Library: Europe

France

ID Code Title Author Description Home(s)
13929 FRA1 Taken in Contempt – When Parents Abduct Their Own Children Robin Bowles, Pan Macmillan Australia, 2001 This book draws attention to the harrowing and difficult problems associated with international child abduction.
13930 FRA2 In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy Frédéric Martel, Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019 An investigative piece of writing exposing the rot at the heart of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church. It is based on four years’ of authoritative research, including extensive interviews with those in power.

Italy

ID Code Title Author Description Home(s)
13931 ITA1 I’m Not Scared Niccolò Ammaniti, translated by Jonathan Hunt, The Text Publishing Company, 2001 The book explores the corruption of the adult world through the eyes of a nine-year-old narrator, Michele Amitrano, who chances upon a kidnapped child left to rot in a dilapidated house.

Netherlands & Germany

ID Code Title Author Description Home(s)
13933 NETH/GER1 Childhood Jona Oberski, translated by Ralph Menheim, Pushkin Press, first published in 1978 A recreation of the Holocaust through the eyes of a Jewish child as he and his family are deported from the Netherlands and interned at the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany. The writer is eventually placed in foster care at the end of the war.
13934 NETH/GER2 The Children’s House of Belsen Hetty E Verolme, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2000 During the Holocaust Hetty and her brothers were sent to Children’s House within Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany from the Netherlands. A truly remarkable story of a young girl’s determination.

Poland

ID Code Title Author Description Home(s)
13935 POL1 The King of Children: The Life and Death of Janusz Korczak Betty Jean Lifton, Chatto & Windus Ltd, 1988 A biography of Janusz Korczak a Jewish Polish paediatrician and educator who pioneered progressive orphanages serving both Jewish and Catholic children in Warsaw, Poland.
13936 POL2 Frozen In Terror Iwona Korzeniewski A recount of life as an orphan and in Polish orphanage under Communist rule. Iwona Korzeniewski's recounts her experience of being placed in a Polish orphanage at the age of four years after her mother passes away. This three page lived experience piece details Iwona's life as an adult living with the damaging effects of her childhood.

Former Yugoslavia now Czechia or Czech Republic

ID Code Title Author Description Home(s)
13937 FORMYUG1 The Rale Rasic Story – The Socceroos’ First World Cup Coach As told to Ray Gatt, New Holland Publishers, 2006 The book tells the story of Rale’s life and his childhood that started in an orphanage in former Yugoslavia.