belief, however ridiculous or contradictory.  [Donald H. Harrison]

Irène Némirovsky, who wrote this novella, was murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.  Although she grew up in Kiev, in what today is part of Ukraine, she wrote in French.  Translator Sandra Smith has brought her stories to light under the aegis of the Kale Press. [Donald H. Harrison]

Chaim Klein, an archaeologist and former commander of an IDF anti-terrorist unit, has a knack for picking up religious souvenirs. In Jerusalem, for example, he finds the Ark of the Covenant; in Ethiopia, the chalice from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper; and in England, the miraculous sword with which David slew Goliath.  But he’s on the hunt for an even bigger prize: the Tablets of the Law on which God, Himself, inscribed the Ten Commandments. [Donald H. Harrison]

This novel concerns a Mexican-American family of mixed Catholic and Jewish religious backgrounds, one which celebrates Easter and Passover, Chanukah and Christmas as cultural holidays rather than religious ones. There is plenty of drama in the Alvarado family, but not because of any noticeable differences in religious outlook. [Donald H. Harrison]

This is a novel about a survivor’s guilt.  Millie Mosbach, a German-American Jew returns to Berlin immediately after World War II to participate in the denazification program administered by the U.S. Army.  She and her brother had left Germany while still  teenagers; American benefactors had arranged for her to attend Bryn Mawr College on a scholarship.  Foregoing higher education, David was quick to enlist in the Army; he wanted to fight Germans. [Donald H. Harrison]

This is a story for Young Adults set in the turbulent 1960s, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down anti-miscegenation laws in 16 states via its decision in Loving v. Virginia.   Leah, a recent high school graduate, has fallen in love with Raj, whose family immigrated from India.  Raj, a business major at New York University, faces the same problem that the Jewish Leah does; his parents want him to marry within his own religion, which is Hindu. [Donald H. Harrison]

This book, intended for students in late elementary and early middle schools, tells the story of two Ukrainian teenage sisters who are taken prisoners by soldiers of the Soviet Union.  The soldiers and the sinister Soviet NKVD believe that however anti-Nazi the sisters might have been during the just-ended World War II, they also were opposed to the expansionist designs of the Soviet Union.  From the standpoint of the commissars, although the girls were just teenagers, they were enemies of the state. [Donald H. Harrison]