Orem Library

A summary of the history of World War II (1939-1945) on the European and North African fronts.

On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed in the South Pacific by a Japanese submarine. An estimated 300 men were killed upon impact; close to 900 sailors were cast into the Pacific Ocean, where they remained undetected by the navy for nearly four days and nights. Battered by a savage sea, they struggled to stay alive, fighting off sharks, hypothermia, and dementia. By the time rescue arrived, all but 316 men had died. The captain's subsequent...

Irene Sendler was a humanitarian and social worker in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. Her job allowed her to pass through the armed gates of the Warsaw Ghetto, bringing limited aid to the 450,000 Jewish people who were forcibly moved there. In secret, Irena built a network of people to smuggle 2,500 children out of the ghetto, saving their lives. Ans in a hidden jar, she kept their family names. This is her story..

Twelve-year-old Lidia's life is forever changed by the Nazi occupation of Poland, leading her to join the resistance movement to fight against the Nazis and aid Jewish people in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII.

Life is a constant struggle for the eighteen-year-old Nowak twins as they raise their three younger siblings in rural Poland under the shadow of the Nazi occupation. Helena discovers an American paratrooper stranded outside their small mountain village. Risking the safety of herself and her family, she hides Sam--a Jew--but Helena's concern for the American grows into something much deeper. Helena is forced to contend with the jealousy her choices...

In the Mississippi Delta of the 1940s, two farming families one of white landholders, and one of Black tenant farmers are bound by the unforgiving soil they share as they struggle to survive amid the upheavals of World War II and the poisonous hatred of the Jim Crow South. Each family sends a young man off to battle; when they return home, scarred, and find a common bond, the community is ripped apart. Writer-director Dee Rees, with co-writer Virgil...

Opening in 1936, the Zion Covenant series tells the courageous and compelling stories of those who risk everything to stand against the growing tide of Nazi terrorism that is sweeping through central Europe under the dangerous and deceitful guise of Hitler's Third Reich.

Star Trek actor, activist, and author George Takei shares his empowering and moving story about growing up in Japanese American incarceration camps during WWII.

Summer 1939. Harry, a translator at the British Embassy in Warsaw, is falling in love with Polish waitress Kasia. When German tanks roll into Poland, and Britain declares war on Germany, Harry and Kasia face terrible choices. With her life in grave danger, can Harry help her, and if he can, how will he ever explain himself to Lois Bennett, the girl he left behind in Manchester?