ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The purpose of this annotated bibliography is to help you choose from the vast array of
Holocaust publications that might be useful to you. This bibliography is not meant to
indicate that these are the best examples of Holocaust literature, although they are all
excellent books. The works cited here were chosen both because of individual merit and
specifically because they address particular aspects of Holocaust experience.
For the most part, these books are readily available, and, where possible, available in
paperback. A few books that are out of print have nevertheless been included simply
because they are too important to be omitted. Books published under the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Holocaust Library imprint are available through the
Museum Shop. Furthermore, one may look at a large retail bookseller, such as Barnes
and Noble or Border’s as well as www.amazon.com for bargain prices.
The difficulty in compiling a selective list of Holocaust literature is complicated not only
by the great amount of material available but also by the subject matter itself. The
Holocaust was a monumental event in history. It involved millions of people in dozens
of nations, and its effects were felt in every aspect of their lives. There is, therefore, no
simple answer to the questions. What’s the best book for me to read about the Holocaust?
or if I can only read one or two books, which ones should they be? Any one book can
present only a partial perspective. Where a good general history of the period can
provide historical background, a personal narrative will translate that history into human
terms, and a more specialized history will examine a particular aspect of that history in
greater depth.
Which book or books you should read will depend both on how much time you are able
to commit and on the aspect of the Holocaust upon which you are focusing. No one can
learn, or teach, everything about the Holocaust. First, determine your goals, and then
select the most appropriate materials. A broad range of materials have been included on
these lists to represent the scope of the Holocaust and to enable you to choose the
materials best suited to your approaches on the subject.
As new Holocaust literature is constantly appearing, it is also important to establish
criteria for examining these materials. In addition to the usual standards to literary
quality and historical accuracy, two phrases from Lawrence L. Langer’s The Age of
Atrocity: Death in Modern Literature set the parameters in the arena. At one end of the
scale, the book should be one that actually confronts the horrors of the Holocaust; it
should not “circumspectly [skirt] the horror implicit in the theme but [leave] the reader
with the mournful if psychologically unburdened feeling that he has had a genuine
encounter with inappropriate death.” At the other extreme, too great a concentration on
the horrors, especially if presented with graphic details, tends to overwhelm the reader
and numb the senses; Langer refers to these works as “mere catalogues of atrocities.”
Between these two extremes, there is a wealth of material, only a fraction of which is
listed here, that will enable you to confront the Holocaust and the issues that it raises.
HISTORY, GENERAL
Altshuler, David A. and Lucy Dawidowicz. Hitler’s War Against the Jews.
West Orange, N.J.: Behrman House. 1978.
The young reader’s version of Lucy Dawidowicz’s The War Against the Jews.
Arad, Yitzhak, Israel Gutman, and A. Margaliot. Documents on the Holocaust:
Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland and
the Soviet Union. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. 1981
This comprehensive collection of essential documents is intended for those interested in
the history of the Holocaust. The documents reflect major trends and developments in
Nazi ideology and policy towards the Jews as well as behavior and reactions of the Jews
facing the Nazi conquest.
Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.
Bachrach tells the story of the Holocaust as presented in the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in brief, thematic segments illustrated by artifacts and historical
photographs. Sidebars tell the personal stories of more than twenty young people of
various religious backgrounds and nationalities who suffered or died during the
Holocaust.
Bauer, Yehuda, and Nili Keren. A History of the Holocaust. New York: Franklin
Watts. 1982.
Broader in scope than the title indicates, this work examines the origins of anti-Semitism
and Nazism as well as the history of Jewish-German relationships. Bauer also arranges
material on the Holocaust by individual country; this is useful for following events in
each nation and for demonstrating the scope of the Holocaust. One of the most readable
general histories for high school students.
Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know: A History of the Holocaust as Told in
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Boston: Little, Brown, 2006.
As indicated by the title, the book tells the story of the Holocaust as presented in the
Museum. It includes more than 200 photos from the Museum’s archives and artifact
collection and many eyewitness accounts from the Museum’s oral and video history
collections. The three parts of the book, which correspond to the three main exhibition
floors, cover the rise of the Nazis to power, the ghettos and camps; and rescue, resistance
and the postwar period.
Bergen, Doris L. War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (Critical
Issues in History). Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993.
This is a good source for general Holocaust information.
Bracher, Karl Dietrich. The German Dictatorship. New York: Praeger, 1976.
This is a succinct summary of resistance in Germany by left-wing groups, churches and
the military.
Charny, Israel. Encyclopedia of Genocide. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 1999.
This provides a broader perspective on the Holocaust within the context of comparative
genocide.
Chartock, R.K., and J. Spencer, eds. Can It Happen Again? Chronicles of the
Holocaust. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal. 2001
This chronicle includes eyewitness accounts, memoirs, documentary materials and
selections from eminent writers, scholars and journalists, providing insight into all
aspects of the Holocaust.
Dawidowicz, Lucy S. A Holocaust Reader (Library of Jewish Studies). West Orange:
Behrman House, 1976.
A companion to the historical work cited below, here. Dawidowicz presents
documentation to support the history. Both German and Jewish documents are provided,
including reports, letters and diaries. The general introduction to studying Holocaust
documents and the introductions to each section of documents are extremely helpful.
Dawidowicz, Lucy S. The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945. New York: Bantam,
1986.
Dawidowicz raises three questions: How was it possible for a modern state to carry out
the systematic murder of a people for no reason other than that they were Jewish? How
did European Jewry allow itself to be destroyed? How could the world stand by without
halting this destruction? In Dawidowicz’s view, World War II was the direct result of
Hitler’s anti-Semitism; she believes the war was waged to allow the Nazis to implement
the “Final Solution.”
Dwork, Deborah, and Robert Jan van Pelt. Holocaust: A History. New York and
London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2002.
The title is appropriately modest for a substantive work that balances the large narrative
of history with the personal stories of survivors.
Eclipse of Humanity: The History of the Shoah. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. 1999.
This comprehensive multimedia program on the Holocaust presents the entire history of
the Jews under the Nazis in a continuous historical narrative, allowing users to explore
particular topics from many angles and in a variety of media.
The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, Before, During and After the Holocaust. Jerusalem:
Yad Vashem, in association with New York University Press. 2003.
Based on a thirty-volume encyclopedia published only in Hebrew, this accessible new
English edition recreates in illustrations and prose the distinctive culture lost during the
Holocaust.
Friedlander, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939.
New York: Harper Collins, 1997.
Friedlander recounts the step-by-step process by which the Nazi regime increased its
repression against the Jews of Germany in the years between 1933 and 1939. His
account includes a description of the responses of Jews at all levels of society.
Friedlander, Saul. The Years of Extermination. New York: Harper Collins, 2007.
This is the author’s conclusion to his two volume narrative of the Holocaust. It is written
extremely well without any bias or emotion, relying on many primary sources to
authenticate his scholarly study of this history.
Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews in Europe During the Second
World War. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1986.
Gilbert effectively combines the results of historical research with personal narratives of
survivors. Although the book is long, it is readable and extremely well-indexed, making
it an invaluable tool for providing supplementary material on almost any aspect of the
Holocaust.
Gilbert, Martin. Holocaust Maps and Photographs: A Visual Narrative by Martin
Gilbert. London: The Holocaust Education Trust. 1998.
Maps and photographs provide a visual record of the destruction of Jewish life in Europe,
acts of resistance, rescue efforts and the inadequate response of the world during Nazi
rule.
Haffner, Sebastian and Oliver Pretzel. Defying Hitler. New York: Picador, 2003.
Written in 1939 and unpublished until 2000, Sebastian Haffner’s memoir of the rise of
Nazism in Germany offers a unique portrait of the lives of ordinary German citizens
between 1907 and 1933.
Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews [student text]. New York:
Holmes and Meier, 1985.
This edition of Hilberg’s classic work is an abridgment of the original, three-volume
edition. The focus here is on the Nazis and their destruction process, from the
concentration of the Jews in ghettos to the killing operations of the mobile units and the
death camps. This essential history is recommended for more advanced students.
Hilberg, Raul. Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 19331945. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
In his most recent work, Hilberg expands his focus from the study of the perpetrator
alone to include, as the title indicates, victims and bystanders. He also includes rescuers
and Jewish resisters, groups that he ignored in his earlier work; however, the attention he
gives to these groups is minimal. His main focus continues to be on the destruction and
those responsible for it. Hitler’s role is more central here than in the earlier work. This is
Hilberg’s most accessible book.
Hochstadt, Steve, ed. Sources of the Holocaust (Documents in History). New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
This collection of original documents and sources covers the origins of Christian antiSemitism through to contemporary topics surrounding the Holocaust.
Laqueur, Walter, ed. The Holocaust Encyclopedia. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2001.
This provides an excellent overall source on the Holocaust.
Katz, Steven T. The Holocaust in Historical Context (vol. I: The Holocaust and Mass
Death before the Modern Age). New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
This is the first of a projected three-volume study of the uniqueness of the Holocaust.
Levin, Nora. The Nazi Destruction of European Jewry, 1933-1945. Melbourne:
Krieger Publishing Company, 1990.
Levin was one of the first writers to use the term Holocaust for the destruction of the
Jews of Europe during World War II. The first part of this historical account, arranged
chronologically, details the Nazi plan and implementation of the “Final Solution.” The
second half arranged geographically, shows how the Nazi program was affected by
individual governments and by degrees of anti-Semitism. Levin emphasizes the
resistance of the Jews and rejects the notion that they went to their deaths “like sheep to
the slaughter.”
Linenthal, Edward T. Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s
Holocaust Museum. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
This is one of the best books that deals with the creation of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Niewyk, Donald L., ed. The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation.
Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1992.
This series of essays by well-known historians offers distinct perspectives on five
different themes of the Holocaust. The topics include the development of the Nazi plan
to solve the “Jewish Question,” experiences of victims, viewpoints on Jewish resistance,
reactions of Christians to the “Final Solution,” and finally, perspectives on rescue.
Ress, Laurence. The Nazis: A Warning from History. New York and London: The
New Press, 1997.
The author’s book contains remarkable previously unpublished material and photographs
documenting the reality of life under Nazi rule and the evolution of the ruthless slaughter
of millions of people in Germany. Rees has collected the testimonies of more than fifty
eyewitnesses and these materials cast a new light on the Third Reich.
Reitlinger, Gerald. The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of
Europe, 1939-1945. Norvale: Jason Aronson, 1988.
This book, first published in 1953 and updated a decade later, is remarkable for the early
understanding it provided of the Holocaust. Much of what Reitlinger wrote less than a
decade after the Holocaust has been confirmed by subsequent research.
Rogasky, Barbara. Smoke and Ashes: The Story of the Holocaust. New York:
Holiday House, 2002.
Blending a narrative of historical events with personal testimonies, Rogasky poses these
questions: How did the Holocaust happen and why? Couldn’t anyone stop it? How
could the Jews let it happen? She also includes a chapter on non-Jewish victims.
Rosenbaum, Alan S. Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative
Genocide. Boulder, Westview, 1998.
Rosenbaum has represented all sides of the debate of the uniqueness of the Holocaust in
his edited work.
Rozert, Robert and Shmuel Spector. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Jerusalem:
G.G. Jerusalem Publishing House, co-published with Facts On File in the United
States, 2000.
This comprehensive text on the Holocaust features eight essays on the history of the
Holocaust and its antecedents followed by more than 650 entries on significant aspects of
the Holocaust, including people, cities and countries, camps, resistance movements,
political actions and outcomes, American Jewry and the Holocaust, Holocaust denial,
films on the Holocaust, the Holocaust in music, Nazi propaganda, youth movements,
Holocaust museums and memorials, etc.
Schleunes, Karl A. The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy Toward German
Jews, 1933-1939. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.
Schleune’s groundbreaking work examines the organization and operations of the Nazi
government between 1933 and 1939, in order to understand how German anti-Semitism
evolved into a program of mass murder. Through his interpretation of the public record,
the author presents an image of Hitler as a leader who provided no cohesive set of
objectives or plans for dealing with the “Jewish Question” during this period. In this
power vacuum, Schleunes argues that a policy evolved in a series of “jumps and starts” as
the party and government agencies acted on their own initiative to curry favor with
Hitler. The work offers an interesting contrast to Dawidowicz’s The War against the
Jews, 1933-1945.
Spector, Shmuel, ed. The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life: Before and during the
Holocaust. New York: New York University Press, 2001.
The provides an excellent resource for Holocaust studies.
Yahil, Leni. The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945 (Studies in
Jewish History). New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Yahil demonstrates how the Nazis used the anti-Jewish program from the beginning to
reinforce their power. Before the war, their deliberate violence against the Jews of
Germany helped to terrorize the rest of the country, and during the war, their anti-Jewish
policies were used as an excuse for taking control of the governments of satellites and
occupied countries.
