The Girl Who Escaped From Auschwitz

Ellie Midwood is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning historical fiction author. She owes her interest in the history of the Second World War to her grandfather, Junior Sergeant in the 2nd Guards Tank Army of the First Belorussian Front, who began telling her about his experiences on the frontline when she was a young girl. Growing up, her interest in history only deepened and transformed from reading about the war to writing about it. After obtaining her BA in Linguistics, Ellie decided to make writing her full-time career and began working on her first full-length historical novel, "The Girl from Berlin." Ellie is continuously enriching her library with new research material and feeds her passion for WWII and Holocaust history by collecting rare memorabilia and documents. 

In her free time, Ellie is a health-obsessed yoga enthusiast, neat freak, adventurer, Nazi Germany history expert, polyglot, philosopher, a proud Jew, and a doggie mama. Ellie lives in New York with her fiancé and their Chihuahua named Shark Bait.

Awards:

Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2016) - "The Girl from Berlin: Standartenführer's Wife" (first place)

Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2016) - "The Austrian" (honorable mention)

New Apple - 2016 Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing - "The Austrian" (official selection)

Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2017) - "Emilia"

Readers' Favorite - winner in the Historical fiction category (2018) - "A Motherland's Daughter, A Fatherland's Son”

Interesting facts about me and my writing:

My interest in history of WWII started at the very early age as I carefully listened and absorbed my grandfather's war stories. He volunteered for the army at the age of 17 (lying about his age) and was among the troops that took Berlin and Reichstag. 

I started studying WWII (mostly the history of Nazi Germany, Soviet Union and the Holocaust) when I was fifteen. Recently I extended my studies to Occupied France and slowly moving back to the Eastern Front, this time concentrating mostly on the front life and not the regime and the civilian life.

All of my novels are written using the "unreliable protagonist" technique; in other words, my characters are never purely positive or negative, just very real people who react in a certain way under extreme circumstances. I believe that's what makes them so interesting, even though sometimes their hides deserve a good tanning.

The writers who influenced me the most come from the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century: Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Guy de Maupassant, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque and Irène Némirovsky are among my most favorite ones. You'll find me mentioning them sometimes in my novels.

I have a rather extensive collection of old photographs of ordinary soldiers depicting their front life in non-combative situations. Eating, sleeping, playing cards, dancing with their comrades, throwing snowballs and even milking cows. 

I collect hardcovers of non-fiction books and memoirs written by soldiers and Holocaust survivors.