HISTORY, SPECIALIZED
Abzug, Robert H. Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi
Concentration Camps. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Using the diaries, letters, photographs and oral testimonies of American GIs and
journalists, Abzug analyzes the reactions of the first eyewitnesses who entered the
concentration camps in Germany and Austria during the spring of 1945. This highly
readable account is liberally illustrated with photographs.
Adelson, Alan, and Robert Lapides, eds. Lodz Ghetto: Inside a Community Under
Siege. New York: Viking Penguin, 1991.
As the source book for the film Lodz Ghetto, this work is an excellent supplement to the
documentary, but it also stands on its own. It contains both German and ghetto
documents as well as the personal expressions of ghetto residents in a variety of forms,
including diaries, speeches, painting, photographs, essays and poems.
Ainsztein, Reuben. Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Europe. New York: Barnes
and Noble, 1974.
The author provides an excellent, widely used source.
Ainsztein, Reuben. The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. New York: Holocaust Library,
1979.
Ainsztein’s book is an important description of the uprising.
Aly, Gotz. “Final Solution”: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European
Jews. New York: Arnold, 1999.
Aly reconstructs the events and decisions leading to the Holocaust. He examines the
failures of Nazi resettlement plans and the growing ideological imperative for the Nazis
to find a solution to the so-called “Jewish Question” during the war.
Anflick. Charles. Resistance: Teen Partisans and Resisters Who Fought Nazi
Tyranny (Teen Witnesses to the Holocaust). New York: Rosen Publishing Group,
1998.
Anflick lists and evaluates the three methods of resistance: “armed, unarmed and
spiritual” and provides examples of how young people lived out these three forms of
resistance during the Holocaust.
Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps.
Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1982.
The scholar writes a definitive volume on three of the six death camps employed by the
Nazi regime as a means to their end of the “Final Solution to the Jewish question.” Arad
uses eyewitness testimony of victims and participants to weave this incredible history.
Arad, Yitzhak. Ghetto in Flames. New York: Holocaust Publications 1982.
For centuries, its large number of rabbinic scholars ensured Vilna a central place in the
cultural life of Lithuanian Jewry. Arad’s scholarly and groundbreaking study focuses on
the life, struggle and annihilation of the Jews of Vilna in the period between 1941-1944.
Arbella, Irving, and Harold Trooper. None is Too Many. New York: Random
House, 1983.
This is an excellent source that discusses Canadian policy toward the Jews.
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Cleveland: World Publishing,
1951.
The first part of Arendt’s book offers important insights into antisemitism and the killing
centers.
Armstrong, John A., ed. Soviet Partisans in World War II. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1964.
This collection of scholarly essays remains a standard reference work on the Soviet
resistance.
Aron, Robert. The Vichy Regime, 1940-44. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969.
The Holocaust in France is covered in Aron’s book.
Ashman, Chuck, and Robert Wagman. The Nazi Hunters: Behind the Worldwide
Search for Nazi War Criminals. New York: Pharon Books, 1988.
This is a good source on the search for Nazi war criminals after World War II.
Bachrach, Susan D. The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936. Boston: Little, Brown, 2000.
Bachrach traces the troubled history of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, examining the
Nazi dictatorship, the escalating persecution of German Jews and the abortive movement
in the United States to boycott the games. She tells the complete story of the Games,
focusing not only on the athletes who competed but also on those who were banned from
competition.
Balabkin, Nicholas. West German Reparations to Israel. New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1971.
Balabkin presents an excellent treatment of this subject.
Bankier, David, ed. Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society
and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933-1941. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, in association
with the Leo Baeck Institute, 2000.
A compilation of articles by predominantly German historians examines all the
economic, political and social aspects calculated to isolate and ultimately destroy the
Jewish population.
Bartoszewski, Wladyslaw T. The Warsaw Ghetto: A Christian’s Testimony. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1988.
The author is a Polish historian and journalist, born in Warsaw in 1922, now a retired
professor of Catholic University in Lublin. He returned to Warsaw in 1941 and was one
of the founders of Zegota, the council for aid to Jews. He served as liaison between the
Polish underground and Jewish ghetto leadership. In this work, he intermingles his
personal story with primary source material from Nazi, resistance and ghetto documents.
Baumel, Judith. Double Jeopardy: Gender and the Holocaust. London and
Portland: Vallentine Mitchell, 1998.
This work sheds light on the issue of women in the Holocaust.
Bauer, Yehuda. American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee 1939-1945. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1981.
This is an excellent resource on this subject. Bauer remains one of the world’s greatest
Holocaust scholars.
Bauer, Yehuda. Flight and Rescue: Brichah. New York: Random House, 1970.
Brichah was the organization which smuggled Jewish Holocaust survivors across
international borders in an attempt to settle them in Israel (Palestine).
Bauer, Yehuda. From Diplomacy to Resistance. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1970.
Bauer explores the history of Jewish Palestine between 1939 and 1945.
Bauer, Yehuda, and Nathan Rotenstreich, eds. The Holocaust as Historical
Experience. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981.
This is a collection of essays by noted scholars in the field (Saul Friedlander, Jacob Katz,
Raul Hilberg, Henry Feingold, Isaiah Trunk and Randolph Braham, among others). It is
organized into three sections: the Holocaust as historical phenomenon (the possibility
and predictability of the Holocaust); case studies (Vilna, Warsaw, Hungary and
Romania); and the contentious issue of Jewish leadership in Nazi-dominated Europe.
Material for the book originated at a conference titled “The Holocaust: A Generation
After” held in New York in March 1975.
Bauer, Yehuda. Jewish Emergence from Powerlessness. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1979.
Bauer traces the emergence of Jews from passivity to militancy during and after the
Holocaust.
Bauer, Yehuda. Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1994.
Bauer published this important study of the attempts at rescue and the indifference of the
west.
Bauer, Yehuda. Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2001.
This is Bauer’s collection of essays that touch all the major issues of Holocaust
historiography.
Bazyler, Michael J. Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America’s
Courts. New York and London: New York University Press, 2003.
This provides important insights into the contemporary issues of restitution and justice.
Ben Sasoon, H. and S. Dunkelblum-Steiner. Resistance, Spiritual Resistance, Revolt,
Partisans and the Uprising in the Death Camps. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004.
This book deals with the many faces of heroism. It concentrates on three topics: social
and spiritual struggle in the Warsaw ghetto, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the
partisans. Also included are primary and secondary sources and educational
methodology.
Berenbaum, Michael, and Abraham J. Peck, eds. The Holocaust and History: The
Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1998.
Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, this book
of essays by noted scholars in the field defines the state of knowledge about the
Holocaust today. The book probes topics such as Nazi politics, racial ideology, stages of
the Holocaust, Jewish leadership and resistance, the Allies and Axis powers, the rescuers
and the impact of the Holocaust on survivors.
Berenbaum, Michael, ed. A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered
by the Nazis. New York: New York University Press, 1990.
This collection of essays includes entries by a number of noted Holocaust scholars,
including Berenbaum himself. The subjects of the essays include non-Jewish victims
such as homosexuals, Gypsies, Serbs, Slavs and pacifists.
Berenbaum, Michael and John Roth, eds. Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical
Implication. New York: Paragon Books, 1990.
This collection of essays brings together more than a score of the major essays on the
Holocaust and is designed to introduce readers to a diverse field of learning.
Berger, Joseph. Displaced Persons: Growing Up American after the Holocaust.
New York: Washington Square Press, 2001.
This is an interesting work regarding displaced persons.
Bergman, Martin, and Milton E. Jucovy. Generations of the Holocaust. New York:
Basic Books, 1982.
The authors provide a collection of important articles on the enduring burden of children
of the Holocaust.
Berkley, George. Vienna and Its Jews: The Tragedy of Success 1880s-1980s.
Cambridge: Abt Books, 1988.
This book is the author’s narrative on an assimilated Jewish community that had a deep
love affair with their adopted city. Unfortunately, their adopted community did not have
the same reciprocal feelings. This is their sad story.
Bernstein, Victor. Final Judgment. London: Latimer House, 1947.
This multivolume publication of the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal is
indispensable.
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Informed Heart, Autonomy in a Mass Age. New York: The
Free Press, 1971.
This is an excellent resource.
Block, Gay, and Malka Drucker. Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the
Holocaust. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1992.
Interviews and full-size color portraits of 49 ordinary individuals from ten countries who
risked their lives to help Jews by hiding them, sharing their food rations, forging
passports and baptismal certificates and raising Jewish children as their own. The
rescuers’ portraits are presented by country of origin and a brief historical overview of
rescue efforts in each country precedes their personal stories.
Boas, Jacob H. Boulevard des Miseres: The Story of Transit Camp Westerbork.
Hamden: Anchor Books, 1985.
This book is critical to understanding this subject.
Borkin, Joseph. The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben: The Startling Account
of the Unholy Alliance of Adolf Hitler and Germany’s Great Chemical Combine.
New York: Free Press, 1978.
This is an excellent source on I.G. Farben’s complicity in the Holocaust.
Borowitz, Eugene. Renewing the Covenant. Philadelphia: JPS, 1991.
Bondy, Ruth. Elder of the Jews: Jacob Edelstein of Theresienstadt. New York:
Grove Press, 1989.
Ruth Bondy’s book on Theresienstadt is significant.
Bracher, Karl Dietrich. The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure and
Effects of National Socialism. New York: Praeger, 1970.
This is a good resource discussing the Nazi ascent to power.
Braham, Randolph. The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
This is an excellent study of Hungarian Jews and the Holocaust.
Breitman, Richard and Alan M. Kraut. American Refugee Policy and European
Jewry, 1933 – 1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
The authors provide a good resource on this subject.
Breitman, Richard. Himmler, The Architect of Genocide. London: University Press
of New England, 1991.
Breitman again writes a brilliant narrative of the Nazi policies towards the Jews.
Breitman, Richard. Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and
Americans Knew. New York: Hill and Wang, 1999.
This is another good work that Breitman provides the Holocaust student.
Brenner, Michael. After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar
Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
This is an interesting work with regard to displaced persons.
Bridenthal, Renate, et al. When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and
Nazi Germany. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984.
Claudia Koonz and Sybil Milton are among the scholars included in this collection of
essays dealing with issues relating to women and families in Germany in the 1920s,
1930s and 1940s. Politics, feminism and anti-Semitism are some of the subjects
addressed.
Bridgeman. The End of the Holocaust: The Liberation of the Camps.
Portland: Areopagitica Press, 1990.
Bridgeman’s work is a valuable resource.
Browning, Christopher R. Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final
Solution. New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, Inc., 1991.
Browning renders a short review of the historiography of the Holocaust and offers an
interpretation of the Nazi decision-making process that led to the “Final Solution.” The
work focuses on the critical period between the summer of 1941 and the spring of 1942.
The author presents evidence that growing persecution of minorities and target groups,
brutal wartime reprisal measures and the mass starvation and maltreatment of Soviet
prisoners of war were components of a brutalization process that culminated in genocide.
The work discusses the development of the gas van and explores how the German
response to partisan warfare in Yugoslavia developed into a “Final Solution” for the local
Jewish community in Serbia.
Browning, Christopher R. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Browning focuses on the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy during the first years of the
war-the movement from expulsion of Jews to systematic extermination-in an effort to
illuminate the mindset and behavior of local perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the
Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
In this compelling, pioneering social history, Browning attempts to explain how
“ordinary,” middle-aged men became mass murderers, personally shooting thousands of
men, women and children in occupied Poland where the reservists served as members of
the German Order Police. The author draws on the interrogations of 210 men who
provided testimony in war crimes trials in the 1960s regarding their participation in the
massacres and roundups of Jews in 1942 and 1943.
Browning, Christopher, and Jurgen Mattaus. The Origins of the Final Solution:
The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
This book sheds important light on the interplay between local and regional decisions on
the one hand and a comprehensive policy throughout German-occupied Europe regarding
the Jews on the other.
Browning, Christopher. The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final
Solution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
This is another important work by the author.
Brozat, Martin. Hitler and the Collapse of Weimar Germany. New York: Berg,
1987.
This book discusses Hitler’s and the Nazi ascent to power.
Burleigh, Michael. Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany, 1900-1945.
New York: 1995.
This well-documented study moves beyond Burleigh’s earlier work, The Racial State and
examines three principal themes: the origins and evolution of Germany’s “euthanasia”
program, the involvement of personnel from various levels of the Bureaucracy and the
advancements they received for participation.
Burleigh, Michael, and Wolfgang Wippermann. The Racial State: Germany, 19331945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Between 1933 and 1945 the Nazi regime tried to restructure German society along racial
lines. This study shows how the Nazi’s plan to annihilate European Jewry derived from
racial and population policies that also targeted the Sinti and Roma (Gypsies), the
mentally and physically handicapped, the “asocial” and homosexuals.
Chamberlin, Brewster, and Marcia Feldman. The Liberation of the Nazi
Concentration Camps 1945. Washington: United States Holocaust Memorial
Council, 1987.
This volume contains valuable original testimony of survivors.
Cohen, Elie A. Human Behavior in the Concentration Camp. New York: W.W.
Norton and Company, 1953.
The author provides a good resource on the victims in the camps.
Cohn, Norman. Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy and
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Providence: Brown Judaic Series, 1981.
This book gives the reader a good understanding of antisemitism.
Cohn-Sherbok, Dan. Atlas of Jewish History. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Cohn-Sherbok traces the development of Jewish history from ancient times to the present
day, placing the Holocaust within the larger context of almost 5000 years of Jewish
history. He includes more than 100 maps and 24 black-and-white illustrations.
Conway, John. The Nazi Persecution of the Churches. New York: Basic Books,
1968.
Conway’s book is an important source on religious persecution by the Nazis.
Cooper, B., ed. War Crimes: The Legacy of Nuremberg. New York: TV Books,
1999.
This is a collection of essays addressing Nuremberg’s shortcomings and achievements
within the context of international law, while considering the moral, legal and historical
implications of Nuremberg’s legacy.
Conot, Robert E. Justice at Nuremberg. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1984.
Conot provides a detailed history of the Nuremberg Trials. He covers the preparations
for the trials, the interrogation and indictment of the major Nazi war criminals, the
prosecution of the trial, strategies used by the defense and the verdict and execution of
the sentences handed down by the International Military Tribunal in 1946. Conot also
includes a brief discussion of the difficulties involved in organizing the Nuremberg
Trails, which involved representatives from the United States, Great Britain, France and
the Soviet Union.
Cornwell, John. Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. New York: Viking,
1999.
This study is critical of Pius XII who was the wartime pope that presided over the
Vatican during the Holocaust.
Corni, Gustavo. Hitler’s Ghettos: Voices from a Beleaguered Society, 1939-1944.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Corni provides a good resource on the ghettos during the Holocaust.
Crowe, David M. A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia. New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
Crowe gives the reader insight to the plight of this victim group during the Holocaust.
Czech, Danuta. Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945. New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 1990.
When Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945 the Nazi administration attempted to
destroy all of the documentary evidence pertaining to the operation of the camp. They
were not successful. Documents survived the destruction for a variety of reasons. This
book attempts to give a day to day account of the camp. The information is detailed and
particular. From the mass of undigested facts emerge a picture of life in the camp.
Czech, Danuta. Auschwitz Chronicle. New York: Holt, 1990.
This is an important work written about the infamous death camp.
Davies, Alan T. Antisemitism and the Foundations of Christianity. New York:
Paulist Press, 1979.
This book is another good resource for understanding the roots of antisemitism.
Delarue, Jacques. The Gestaop: A History of Horror. New York: Skyhorse
Publishing, 1962.
The author probes the organization’s history, and explains how such a horrific institution
could come into being, who was behind it, what they did, and why. Delarue provides a
complete history by drawing upon interviews with ex-Gestapo agents and the
organization’s published and unpublished archives.
Delbo, Charlotte. None of Us Will Return. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.
Delbo joined the resistance movement in France in 1940 and was arrested together with
her husband by the Germans in March 1942. The Germans executed her husband but
imprisoned and, later, deported Delbo to Auschwitz in occupied Poland. The book is a
series of memories about the camp written in free verse and rhythmic prose in an attempt
to symbolize time for prisoners in a death camp.
Des Pres, Terrence. The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Des Pres studies survivors of the death camps in an attempt to determine what enabled
people to survive; his conclusions are controversial and are unlike those of Bettelheim
(The Informed Heart), Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning), and other Holocaust
survivors.
Dinnerstein, Leonard. America and the Survivors of the Holocaust. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1982.
Dinnerstein provides important background information on the DP camps.
Dubkowski, Michael N. The Tarnished Dream: The Basis of American AntiSemitism. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1979.
This book discusses American antisemitism quite frankly.
Dobroszycki, Lucjan, ed. The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto, 1941-1944. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1987.
Himself a survivor of the Lodz ghetto, Dobroszycki introduces and analyzes the detailed
records kept by Lodz archivists. He includes material about the ghetto’s controversial
leader, Mordecai Chaim Rumkowski.
Dwork, Deborah. Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1991.
This detailed study of Jewish children during the Holocaust is based on archival material
and survivor interviews. The book focuses on the daily life of children in hiding and in
transit camps, ghettos, forced labor camps and killing centers.
Eckardt, Roy A. Elder and Younger Brothers: The Encounter of Jews and
Christians. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967.
Eckardt attempts to confront the implications of this long history of antisemitism for
contemporary Christians.
Eisenhower, Dwight David. Crusade in Europe. Garden City: Doubleday, 1948.
This book describes the General’s visit to Ohrdruf Concentration Camp.
Eitinger, Leo. Concentration Camp Survivors in Norway and in Israel. The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1964.
Eitinger discusses Holocaust survivors in this work.
Eizenstat, Stuart E. Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the
Unfinished Business of World War II. New York: Public Affairs, 2003.
Eizenstat provides important insights into the contemporary issues of restitution and
justice.
Engelmann, Bernt. In Hitler’s Germany. New York: Schocken, 1988.
Engelmann, a German raised in an anti-Nazi home, tells his own story here along with
those of other Germans both for and against the Nazis. He also includes stories of those
who actively resisted the Nazis and those who were indifferent to the events around them.
This is a social history, focusing on everyday life.
Epstein, Helen. Children of the Holocaust. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979.
Epstein’s book is a well-written and moving account of the struggles of children of the
Holocaust.
Evans Richard J. Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial.
New York: Basic Books, 2002.
This work deals with the defeat of Davie Irving in the London courtroom that branded
him a racist and anti-Semite who distorted historical events and misrepresented
documents with an agenda to exonerate Hitler and to minimize the killing of Jews.
Favez, Jean-Claude. The Red Cross and the Holocaust. Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Favez’s book is an important discussion of the controversial and failed role of the Red
Cross.
Fein, Helen. Accounting for Genocide. New York: Free Press, 1979.
This is an excellent sociological account on how genocide happens. Her concept of the
universe of moral obligation is most helpful in describing why some chose to rescue
while others remained silent.
Feingold, Henry. Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the
Holocaust. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995.
Feingold presents a learned and balanced collection of his work on the subject of the
Holocaust and the American Jewish community.
Feingold, Henry. The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the
Holocaust, 1938-1945. New York: Schocken, 1980.
This study examines the reaction of the Roosevelt administration to the Holocaust.
Feingold attempts to move beyond a moral condemnation of American inaction to
examine the political context that shaped the American response. The main focus is on
American and international refugee policy from the Evian Conference in 1938 to the
creation of the War Refugee Board in 1944.
Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature,
Psychoanalysis and History. New York: Routledge, 1991.
The authors draw from material in the Fortunoff Archive for Holocaust Testimony at
Yale University.
Ferencz, Benjamin. Less Than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for
Compensation. Cambride: Harvard University Press, 1979 [Bloomington: Indiana
University Press in association with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
2002]
This book is valuable in describing the Nazi use and abuse of slave labor.
Flam, Gila. Singing for Survival: Songs of the Lodz Ghetto, 1940-45. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 1992.
This book includes background on the Lodz ghetto and the music culture that flourished
there. The songs and stories reveal life in the ghetto through a unique lens.
Flender, Harold. Rescue in Denmark. New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1963.
The exceptional, honorable character of the Danes’ successful operation to rescue most of
its Jewish residents has aroused profound admiration. Individual stories of rescue are
cited here as well as more general historical background and a look at the reasons for the
Nazis’ failure to implement the “Final Solution” in Denmark.
Forsyth, Frederick. The Odessa File. New York: Viking Press, 1972.
This excellent book was turned into a Hollywood film in 1974 staring Jon Voight and
Maximilian Schell.
Frankel, Victor. Man’s Search for Meaning. New York: Washington Square Press,
1984.
This is a good book to read.
Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final
Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Friedlander traces the Nazi “euthanasia” program in Germany from its development and
inception in the 1930s until 1945. Beginning with the murder of children and expanding
into a more inclusive operation, the author details the evolution of the Nazis’ eugenics
policy designed to rid society of the “incurable,” institutionalized, mentally and
physically handicapped and others whom the Nazis termed “useless eaters.” One of the
work’s important contributions in understanding the Holocaust is its study of the
program’s bureaucratic structure and how it functioned as a precursor to the “Final
Solution.”
Friedman, Saul S. No Haven for the Oppressed. Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1973.
This is a good source on the Evian Conference.
Gallagher, Hugh Gregory. By Trust Betrayed: Patients, Physicians, and the License
to Kill in the Third Reich. Arlington: Vandemeer Press, 1995.
A paraplegic, Gallagher provides a compelling account of Nazi Germany’s so-called
“euthanasia” program that gave license to German physicians to kill mentally and
physically handicapped people deemed “unworthy of life.”
Gay, Ruth. Safe among the Germans: Liberated Jews after World War II.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
This book is a good source discussing displaced persons after the war.
Geier, Arnold. Heroes of the Holocaust. New York: Berkley Publishing Group,
1998.
A Holocaust survivor himself, Arnold Geier collects and retells the stories of twentyeight people who survived the Holocaust because of the actions of others.
Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
In this study of the Nazi secret police, Gellately combines administrative and social
history. He draws extensively on Gestapo case files to show that the key factor in the
enforcement of Nazi racial policy designed to isolate Jews was the willingness of German
citizens to provide the authorities with information about suspected “criminality.” The
author includes a chapter on racial policy aimed at Polish foreign workers.
Gilbert, Martin. Auschwitz and the Allies. New York: Holt, Reinhart, and
Winston, 1981.
This world renowned Holocaust scholar provides an excellent resource.
Gilbert, Martin. Holocaust Journey. New York: Columbia Free Press, 1997.
Professor Martin Gilbert took his graduate students, at their behest, on a tour of the places
they discussed in class on the Holocaust. This powerful narration of their two week
journey is a powerful read.
Gilman, Sander L. and Steven T. Katz, eds. Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis. New
York: New York University Press, 1991.
This is an interesting study of the subject of antisemitism.
Goldberger, Leo, ed. The Rescue of the Danish Jews: Moral Courage Under Stress.
New York: New York University Press, 1988.
In this book, Jews and non-Jews, rescuers and rescued, offer their first-person accounts
and reflections on why the Danes risked their lives to rescue their Jewish population.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in
the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair. Alfred A Knopf, 2002.
This is a critical study of Pope Pius XII and the Vatican during the Holocaust.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the
Holocaust. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
This book adds to the discussion of the killers and their motivations. It also adds some
important insights into both the death marches and the motivations of the Einsatzgruppen.
Grau, Gunther. Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany 193345. London: Cassell, 1995.
This is an important collection of documents relating to the German persecution of
homosexuals.
Greenfeld, Howard. After the Holocaust. New York: Greenwillow Books, 2001.
Through photographs and narratives, eight survivors describe their journeys after
liberation – from hiding places and concentration camps to displaced person camps, illicit
border crossings and emigration.
Greenfeld, Howard. The Hidden Children. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.
Greenfeld has woven together the experiences of thirteen men and women to create a
portrait of the Holocaust as lived by the hidden children.
Gross, Jan. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Jedwabne,
Poland. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Gross describes the fate of the members of the Jewish community of Jedwabne who were
murdered by the local Polish population in a self-initiated genocide.
Gross, Leonard. The Last Jews in Berlin. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.
The author vividly recounts those courageous Jews that survived on their own during the
Holocaust, never leaving, rather hiding in Berlin until liberation.
Grossman, Mendel. My Secret Camera: Life in the Lodz Ghetto. San Diego:
Gulliver Books, 2000.
Mendel Grossman was a Jewish photographer who depicted life in the Lodz ghetto in
1941 and 1942. This is an excellent companion to the Lodz Ghetto film and the Adelson
book. It can also supplement the book if the film is not available.
Gruber, Ruth and Dava Sobel. Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1000 World War II
Refugees and How They Came to America. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000.
Written by the Secretary of the Interior’s special assistant chosen to accompany the
refugees to America, this is a firsthand account of the transport of refugees to the United
States, their internment at Fort Ontario, and the political wranglings regarding their fate.
Gutman, Israel and Bella Gutterman. The Auschwitz Album. Jerusalem: Yad
Vashem, in association with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2002.
This album is the only surviving visual evidence of the process of mass murder at
Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 189 photographs, two SS photographers documented the entire
process of arrival of Jews to the platform in the Birkenau death camp, the selection
process and their path to the gas chambers and crematoria.
Gutman, Israel and Michael Berenbaum, eds. The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should
the Allies Have Attempted It? Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003.
The book is based on an international conference held by the Smithsonian National Air
and Space Museum to honor the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum and which brought together Holocaust historians and military historians who
had never before been in dialogue to consider whether bombing was feasible and what it
would have achieved.
Gutman, Israel and L. Lazare, eds. The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the
Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust – France. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem,
2003.
This encyclopedia is the first in a series published by Yad Vashem containing the
personal stories of each of the “Righteous Among the Nations.” It presents an authentic
record of some of the most moving and heroic acts of contemporary times.
Gutman, Israel. The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1982.
This book makes use of extensive primary and secondary materials from Jewish, German
and Polish sources to throw light on critical events.
Gutman, Israel. Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1994.
Gutman draws on diaries, letters and underground press reports to bring the Warsaw
ghetto uprising to life for the reader.
Gutman, Israel, and Shmuel Krakowski. Unequal Victims: Poles and Jews During
World War Two. New York: Holocaust Library, 1986.
Gutman and Krakowski examine in-depth the story of Polish-Jewish relations during the
Holocaust. They analyze Polish attitudes toward Jews by region and by social class,
concluding that the majority of Poles were either indifferent or actively hostile toward
Jews during the Holocaust.
Guttenplan, D.D. The Holocaust on Trial. New York and London: W.W. Norton,
2002.
This is a good source relating to Holocaust denial and most especially the defeat of David
Irving in the London courtroom that branded him a racist and anti-Semite who distorted
historical events and misrepresented documents with an agenda to exonerate Hitler and to
minimize the killing of Jews.
Gutterman, Barbara and N. Morgenstern. The Gurs Hagaddah: Passover in
Perdition. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2003.
This is a facsimile edition of a handwritten Passover Haggadah from Gurs detention
camp, where Jewish prisoners celebrated the Festival of Freedom behind barbed wire.
Mortality was extremely high under inhuman conditions of freezing cold, quicksand,
barracks that hardly provided shelter and poor food. In the summer of 1942, most of the
inmates were transported to Drancy and from there to Auschwitz.
Haas, Aaron. In the Shadow of the Holocaust. New York: Cornell University Press,
1990.
The author provides a psychological profile of the second generation of survivors.
Hallie, Philip. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon
and How Goodness Happened There. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
This book is still the best study of the small French village and how they saved Jewish
victims of the Holocaust.
Hamilton, Richard F. Who Voted for Hitler. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1982.
This is an excellent study of Hitler’s rise to power.
Harris, Mark Jonathan, and Deborah Oppenheimer. Into The Arms of Strangers:
Stories of the Kindertransport. New York: MJF Books, 2000.
This book is based on the film of the same name. It describes Great Britain’s rescue of
more than 10,000 children from the Holocaust. This narrative describes the ordeals of the
rescued in their own words.
Hayes, Peter, ed. Lessons and Legacies: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a
Changing World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991.
In this useful collection, thoughtfully introduced by Hayes, various aspects of the
Holocaust are examined by 16 leading scholars, including Raul Hilberg, Saul Friedlander,
Yehuda Bauer, Michael Marrus, Christopher Browning and Lawrence Langer. Also
included is a critical essay by Alvin Rosenfeld on the popularization of Anne Frank.
Hayes, Peter, ed. Lessons and Legacies, Volume III: Memory, Memorialization, and
Denial. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999.
A collection of essays by noted scholars (Christopher Browning, John Roth, Michael
Marrus, and Deborah Dwork, among others). The essays deal with integrating the
Holocaust into several disciplinary fields (history, Jewish studies, sociology, philosophy,
and literary studies), the German context of the Holocaust, issues of memorialization, and
combating Holocaust denial.
Hellman, Peter. The Auschwitz Album: A Book Based Upon an Album Discovered by
a Concentration Camp Survivor, Lili Meier. New York: Random House, 1981.
What are the odds of a girl deported from Bilke to Auschwitz-Birkenau would be
liberated from Dora concentration camp, and she would find in an SS barracks where she
had been sleeping the only photographs known to exist of a selection at Birkenau, and the
photographs would be of people she knew from her hometown, indeed the very transport
that took her and her family to Auschwitz? Of her mother and father and five brothers,
she was the only one to survive.
Herzer, Ivo. The Italian Refuge: Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. Washington,
DC: Catholic University Press, 1989.
This is a fine collection of essays on the Italian rescue.
Hesse, Hans, ed. Persecution and Resistance of Jehovah’s Witnesses During the Nazi
Regime, 1933-1945. Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2001.
Hesse provides the reader with a good resource on this other victim group.
Herzstein, Robert E. The War That Hitler Won: Goebbels and the Nazi Media
Campaign. New York: Paragon House, 1978.
The author illustrates the power of propaganda and the effective manipulation of mass
media by focusing on the work of Goebbels and the impact of Nazi propaganda on the
German people.
Hoffman, Peter. German Resistance to Hitler. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1988.
This is an excellent, succinct overview of German resistance.
Homze, Edward. Foreign Labor in Nazi Germany. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1967.
This is a good source in describing the Nazi use and abuse of slave labor.
Horwitz, Gordon. In the Shadow of Death: Living Outside the Gates of Mauthausen.
New York: The Free Press, 1990.
How much did people living near the camps know about what was going on? How did
they cope with this knowledge? How did they find out? These and similar questions are
raised in this very readable book on the complicity of bystanders in the Holocaust.
Ioanid, Radu. The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of the Jews and Gypsies
under the Anonescu Regime, 1940-1944. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000.
The author fills in our understanding of what happened in Romania. Ioanid also
produced, under the chairmanship of Elie Wiesel, the recent report on the International
Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, commissioned by and presented to that
country’s president.
Ioanid, Radu. The Sword of the Archangel: Fascist Ideology in Romania. Boulder:
Eastern European Monographs, 1990.
This is the first book of a new scholar who researches the Holocaust in Romania.
James, Harold. The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi Economic War Against The Jews.
Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2001.
The author uses new and previously unavailable materials, many from the bank’s own
archives, to examine policies that led to the eventual genocide of European Jews. No
comparable study exists of a single company’s involvement in the economic persecution
of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
Johnson, Eric A. and Karl-Heinz Reuband. What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder
and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Basic Books, 2005.
The authors provide us with a good resource on this subject.
Kalisch, Shoshana and Barbara Meister. Yes, We Sang! New York: Harper and
Row, 1985.
Mrs. Kalisch informs us that songs were an ubiquitous part of life in the confinement of
the ghettos and camps. Stories of courage and sadness accompany the songs.
Kaplan, Marion A. Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Kaplan draws on memoirs, diaries, interviews and letters to paint a portrait of Jewish life
in Nazi Germany. This is the story of the Holocaust told from the perspective of
individuals living in an increasingly hostile world.
Karski, Jan. Story of a Secret State. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1944.
This late Polish diplomat provides us with insight that is valuable.
Kendrick, Donald, and Grattan Puxon. The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies. New
York: Basic Books, 1973.
This is an important source of the Roma victims of the Holocaust.
Kershaw, Ian. The Nazi Dictatorship, Problems and Perspectives of the
Interpretation. London: Hodder Arnold, 2000.
This is a well written text examining the various complex issues that made up the Nazi
ideology.
Kershaw, Ian. Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria
1933-45. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Kershaw’s work is a good source on the Nazi party in Bavaria.
Kertzer, David I. The Popes against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of
Modern Antisemitism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
This book focuses on Pope Pius XII, the wartime pope during the Holocaust.
King, Christine. The Nazi State and the New Religions. New York: E. Mellen Press,
1982.
King’s work describes the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany.
Klee, Ernst, et al., eds. The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its
Perpetrators and Bystanders. New York: Free Press, 1991.
Originally published in Germany in 1988, this work is made up of letters, diaries, reports,
photographs and other documents, some of which were kept in scrapbooks and albums by
concentration camp guards, SS officers and other perpetrators and “sympathetic
observers” of the Holocaust.
Kleiman, Yehuit, and Nina Aharoni-Springer. The Anguish of Liberation:
Testimonies from 1945. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1995.
This book presents a compilation of excerpts from testimonies about the liberation from
Nazi concentration camps in 1945. They have been selected from a voluminous
collection of testimonies from the period of the Holocaust taken during the 1960s and
kept in the Yad Vashem Archives. This is an attempt to portray through photographs and
to describe through testimonies the complexity of the liberation and its special
significance for those Jews who remained alive.
Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988.
A history of the women’s movement in Germany from the Weimar Republic to the Nazi
era, this work emphasizes the role of women in Nazi Germany and the impact of Nazism
on the family unit. Koonz also includes material on the influence of the church in
defining women’s roles, on female members of the resistance and on Jewish women.
Koonz, Claudia. The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2003.
Koonz provides the reader with a good perspective on this subject.
Kranzler, David. Thy Brothers Blood: The Orthodox Jewish Response During the
Holocaust. Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, 1987.
This is a good resource discussing Orthodox Jews and the Holocaust.
Kraut, Alan M., and Richard Breitman. American Refugee Policy and European
Jewry. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1987.
This is a balanced treatment of American policy in regards to European Jewish refugees.
Kugelmass, Jack, and Jonathan Boyarin, eds. From a Ruined Garden: The
Memorail Books of Polish Jewry. Bloomington and London: Indiana University
Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1998.
This book offers a depiction of the diverse Jewish communities of Poland and their
destruction.
Kustanowitz, Esther. The Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Teens Who Hid From
the Nazis. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 1999.
In their own words, five Jewish teenagers detail their experiences of hiding from the
Nazis in France, Belgium and Denmark. (This is part of a series of books dealing with
the experiences of teens and the Holocaust).
Lagnado, Lucette Matalong, and Sheila Cohn Dekel. Children of the Flames: Dr.
Joseph Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz. New York: William
Morrow, 1991.
This book tells the story of the twins and experimentation at Auschwitz.
Landau, Elaine. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New York: Macmillan Publishing
Company, 1992.
The author begins with the creation of the ghetto, but she concentrates on the twentyeight days of the uprising. The text and photos are graphic at times.
Langbein, Hermann. Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps
1938-1945. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Paragon House, 1994.
Langbein, a leader of the resistance in Auschwitz, defines “active resistance” in the
camps as “an organized activity with far-reaching goals” such as efforts to diminish the
exploitation of prisoners as workers in the camp or to inform the outside world about
conditions. Escapes also are considered “resistance” if they were planned and organized,
and especially if their aim was to spread news about Nazi crimes.
Langbein, Herman. People in Auschwitz. Chapel Hill: University of North Caolina
Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2004.
This is a fine example of resistance in Auschwitz and the victimization of the Poles.
Langer, Lawrence. The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1975.
This is an important work by Langer.
Langer, Lawrence. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1991.
This is an important work on the oral history and survivors’ testimony. Langer draws
from material in the Fortunoff Archive for Holocaust Testimony at Yale University.
Langer, Lawrence. Versions of Survival: The Holocaust and the Human Spirit.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982.
This is another important work by Lawrence Langer.
Lanzmann, Claude. Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust. New York:
Pantheon, 1987.
This work consists of the text of Lanzmann’s nine-and-a-half-hour film of the same
name. The film’s length makes the text extremely useful to the teacher, facilitating the
process of selecting excerpts for classroom use. The text can also be used alone if the
film is unavailable.
Laska, Vera. Women in the Resistance and in the Holocaust: The Voices of
Eyewitnesses. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1983.
Laska has collected more than two dozen accounts of women during the Holocaust,
stressing women’s resistance activities. The material is divided into three sections:
resistance, hiding and the camps. These are all first-person accounts, many of them
excerpts from diaries and memoirs and the represent a number of different countries.
Levin, Dov. Fighting Back: Lithuanian Jewry’s Armed Resistance to the Nazis, 19411945. New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1985.
Based on German records as well as on interviews with Nazi doctors, prison doctors and
survivors of the camps, Lifton’s book not only documents the role doctors played but also
suggests ways they were able to rationalize their role.
Levy, Alan. The Wiesenthal File. London: Constable, 1993.
The author provides an excellent resource on Simon Wiesenthal.
Lewy, Guenter. The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001.
This book focuses on the Sinti and Roma victims of the Holocaust.
Lifton, Robert. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killings and the Psychology of Genocide.
New York: Basic Books, 1988.
Lifton’s book is a major study of the development and practice of Nazi medicine by an
eminent American psychoanalyst and ethicist.
Little, Franklin. The Crucifixion of the Jews. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1951.
This book offers important insights into antisemitism and the killing centers.
Lipstadt, Deborah. Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the
Holocaust, 1933-1945. New York: The Free Press, 1986.
Why did one of every three Americans polled in 1943 dismiss as propaganda the reports
of atrocities against European Jews? Why were reports given by Auschwitz escapees in
1944 viewed with skepticism by major newspapers? Lipstadt raises these questions and
others in this book on how the American news media reported (or ignored) the Nazi
persecution and genocide of European Jewry.
Lipstadt, Deborah. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and
Memory. New York: The Free Press, 1993.
Lipstadt does not refute the deniers of the Holocaust point by point (although she offers a
useful appendix addressing some of their specific charges). Instead, she provides an
overview of the main figures promoting denial in the United States and abroad, their
motives, their methods and an assessment of their impact on college campuses and wider
public opinion.
Lipstadt, Deborah. History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving. New
York: Ecco, 2005.
The author discusses the defeat of David Irving in the London courtroom that branded
him a racist and anti-Semite who distorted historical events and misrepresented
documents with an agenda to exonerate Hitler and to minimize the killing of Jews.
Loftus, John. The Belarus Secret. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1982.
This tells the story of the escape of Nazi war criminals and their resettlement as free men.
Lookstein, Haskel. Were We Our Brothers’ Keepers?: The Public Response of
American Jews to the Holocaust, 1938 – 1944. New York: Vintage Books, 1985.
Lookstein provides an interesting perspective on this subject.
Lovenheim, Barbara. Survival in the Shadows: Seven Jews Hidden in Hitler’s
Berlin. Rochester: Center for Holocaust Awareness Information, 2002.
The author depicts the fate of those Jews who hid among the Germans in Hitler’s capital
city.
Lowenstein, Sharon R. Token Refuge: The Story of Jewish Refugee Shelter at
Oswego, 1944-1946. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
Lowenstein provides an excellent resource about Jewish refugees at Oswego in New
York.
Lukas, Richard. The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation,
1939-1945. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1986.
This provides an important assessment of the victimization of the Poles. Lukas sees
many parallels between Nazi policy toward the Jews and the Poles.
Luza, Radomir. Austro-German Relations in the Anschluss Era. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1975.
This book is great material on the “expansion without war” idea.
Mahoney, Kevin. 1945: The Year of Liberation. Washington, D.C.: United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1995.
This resource is a collection of articles, photographs, newspaper reports and personal
testimonies documenting the liberation of the camps and the immediate aftermath.
Mankowitz, Zeev W. Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the
Holocaust in Occupied Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
This is the remarkable story of the 250,000 Holocaust survivors who converged on the
American Zone of Occupied Germany from 1945-1948. Mankowitz uses largely
inaccessible archival material to give a moving and sensitive account of this neglected
area in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Marrus, Michael. The Holocaust in History. New York: New American
Library/Dutton, 1989.
In this succinct evaluation of historical accounts of the Holocaust, Marrus looks at a
variety of issues: anti-Semitism, collaboration, resistance and others. He presents the
interpretations of leading historians in these areas and points out the strengths and
weaknesses of their arguments.
Marrus, Michael, and Robert O. Paxton. Vichy France and the Jews. New York:
Basic Books, 1981.
Marrus and Paxton examine the fate of the Jews in Vichy, France. They outline the antiSemitic policy of the Vichy regime and its collaboration with the Nazis.
Mayer, Milton. They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-1945. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1966.
After the war, Mayer, an American journalist, interviewed ten men of different
backgrounds but from the same German town in an effort to determine, through their
eyes, what had happened in Germany and what had made it possible. This is an excellent
companion to Allen’s Nazi Seizure of Power.
MacDonald, Callum. The Killing of SS Obergruppenfuher Reinhard Heydrich. New
York: Free Press, 1989.
MacDonald has written a fascinating, detective-like thriller about the event that triggered
the destruction of Lidice, Czechoslovakia.
Medoff, Rafael. The Deafening Silence: American Jewish Leaders and the
Holocaust. New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1987.
This is another good resource discussing the reaction of the American Jewish community
during the Holocaust.
Mendelsohn, Ezra. The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
Mendelsohn focuses on the Jewish communities of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia with particular attention to the relationship
between Jews and Gentiles in the highly nationalist environment of the volatile period
between the world wars, from 1918 to 1939.
Michel, Henri. The Shadow War: European Resistance 1939-1945. New York:
Harper and Row, 1972.
Michel is one of the foremost authorities on European resistance.
Milgram, Avraham, Carmit Sagie, and Shulamit Imber. Everyday Life in the
Warsaw Ghetto, 1941. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem.
This resource is a documentation of life in the Warsaw ghetto, based on photographs
taken by a German soldier in September, 1941.
Miller, Russell, and others. The Resistance. World War II, vol. 17. Alexandria:
Time-Life Books, 1979.
This is a resource to be utilized on the subject of resistance during the Holocaust.
Milton, Sybil, ed. and trans. The Stroop Report. New York: Pantheon, 1979.
SS Major General Juergen Stroop oversaw the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943.
His almost daily, detailed reports of the ghetto’s liquidation provide a vivid picture of the
battle and of the determined heroism of the underground fights.
Morse, Arthur D. While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy. New
York: Overlook Press, 1967.
This is an early look at the American response to the Holocaust.
Mosse, George. Nazi Culture: A Documentary History. New York: Schocken, 1981.
While primarily an anthology of original source material, Mosse includes a lengthy
personal introduction as well as introductions to each section and selection. Selections
include material taken from speeches, newspapers, contemporary literature and diaries.
Mosse, George. The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third
Reich. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964.
Mosse’s book is an important work on Nazi racism.
Mosse, George. Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism. New
York: Howard Fertig, 1997.
This resource traces the development of racist beliefs in Europe from the eighteenth
through the twentieth century.
Muller-Hill, Benno. Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews,
Gypsies, and Others in Germany, 1933-1945. Plainview: Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory Press, 1997.
The scientific roots of racism and racial hygiene in Nazi Germany are explored in this
resource.
Musmanno, Michael. The Eichmann Kommandos. Philadelphia: Macrae Smith,
1961.
Musmanno’s book is extremely helpful in understanding this fact of life.
Nicosia, Francis R., and Lawrence D. Stokes, eds. German Against Nazism:
Nonconformity, Opposition and Resistance in the Third Reich. Oxford: Berg, 1990.
This is the authors fruits of recent scholarship on German resistance.
Noakes, Jeremy, and Geoffrey Pridham, eds. Nazism, 1919-1945: A Documentary
Reader [2 vols.]. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998.
This comprehensive work includes a wide range of official, government and party
documents; newspapers; speeches; memoirs; letters; and diaries. The first volume covers
the Nazis’ rise to power and the domestic aspects of their regime from 1933 to 1939.
Volume two examines foreign policy in the prewar and war periods, the occupation of
Poland, the “euthanasia” program and the implementation of the genocidal policies.
Ofer, Dalia and Lenore J. Weitzman. Women in the Holocaust. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1998.
This is a good resource to consider on the issue of women in the Holocaust.
Oliner, Samuel P., and Perl M. Oliner. The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews
in Nazi Europe. New York: Free Press, 1988.
This is an interesting study of the sociology and psychology of rescuers and their values.
Orbach, Larry, and Vivien Orbach Smith. Soaring Underground: A Young
Fugitive’s Life in Nazi Berlin. Washington, DC: The Compass Press, 1996.
The authors probe the unique situation of those Christians whom German law defined as
Jews because of their origins.
Paldiel, Mordecai. The Righteous Among The Nations: Rescuers of Jews During The
Holocaust. Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Publishing House Ltd. And Yad Vashem,
2007.
This book has gathered 150 of the most moving and riveting stories. The volume is
illustrated and includes a detailed index of rescuers and rescued along with the places that
figured in their activities.
Patterson, Charles. Anti-Semitism: The Road to the Holocaust and Beyond. New
York: Walker and Company, 1988.
As the title implies, this history of anti-Semitism includes the years both before and after
the Holocaust. Patterson begins with ancient and medieval times and concludes with a
discussion of modern anti-Semitism in various parts of the world.
Paulsson, Gunnar S. Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
This book describes what life in hiding was like for the few who were lucky enough to
survive.
Pawelczynska, Anna. Values and Violence in Auschwitz. London: University of
California Press, 1979.
This book provides additional insight into Auschwitz.
Pelt, Robert Jan Van and Deborah Dwork. Auschwitz 1270 to the Present. New
York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1996.
The plans of the SS-Central Building Administration for Auschwitz which were found by
the Soviets show that Auschwitz had an evolving role in the “Final Solution.” In the
most telling example, plans for one of the crematoria were changed when mass
extermination became the accepted policy. Originally, the crematoria were constructed
to dispose of dead bodies and the plans called for a chute down which the bodies entered
the building. The chute was eliminated when it was determined that the victims would
walk into the building.
Penkower, Monty Noam. The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and
the Holocaust. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983.
Penkower provides a good resource on the subject of Jews as political pawns.
Phayer, Michael. The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2000.
Phayer examines the response of the Catholic Church as a whole to the Holocaust. He
shows that without effective church leadership under Pius XII, Catholics reacted in
different ways to the Holocaust. Some Catholics saved Jews; others collaborated with the
Nazis, while most became bystanders to genocide.
Phayer, Michael and E. Fleischner. Cries in the Night: Women Who Challenged the
Holocaust. Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1997.
The stories of seven Catholic lay women who defied the Nazis by saving Jews during the
Holocaust are explored in this book.
Piekalkiewicz, Janusz. The German National Railway in World War II. Atglen:
Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2008.
This is the first book of its kind for the historian.
Piper, Franciszek. Auschwitz Prisoner Labor. Oswiecim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State
Museum, 2002.
This is an important work written by the chief historian of Auschwitz.
Plant, Richard. The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals. New York:
Henry Holt, 1986.
The Nazis condemned homosexuals as “socially aberrant.” Soon after Hitler came to
power in 1933, Storm Troopers raided nightclubs and other places where homosexuals
met. Plant argues that about 10,000 people were imprisoned as homosexuals and many
of them perished in concentration camps. In this volume, the first comprehensive study
available in English, Plant examines the ideological motivations for the Nazi persecution
of homosexuals and the history of the implementation of Nazi policies.
Poliakov, Leon. A History of Antisemitism. New York: Vanguard Press, 1975.
This book is rightfully regarded as a major work in this subject.
Poliakov, Leon. The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalistic Ideas in
Europe. New York: New American Library, 1974.
Poliakov’s book is an important resource on Nazi racism.
Presser, Jacob. The Destruction of Dutch Jews. Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1988.
Presser’s book is critical to understanding Dutch Jews in the Holocaust.
Proctor, Robert. Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1988.
This book is helpful in understanding scientific racism, eugenics and euthanasia.
Rapoport, S. Yesterdays and Then Tomorrows: Holocaust Anthology of Testimonies
and Readings. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2002.
This is an anthology of testimonies and readings for Holocaust study through literature,
excursions to Poland and Holocaust memorial ceremonies.
Rashke, Richard. Escape from Sobibor: The Heroic Story of the Jews Who Escaped
from a Nazi Death Camp. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982.
This is an informative account of this act of armed resistance.
Read, Anthony, and David Fisher. Kristallnacht: The Tragedy of the Nazi Night of
Terror. New York: Random House, 1989.
Beginning with a brief background and ending with the Evian conference, the focus on
this work is the events of Kristallnacht itself and its immediate aftermath, including the
response of ordinary Germans, the Nazi follow-up and the international response. Both
the prologue and epilogue deal with Herschel Grynszpan, the young man who triggered
Kristallnacht by shooting a German official in Paris.
Reuther, Rosemary. Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Antisemitism.
New York: Seabury Press, 1974.
This is a good resource for an understanding of antisemitism.
Rice, Earle. Nazi War Criminals. Farmington Hills: Lucent Books, 1997.
This book explores the lives of six Nazi war criminals and the roles they played in
implementing the “Final Solution.”
Rigg, Bryan Mark. Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws
and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military. Lawrence: University of Kansas
Press, 2002.
The author probes the unique situation of those Christians whom German law defined as
Jews because of their origins.
Rings, Werner. Life With the Enemy: Collaboration and Resistance in Hitler’s
Europe. New York: Doubleday, 1982.
The author breaks resistance down into five broad categories: symbolic (e.g.,
communication of ultimate hope of military victory over Germans), polemical (e.g.,
efforts to persuade people to oppose Nazi aggression), defensive (e.g., recruitment,
planning, arming phases of resistance groups), offensive (e.g., activities of armed
partisans), and resistance enchained (e.g., Jewish ghetto rebellions, undertaken with no
hope of success.)
Rittner, Carol. Ed. The Courage to Care. New York: New York University Press,
1986.
This compelling book is the companion volume to the award-winning film, The Courage
to Care, and includes the personal narratives of the same persons in the film and many
others.
Rittner, Carol and John K. Roth. Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust. St.
Paul: Paragon House, 1993.
This book is an excellent place to begin one’s study of how women were involved in the
Holocaust.
Rittner, Carol and John K. Roth. Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. London and
New York: Continuum, 2002.
This book focuses on the Pontificate of Pius XII, the wartime pope during the Holocaust.
Rhodes, Richard. Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the
Holocaust. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.
This provided vivid descriptions of the activities of the Einsatzgruppen and probes the
motivations of these killers.
Rosenbaum, Alan S. Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals. Boulder: Westview Press,
1993.
Rosenbaum provides an excellent resource on this subject.
Roseman, Mark. The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A
Reconsideration. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002.
Roseman presents an important portrayal of the conference and its implications.
Rosensaft, Menachem. Life Reborn: Jewish Displaced Persons 1945-1951:
Conference Proceedings, Washington D.C., January 14-17, 2000. Washington, DC:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Rosensaft’s book examines the issue of displaced persons after the Holocaust.
Ross, Robert. So It Was True: The American Protestant Press and the Nazi
Persecution of the Jews. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980.
Ross provides a good source on this subject.
Rubinstein, Richard L. After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary
Judaism. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966.
This book offers important information into antisemitism and this killing center.
Rubenstein, Richard L. The Cunning of History. New York: HarperCollins, 1987.
This slim volume is less a history of the Holocaust than an extended essay that attempts
to put the Holocaust into historical perspective. Rubenstein’s original but controversial
tenet essentially describes the Holocaust as the culmination of twentieth-century
technology and bureaucracy.
Rubenstein, Richard L., and John K. Roth. Approaches to Auschwitz: The
Holocaust and Its Legacy. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987.
Rubenstein and Roth explore the historical development that led to the Holocaust from
both a Christian and Jewish perspective. They develop an analysis of the historical roots
of the Holocaust and explore the implications of the Holocaust for the future.
Rubin, Susan Goldman. Fireflies in the Dark: The Story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
and the Children of Terezin. New York: Holiday House, 2000.
This book profiles Dicker-Brandeis, a Bauhaus-trained art therapist who brought art
supplies with her when she was deported from Prague to Therseiendstadt (Terezin).
Included in the book are pictures that the children in Theresiendstadt drew and painted
under her guidance.
Ryan, Alan. Quiet Neighbors. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.
Ryan tells the story of Nazi war criminals escape and their resettlement as free men.
Schilling, Donald G. Lessons and Legacies II: Teaching the Holocaust in a
Changing World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998.
This volume includes a collection of essays written by noted scholars on recent
developments in Holocaust history, methodology for teaching the Holocaust and
strategies for integrating the study of the Holocaust into an interdisciplinary environment.
Schreiber, Marion. Silent Rebels: The True Story of the Raid on the 20th Train to
Auschwitz. London: Atlantic Books, 2000.
This is an account of the three young men who stopped the twentieth transport from
Mechelen, Belgium to Auschwitz on April 19, 1943.
Sender, Ruth Minsky. The Cage. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company,
1986.
This is one of the most graphic and dramatic in young people’s literature. A teenage
Polish girl gives an account of her family under the Nazis in the ghetto, during the
deportation and the camps.
Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted The Nazis.
Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.
Silver has written an interesting book about the remarkable, little-known story of Berlin’s
Jewish Hospital – the only Jewish institution in Germany to survive the Holocaust.
Smolar, Hersh. The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans Against the Nazis.
New York: Holocaust Library, 1989.
Smolar, a leader of the resistance in the Minsk ghetto, became a partisan commander in
the forests after the ghetto’s liquidation.
Stein, Richard A. Documents Against Words: Simon Wiesenthal’s Conflict with the
World Jewish Congress. Rotterdam: STIBA, 1992.
Sterling, Eric J. and John K. Roth. Life in the Ghettos During the Holocaust
(Religion, Theology and the Holocaust). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005.
The authors provide a good source on ghetto life during the Holocaust.
Suhl, Yuri, ed. They Fought Back: The Story of the Jewish Resistance in Nazi
Europe. New York: Schocken Books, 1967.
Suhl uses editorial comments to rebut Raul Hilberg’s interpretation. The collection of
documents and memoirs is one of the best available.
Stern, Fritz. The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of Germanic
Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961.
Stern’s book is an important work on Nazi racism.
Strelecki, Andrzej. The Evacuation, Dismantling and Liberation of KL Auschwitz.
Oswiecim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2001.
Strelecki depicts the liberation of Auschwitz in great detail.
Sydnor, Jr., Charles. Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death’s Head Division, 193345). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.
Sydnor’s book is an important study of the killers during the Holocaust.
Szwajger, Adina B. I Remember Nothing More: The Warsaw Children’s Hospital
and the Jewish Resistance. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.
The author worked in the children’s hospital of the Warsaw ghetto. After the hospital
closed, she left the ghetto with false papers, and from then until liberation worked as a
courier for the resistance.
Tec, Nechama. Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993.
This is a fascinating account of the Bielskis and their family camp.
Tec, Nachama. Resistance and Courage: Women, Men and the Holocaust. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003.
Tec, who writes extensively on resistance and hiding, probes the difference between
women and men in the Holocaust.
Tec, Nechama. When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in NaziOccupied Poland. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Tec studies those who risked their lives to save Jews in an attempt to find a sociological
pattern, to determine what characteristics these people had in common, and whether they
were related by class, religion or other factors.
Tent, James F. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-German
Christians. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003.
Tent probes the unique situation of the Mischlinge, those Christians whom German law
defined as Jews.
Thomas, Gordon, and Max Morgan Witts. Voyage of the Damned. Old Saybrook:
Konecky & Konecky, 1974.
This book is an essential part of the history of the twentieth century and a memorial to
those who did survive.
Treseder, Terry Walton. Hear, O Israel – A Story of the Warsaw Ghetto. New York:
Atheneum, 1990.
This is a story of a family in the Warsaw ghetto, whose faith sustained them during their
many hardships.
Trunk, Isaiah. Judenrat. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1996.
This scholarly study remains the most important work on the Jewish councils and their
responses to ghetto resistance groups.
Turner, Henry. German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1985.
This book is a good study of Hitler’s rise to power.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Historical Atlas of the Holocaust. New
York: Macmillan Publishing, 1995.
The atlas presents the story of the Holocaust in detail-country by country, ghetto by
ghetto and camp by camp. It includes more than 230 full-color maps and accompanying
text, from the location of Jewish and Romani (Gypsy) communities in 1933 to the
makeup of postwar Europe in 1949-1950
.
United States Holocaust Memorial Council. In Pursuit of Justice: Examining the
Evidence of the Holocaust. Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, 1997.
This was published to mark the 50th anniversary of the verdict from the International
Military Tribunal that passed judgment on some of the Holocaust’s major perpetrators,
this book commemorates postwar trials of Nazi war criminals and provides
documentation of some of the worst crimes of the Nazi regime.
Van Buren, Paul. Christ in Context: A Theology of Jewish-Christian Reality. San
Francisco: Harper, 1988.
This book is also a compelling look at Protestant thought after the Holocaust.
Van Buren, Paul. Discerning the Way: A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality.
New York: Seabury Press, 1980.
Van Buren’s book is one of the most compelling reexaminations of Protestant thought in
the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Van Pelt, Robert Jan. A Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
This book was shaped by van Pelt’s testimony at the Irving v. Lipstadt trial in the U.K. It
is a significant study of the evolution of the gas chambers as well as the evidence for the
killing process at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Vishniac, Roman. A Vanished World. New York: Noonday Press, 1983.
In the late 1930s photographer Roman Vishniac took it upon himself the task of recording
life in the shtetls and cities of Eastern Europe. He circulated among the very religious
and the poor. These portraits are sensitive, evocative and haunting. Vishniac’s love for
his subjects is readily apparent. The ritual dress and customs seem quaint, the poverty
grinding. The message is universal.
Volavkova, Hana, ed. I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and
Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944. New York: Schocken, 1993.
A poignant memorial to the children of Terezin, the collages, drawings and poems
published in this selection are impressive for their artistic merit and their value in
documenting the feelings and lives of the children in the camp. Some prior knowledge of
what life in the camp was like will make this book more meaningful to students.
Vrba, Rudolf and Alan Bestic. Escape from Auschwitz: I Cannot Forgive. New
York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964.
The two authors escaped from Auschwitz in April 1944 with a message for the world
about the mass exterminations occurring there.
Weinberg, Gerhard L. Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern
German and World History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
This collection of essays examines the nature of the Nazi system and its impact on
Germany and the course of World War II. Weinberg places the Holocaust within the
larger context of World War II.
Werner, Harold D. and Mark Werner. Fighting Back: A Memoir of Jewish
Resistance in World War II. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.
This book is firsthand account of life in the forests in Poland and the exploits of a large
group of Jewish partisans. The book also recalls life before the war and the escalating
rigors and terrors of the German occupation.
Wiesenthal, Simon. Anti-Jewish Agitation in Poland: A Documentary Report. Bonn:
R. Vogel, 1969.
The late, world renowned Nazi hunter provides insight into this subject.
Wistrich, Robert S. Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred. London: Thames Methuen,
1991.
This is an excellent resource on the subject of antisemitism.
Wyman, David S. The Abandonment of the Jews. New York: Pantheon, 1986.
Wyman asks and answers the basic questions about how much was known in America
about the “Final Solution.” In addition to his criticism of the official response from the
U.S. government in general and from President Roosevelt in particular, Wyman also
indicts some of the American Zionist leaders.
Wyman, David S. Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938-1941.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts. 1968.
Wyman provides another good book, this time confronting the American government and
the issue of refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.
Wyman, David S. and Rafael Medoff. A Race against Death: Peter Bergson,
America, and the Holocaust. New York: The New Press, 2001.
This is an oral history of Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), a Palestinian Jewish activist who
worked to call attention to the plight of the Jews and who fought the Jewish
establishment, much to its chagrin and with considerable success.
Wyman, Mark. DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951. Philadelphia: Balch
Institute Press, 1988.
Wyman provides important background information on the Displaced Person’s camps.
Wytwycky, Bohdan. The Other Holocaust: The Many Circles of Hell. Washington,
D.C.: The Novak Report on the New Thnicity, 1980.
This is an excellent source to understand the multiplicity of Holocaust victims.
Yablonka, Hannah. The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann. New York: Shocken
Books, 2004.
This Israeli historian probes Eichmann the man, the evidence presented at the trial, and
trial’s effect. She has had access to newly declassified documents in Israel, including
David Ben-Gurion’s diaries, and has interviewed all of the important figures still alive.
Yahil, Leni. The Rescue of Danish Jewry. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society,
1969.
Yahil’s book is still the definitive work on this subject.
Zuccotti, Susan. The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1999.
Zuccotti examines the response to the Holocaust of ordinary French people. She draws
on memoirs, government documents and personal interviews with survivors to tell the
story of French men and women, Jews and non-Jews, during the Holocaust.
Zuccotti, Susan. The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
Zuccotti examines the Holocaust in Italy. She notes the generous acts toward Jews that
characterized the behavior of many Italians during the Holocaust but also notes the fact
that anti-Semitic legislation was passed in Italy almost without dissent. Some Italians
collaborated with the Germans in the deportation of Jews from Italy.
Zuccotti, Susan. Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
This meticulously researched and balanced book finds that, despite the persistent myth
that the pope worked behind the scenes to help the Jews, he and those around him
actually did very little.
BIOGRAPHY
Anger, Per. With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Memories of the War Years in
Hungary. Translated by David Mel Paul and Margareta Paul. Washington, D.C.:
Holocaust Library, 1996.
While Raoul Wallenberg is the dominant figure in this biography, the central theme of
the book is the fate of Hungarian Jews in the latter stages of World War II. The author
combines his personal memories as a member of the Swedish legation with a historical
narrative of the events. Anger also examines the history of anti-Semitism in Hungarian
society and how it manifested itself in 1944.
Atkinson, Linda. In Kindling Flame: The Story of Hannah Senesh 1921-1944. New
York: William Morrow, Beech Tree Books, 1992.
Story of the noted resistance fighter who fought with the Palestinian Jewish Brigade of
the British army.
Baker, Leonard. Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1978.
This is a fine account of German Jewry’s leader.
Berenbaum, Michael. Elie Wiesel – G-d, the Holocaust and the Children of Israel.
West Orange: Behrman House, 1994.
This world renowned Holocaust scholar offers a wonderful insight into Elie Wiesel.
Bierman, John. Righteous Gentiles: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero
of the Holocaust. New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1981.
Bierman tells of his saving at least 30,000 Jews in Hungary and discusses his
disappearance.
Bird, Kai. The Chairman: John F. McCloy and the Making of the American
Establishment. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1992.
Bird enables us to understand the role of politics and pressure that led to commuting the
sentences of the Nazi war criminals.
Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.
This is not a biography of Himmler in the traditional sense that it chronicles the life of the
man from birth to death. Rather, it focuses on his years as a Nazi, his relationship with
Hitler and his role in masterminding the “Final Solution.” Other Nazi leaders, like
Goering and Goebbels, are discussed at length.
Breitman, Richard, and Walter Laqueur. Breaking the Silence: The Man Who
Exposed the Final Solution. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1986.
Eduard Schulte was a major German industrialist who abhorred Hitler and Nazism. He is
the man credited with passing on to the Allies news not only of troop movements and
weapon programs but of the Nazi plans for genocide. This biography relates Schulte’s
story from his childhood to his postwar years. The authors also describe the responses of
Allied governments to the information he passed on to them.
Bullock, Alan. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
Bullock’s book is an excellent biography of Hitler.
Crowe, David M. Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime
Activities, and the True Story behind The List. Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press,
2004.
Crowe’s work adds considerably to our understanding of Schindler and to our
appreciation of his important efforts.
Fleming, Gerald. Hitler and the Final Solution. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1984.
Fleming provides a good biography of Adolf Hitler.
Friedlander, Albert. Leo Baeck Teacher of Thereseinstadt. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1968.
This book is a good account of Leo Baeck’s life.
Friedman, Ina R. Flying Against the Wind: The Story of a Young Woman Who
Defied the Nazis. Brookline: Lodgepole Press, 1995.
This biography tells the little-known story of Cato Bjontes van Beek, a non-Jewish
German executed at the age of twenty-two for writing and circulating anti-Nazi flyers.
Friedman, Maurice. Martin Buber’s Life and Work: The Middle Years 1923-45.
New York: E.P. Dutton, 1983.
This is the middle volume of Friedman’s three-volume biography discussing Buber’s life
during the Holocaust years.
Hay, Peter. Ordinary Heroes: Chana Szenes and the Dream of Zion. New York:
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1986.
Hay provides insights into the life and struggle of Chana Szenes.
Hay, Peter. Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary. New York: Schocken Books,
1973.
This is another good source about the life of this woman.
Keneally, Thomas. Schindler’s List. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.
Oskar Schindler was an influential German industrialist with high-level connections in
Nazi Germany. He used his position to protect many Jews. Keneally’s absorbing
biography is based on interviews with many of those helped by Schindler.
Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
1999.
Kershaw depicts the early years of Adolf Hitler from his birth in a small Austrian village
in 1889 through the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936. He argues that the sources
for Hitler’s power are to be found not only in the dictator’s actions but also in the social
circumstances of Germany in the early twentieth century.
Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1937-1945: Nemesis. New York: W.W. Norton and
Company, 2000.
In this second volume of his two-volume biography of the Nazi dictator, Kershaw depicts
Hitler from his achievement of absolute power within Germany and early triumphs
against other European powers to the destruction of Germany and his suicide in Berlin in
1945.
Kurzem, Mark. The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi
Boyhood. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Ltd., 2007.
Told with exquisite tenderness and suspense by the author’s father, it is a grim fairy tale
that illuminates the timeless problems of complicity, identity and memory.
Levine, Hillel. In Search of Sugihara: The Elusive Japanese Diplomat Who Risked
His Life to Rescue 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust. New York: Free Press, 1996.
This is the author’s quest for understanding goodness, compassion and dedication in
Sugihara.
Lifton, Betty Jean. The King of Children: A Portrait of Janusz Korczak. New York:
Schocken, 1989.
Much of the material in this biography is taken from Korczak’s diaries, but Lifton also
interviewed many of his former charges and people who worked with him. In addition to
the personal portrait of Korczak, a distinguished physician, writer and educator, she
includes background material on the Warsaw ghetto based on Korczak’s diary and diaries
of other ghetto victims.
Lindwer, Willy. Anne Frank: The Last Seven Months. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1991.
The final days of Anne Frank are chronicled in this compilation of extensive interviews
with her friends and colleagues.
Nicholson, Michael, and David Winner. Raoul Wallenberg. Ridgefield: Morehouse,
1990.
This is a concise and well-illustrated biography of this rescuer.
Noble, Iris. Nazi Hunter: Simon Wiesenthal. London: Constable, 1993.
Noble provides a good biography on this world famous Nazi hunter.
Scholl, Inge. The White Rose: Munich, 1942-43. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan,
1983.
Inge Scholl was the sister of Hans and Sophie Scholl, founders of the famous “White
Rose” resistance movement in Germany. Originally written in 1952, this is the story of
the Scholls and of the White Rose movement. It also includes original documents
concerning their indictments and sentences. This book was previously published under
the title Students against Tyranny.
Sereny, Gitta. Into that Darkness. New York: Random House, 1983.
Franz Stangl, a convicted Nazi war criminal, was interviewed in prison by the author.
These interviews were supplemented by testimony from witnesses. Stangl was
commandant of the camps at both Sobibor and Treblinka. His testimony, as told to
Sereny, is revealing and chilling.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus [vols. 1-11]. New York: Pantheon, 1991.
Spiegelman presents his parents’ experiences during the Holocaust in a unique way; here
cartoon characters represent people, with the Jews portrayed as mice and the Nazis as
cats. In the first volume, the author relates the real-life trials of his parents at Auschwitz.
The second volume continues their story from Auschwitz to America. The cartoon
format will appeal to reluctant readers and the satirical irony of these works make them
appropriate for a wider audience.
Waite, Robert G.L. The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler. New York: Basic Books,
1977.
Waite’s book is an excellent biography of Hitler.
Wood, E. Thomas and Stanislaw M. Jankowski. Karski: How One Man Tried to
Stop the Holocaust. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1994,
Karski was an agent for the Polish underground. He was taken on two visits to the
Warsaw ghetto. It affected him deeply. Then he was smuggled into Izbica Lubelska, a
holding camp for Belzec death camp, in a Ukrainian guard’s uniform. Karski’s mission
was to report what he saw to the Polish government-in-exile and then to the Allied
powers. His goal was to get the Allies to take some action to stop the exterminations.
After reporting in London, Karski was sent to the U.S. Even Felix Frankfurter, a
Supreme Court Justice, and a Jew, refused to believe him.
FICTION
Allen, William Sheridan. The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single
German Town. New York: Franklin Watts, 1973.
This fictional account traces the rise of Nazism in Thalburg.
Appelfeld, Aharon. Badenheim, 1939. New York: Pocket Books, 1981.
The story revolves around a group of upper-class Jews in an Austrian resort town on the
eve of war. The author, himself a Holocaust survivor, creates a haunting picture of
impending tragedy, heightened by the reader’s awareness of the events to come.
Appelfeld, Aharon. To the Land of the Cattails. New York: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1986.
A young man and his mother living in Austria travel eastward across the heart of Europe
to the distant land of the mother’s childhood. The year is 1938, and the two arrive just as
the Jews of the village are being shipped off to a mysterious train to an unspecified
destination. Appelfeld is a master storyteller, and this haunting narrative of an ironic
pilgrimage will not easily be forgotten.
Begley, Louis. Wartime Lies. New York: David McKay, 1991.
Begley, himself a child caught up in the Holocaust, has written a first-person novel about
a young Jewish boy and his aunt who survive only due to a pattern of denial and
compromise that leaves its own scars.
Borowski, Tadeusz. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. New York:
Viking Penguin, 1992.
Through this collection of remarkable short stories, Borowski describes his experiences
in Auschwitz and Dachau. His focus is on the atmosphere of the camps and its effect on
the inner being. He probes the minds of both victims and perpetrators.
Fink, Ida. A Scrap of Time. New York: Schocken, 1989.
The title story in this collection of short stories concerns the way time was measured by
Holocaust victims. Other stories describe people in a variety of human situations
distorted by the circumstances of the times. Many of these stories can be effectively used
with students.
Friedlander, Albert. Out of the Whirlwind. New York: Schocken, 1989.
No all the entries included in this anthology are fiction. Excerpts are also included from
historical works and personal narratives. The book is arranged thematically, making it
especially helpful for a teacher looking for material to support specific aspects of a
curriculum.
Hersey, John. The Wall. New York: Bantam, 1950.
On the surface this is the story of the systematic, piecemeal extermination of the Jews of
the Warsaw ghetto, and the heroic resistance of defenseless men and women against the
full brute force of the German. But the real story is the growth in spirit of a group of
friends, so they emerge undismayed and triumphant in the face of physical annihilation.
Kosinski, Jersy. The Painted Bird. New York: Random House, 1983.
In this autobiographical novel, Kosinski chronicles the horrors visited upon a six-year-old
boy wandering through Europe during the Holocaust.
Kubert, Joe. Yossel April 19, 1943: A Story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New
York: Simon and Shuster, 2003.
Kubert writes a fictional account of a boy involved in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The
boy is based on the author and his family. Using the medium of a graphic novel, where
drama, fear, tedium, danger, torture, heightened reality and a host of other feelings can be
communicated visually. Kubert portrays the suffering of the Holocaust with immediacy.
Laird, Christa. Shadow of the Wall. New York: Greenwillow, 1990.
This is a novel about a boy and his two sisters in an orphanage run by Janusz Korczak,
set in 1942, in the Warsaw ghetto.
Orlev, Uri. The Island on Bird Street. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
After his mother’s disappearance and his father being taken by the German army, a
young Jewish boy is forced to make it on his own in the Warsaw ghetto.
Orlev, Uri. The Man from the Other Side. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
The author was a child in the Warsaw ghetto and based the novel on actual experiences
and a childhood acquaintance. The book is about a boy and his stepfather who smuggle
goods into the people of the ghetto.
Ozick, Cynthia. The Shawl. New York: Random House, 1990.
Originally published as two separate stories in The New Yorker, the first, very brief title
story tells of a mother witnessing her baby’s death at the hands of camp guards. The
second story, “Rose,” describes the same mother 30 years later, still haunted by the event.
Richter, Hans Peter and Edite Kroll. Friedrich. New York: Puffin Books, 1987.
Schwartz-Bart, Andre. The Last of the Just. Cambridge: Robert Bentley, 1981.
Based on the Talmudic legend of 36 men of each generation upon whose virtue the
existence of the world depends, this novel traces the history of the Levy family from
medieval times to Ernie Levy, the last of the just, who died at Auschwitz.
Taylor, Katherine Kressmann. Address Unknown. New York: Washington Square
Press, 2001.
Originally published in 1938, this work of fiction is written as a series of letters between
a Jewish American living in San Francisco and his former business partner, a non-Jew,
who had returned to Germany.
Uhlman, Fred. Reunion. New York: Rarrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
More of a novella than a novel, this brief but moving story told in retrospect by a Jewish
German youth describes his friendship with a non-Jewish German youth during the
1930s. Its brevity and readability make it especially suitable for reluctant readers.
Young-Bruehl, Elizabeth. Hannah Arendt: For Love and the World. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1982.
The author presents a sympathetic treatment from Arendt’s perspective.
MEMOIRS
Anatoli, A. Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel. Cambridge: Robert
Bentley, 1979.
As a Russian boy of 12, A. Anatoli used to play in the Babi Yar ravine near Kiev and was
in earshot of the machine-gun fire that signaled the massacre by Nazi mobile killing units
of about 33,000 Jews on September 29 and 30, 1941. Babi Yar is an unforgettable
account of the years of German occupation.
Appleman-Jurman, Alicia. Alicia: My Story. Madison: Demco Media Turtleback
Books, 1989.
In this autobiographical account, the author tells how, as a teenager, she helped save Jews
from the Nazis.
Ayer, Eleanor H. In the Ghettos: Teens Who Survived the Ghettos of the Holocaust.
New York: Rosen, 1999.
Narratives of three individuals who, as teenagers, lived in the ghettos of Lodz, Warsaw
and Theresienstadt.
Ayer, Eleanor H. Parallel Journeys. New York: Atheneum, 1995.
Alternating chapters contrast the wartime experiences of two young Germans-Helen
Waterford, who was interned in a Nazi concentration camp, and Alfons Heck, a member
of the Hitler Youth. The volume is composed mainly of excerpts from their published
autobiographies, connected by Ayer’s overview of the era.
Cohen, Elie. The Abyss. New York: W.W. Norton, 1973.
This memoir is written by a physician that survived.
Conot, Robert E. Justice at Nuremberg. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1984.
Conot provides a detailed history of the Nuremberg Trials. He covers the preparations
for the trials, the interrogation and indictment of the major Nazi war criminals, the
prosecution of the trial, strategies used by the defense and the verdict and execution of
the sentences handed down by the International Military Tribunal in 1946. Conot also
includes a brief discussion of the difficulties involved in organizing the Nuremberg
Trials, which involved representatives from the United States, Great Britain, France and
the Soviet Union.
Cretzmeyer, Stacey and Beate Klarsfeld. Your Name is Renee: Ruth Kapp Hartz’s
Story as a Hidden Child in Nazi-Occupied France. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999.
This memoir describes the events in France during Nazi occupation through the eyes of a
German-Jewish child who assumed a new persona to survive the Nazis.
Dawidowicz, Lucy S. From That Place and Time: A Memoir 1938-1947. New York:
Norton, 1989.
In 1938, the author was given an internship to work at YIVO, the Jewish Scientific
Institute in Vilna, Poland. Jews were desperate to get out of Europe and she was going to
it. In this thematically organized account Ms. Dawidowicz explores an artistic,
intellectual strata of an important Jewish learning center in Vilna, which was proudly
proclaimed, “The Jerusalem of Lithuania!”
Delbo, Charlotte. None of Us Will Return. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.
Delbo joined the resistance movement in France in 1940 and was arrested together with
her husband by the Germans in March 1942. The Germans executed her husband but
imprisoned and, later, deported Delbo to Auschwitz in occupied Poland. The book is a
series of memories about the camp written in free verse and rhythmic prose in an attempt
to symbolize time for prisoners in a death camp.
Donat, Alexander. The Holocaust Kingdom. Washington, D.C.: Holocaust Library,
1999.
The author, a Polish Jew whose Holocaust experiences included the Warsaw ghetto,
Majdanek, and Dachau, was separated from his wife and son at Majdanek but was
reunited with them after the war. He tells his own story and the stories of others with
whom he came in contact. His wife describes her own experiences in the final section of
the book.
Eliach, Yaffa. Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.
Through interviews and oral histories, Eliach garnered 89 tales, both true stories and
fanciful legends. This compelling collection bears witness, in a traditional idiom, to the
victims’ suffering, dying and surviving.
Fenelon, Fania. Playing for Time. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997.
Fenelon recounts her experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. The Nazis
transported her from the Drancy camp in Paris to the Auschwitz killing center. Although
her descriptions reveal the horrors of the camps, the book’s primary focus is on her
experiences in the Auschwitz-Birkenau women’s orchestra.
Franl, Viktor. Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. New
York: Pocket Books, 1984.
A psychiatrist and a concentration camp survivor, Frankl’s work is only secondarily a
personal memoir. Primarily, it is an attempt to understand and explain the psychology of
camp victims through Frankl’s own experiences and observations.
Friedman, Herbert A. Roots of the Future. Jerusalem and New York: Gefen, 1999.
This is a moving memoir by a rabbi who was actively involved in Brihah and in
American military government and the DP camps.
Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. Boulder: Johnson Books in conjunction with
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1997.
The story of Varian Fry, who worked relentlessly in opposition to French and even
American authorities, to rescue more than 1500 people from France, among them some
of Europe’s most prominent politicians, artist, writers, scientists and musicians.
Goetz, Sam. I Never Saw My Face. Bethel, Ct.: Routledge. 2001
Sam Goetz, a Polish Jew, tells the story of his childhood, his existence in the Tarnow
ghetto, separation from his family, liberation from the Elensee camp in 1945, life as a
displaced person and his emigration to Los Angeles where he became an optometrist and
spokesperson for Holocaust remembrance.
Gies, Miep, and Alison L. Gold. Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman
Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Miep Gies, along with her husband, was among the people who helped the Frank family
while they were in hiding. Her story is an important supplement to Anne Frank’s diary as
it adds historical background and an outside perspective to Anne’s story. Gies enables
the reader to understand what was happening both inside and outside the annex.
Hart, Kitty. Return to Auschwitz: The Remarkable Life of a Girl who Survived the
Holocaust. New York: Atheneum, 1981.
Kitty and her mother survived twenty months together in Auschwitz-Birkenau together.
It is quite plain that without her mother, Kitty would have never survived. Ms. Hart
makes you feel what it was like to be in Auschwitz. She describes the smells, the
degrading things one did to survive and the idiocy of the camp system.
Hausner, Gideon. Eichmann in Jerusalem. New York: Schocken Books, 1966.
This is the memoir of Eichmann’s prosecutor at the infamous trial.
Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Boston and New York: Mariner Books, 1999.
Hitler’s “My Struggle,” written during his short prison stay in 1924.
Hoess, Rudolf. Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess.
Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1960.
Hoess portrays himself as an able administrator concerned with the larger issues of
running the camp. This is not a candid memoir, nor does Hoess evidence guilt or remorse
for his role as a mass murderer. Nevertheless, there are moments in the book when the
reality of his function breaks through into his consciousness. Hoess’ autobiography gives
us a partial insight into the mind of an SS officer.
Jacobs, Mike. Holocaust Survivor. Austin: Eakin Press, 2001.
A memoir by the founder of the Dallas Holocaust Memorial Center (who is a Polish
survivor), recounting his five years in ghettos and concentration camps.
Klein, Gerda Weissmann. All But My Life: A Memoir. New York: Hill and Wang,
1995.
Gerda Weissmann Klein’s autobiographical account of her six-year ordeal as a victim of
Nazi cruelty includes information about the German invasion of Poland, slave labor and
the thousand-mile winter march she and 4000 others were forced to endure.
Klemperer, Victor. I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years. New York:
Random House, 1998.
Klemperer was a professor at the University of Dresden when the Nazis came to power in
1933. Removed from his position, but protected from deportation by his non-Jewish
wife, Klemperer details the countless humiliations suffered by Jews in Nazi Germany
from 1933 until the systematic deportation of Jews began in 1941.
Leitner, Isabella. Isabella: From Auschwitz to Freedom. New York: Anchor Books,
1994.
Leitner, a survivor of Auschwitz, recounts the ordeal of holding her family together after
her mother was killed. Leitner describes her deportation from Hungary in the summer of
1944, her experiences in Auschwitz and her evacuation to Bergen-Belsen concentration
camp near the end of the war.
Levi, Primo. If This is a Man. New York: Summit Books, 1986.
Levi, Primo. Moments of Reprieve. New York: Summit Books, 1986.
Levi was deported from Turin, Italy, to the Auschwitz camp in German-occupied Poland
in 1944. He presents a collection of short stories that celebrate his survival of Auschwitz.
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. New York: Macmillan, 1987.
Levi was an Italian Jew captured the end of 1943 who was still at Auschwitz at the time
of the liberation. He not only chronicles the daily activities in the camp but also his inner
reactions to it and the destruction of the inner as well as the outer self.
Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved. New York: Summit Books, 1988.
In Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi describes two categories of prisoners: the drowned,
who have lost the will to live, and the saved, those who fight to survive and have some
privilege or advantage that keeps them going despite the grinding brutality of the camp.
This volume shows Mr. Levi at his most analytic. Perhaps he had the advantage of
understanding the camp experience because both poet and chemist, he was grounded in
the world of feelings and the world of abstraction and observation.
Lukacs, John. The Hitler of History. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.
This allows readers who have not read the detailed biographies of Hitler to understand
how important they are and the man they depict.
Massaquoi, Hans J. Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany. New
York: William Morrow and Company, 1999.
Mr. Massaquoi was born to an African Liberian father and a German mother. As a
person of mixed race growing up in Nazi Germany he was subject to the same harsh
restrictions imposed on the Jews by the Nuremberg racial laws. This book is important
because it gives a different take on the Nazi regime viewing it from the inside and from a
highly original point of view. It reveals the moral corruption that was its very core. The
author was treated decently by some Germans who saw him as an individual; he was
persecuted by others who let their Nazi ideology be the filters through which they saw the
world.
Meed, Vladka. On Both Sides of the Wall. Washington, D.C.: Holocaust Library,
1993.
This is an informative memoir of the Warsaw ghetto by one of the young smugglers who
maintained contact between the ghetto and the “Aryan” side of the city. Working for the
Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), Vladka Meed helped smuggle weapons and
ammunition into the ghetto.
Melson, Robert. False Papers: Deception and Survival in the Holocaust. Urbana
and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Melson tells the surprising story of his Jewish parents who survived on false papers by
pretending to be Polish nobility living in exile in Prague. A scolar of the Holocaust and
genocide and a child-survivor himself, he retells three stories – his mother’s, his father’s
and his own – in a compelling narrative.
Michelson, Frida. I Survived Rumbuli. New York: Holocaust Library, 1979.
This memoir describes life in Riga before the war, panic at the invasion by the Nazis and
her survival at the slaughter at Rumbuli. It then gives a lengthy account of her passing as
a gentile hiding in the Aryan world. She gives some accounts of some heroic gentiles.
Ms. Michelson’s expert tailoring skills were her salvation.
Nir, Yehuda. The Lost Childhood. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991.
This compelling memoir chronicles six extraordinary years in the life of a Polish Jewish
boy, his mother and his sister, who all survived the Holocaust by obtaining false papers
and posing as Catholics. Yehuda Nir lost almost everything, including his father, his
possessions, his youth and innocence, and his identity, but he managed to live with the
help of chance, personal resourcefulness and the support of his family.
Nyiszli, Dr. Miklos. Auschwitz. Greenwich: Fawcett Crest, 1960.
This is written by a physician who survived the death camp.
Smith, Frank Dabba and Mendel Grossman. My Secret Camera: Life in the Lodz
Ghetto. San Diego: Gulliver Books, 2000.
At great risk to himself, Mendel Grossman secretly took thousands of photographs that
bore witness to the fear, the hardship, and the struggle for survival woven through the
daily lives of the people unjustly imprisoned with him. Some of those pictures are
interspersed throughout this book.
Szpilman, Wladyslaw. The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s
Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945. New York: Picador USA, 1999.
This is an account of an accomplished concert pianist and his struggle to survive both
inside and outside of the Warsaw ghetto while losing his entire family.
Tec, Nechama. Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1984.
The author and her family were Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust on the “Aryan”
side of the ghetto. Although she escaped the worst horrors of the Holocaust, her story
adds another dimension to Holocaust literature. She describes her childhood experiences
as seen through the child’s eyes, but with the added perspective of her adult perception.
Trunk, Isaiah and Jacob Robinson. Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern
Europe Under Nazi Occupation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
This is a detailed study of the Judenrat (Jewish councils) in the ghettos of Eastern
Europe, including the councils’ relations with the German authorities. Included are
maps, charts, illustrations, extensive notes and an index.
Weinberg, Gerhard L., ed. Hitler’s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein
Kampf. New York: Enigma Books, 2003.
This book expands our understanding of Hitler.
Weitz, Sonia Schreiber and Susan Belt Cogley. Facing History and Ourselves: I
Promised I Would Tell. Brookline: Facing History and Ourselves, 1993.
Sonia Schreiber Weitz uses diary entries and poetry to help students understand her
experiences as a child in Krakow, her years in concentration camps and her time in a
camp for displaced persons.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Bantam, 1982.
Wiesel is one of the most eloquent writers of the Holocaust, and this book is his bestknown work. The compelling narrative describes his experience in Auschwitz. This
narrative is often considered required reading for students of the Holocaust.
Willenberg, Samuel. Surviving Treblinka. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
Mr. Willenberg was one of the very few who survived the Treblinka death camp uprising.
He later describes his participation in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. His memoir portrays
the anger of the inmates against the brutality of the guards. His memory focuses on
episodes and details.
Yoors, Jan. Crossing: A Journal of Survival and Resistance in World War II. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1971.
Every summer during his teen years, Yoors left his comfortable, upper-middle-class
family life in Belgium to travel around Europe with a Romani (Gypsy) family. This
beautifully written journal focuses on the participation of Yoors and his fondly
remembered Romani friends in resistance activities during World War II.
DIARIES
Frank, Anne. The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition. New York:
Doubleday and Company, 1989.
This edition of the internationally acclaimed diary includes three different versions: the
portion that was originally found, the revisions made by Anne herself and the version
edited by her father. In addition, there is extensive commentary on each version.
Frank, Anne, Otto M. Frank, Mirjam Pressler and Susan Massotty. The Diary of a
Young Girl: The Definitive Edition. New York: Anchor Books, 1996.
This edition of Anne Frank’s diary includes previously unpublished material.
Boas, Jacob. We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the
Holocaust. New York: Henry Holt, 1995.
Der Grun, Max von. Howl Like the Wolves: Growing Up in Nazi Germany. New
York: William Morrow and Company, 1980.
This is a personal account of a young man who is conscripted into the Wehrmacht and
relays his experiences as a POW in Louisiana and after the fall of Nazism.
Gaarlandt, Jan G., ed. Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life, The Diaries, 1941-1943
and the Letters from Westerbork. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996.
In these diaries and letters is the moving story of a Dutch Jew of average moral character
who in the environment of Westerbork transit camp finds her calling in doing good
works. Etty transcends herself and knowingly goes to her destruction with an ever
deepening faith in G-d and the goodness of life.
Gutman, Israel. Janusz Korczak, Ghetto Diary. New York: Holocaust Library,
1978.
This is a wonderful original source on Korczak’s diary.
Gutman, Israel. Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel
Ringelblum. New York: Schocken Books, 1958.
This is an important source on Ringelblum’s diary.
Gutman, Israel. The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan. New York: Collier Books,
1965.
Gutman, Israel. The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow. New York: Stein and
Day, 1979.
This is a great source about the Judenrat (leader of the Jewish Council) of the Warsaw
Ghetto.
Hilberg, Raul, et al., eds. The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow. Lanham:
Madison Books, 1982.
Czerniakow was chairman of the Nazi-appointed Jewish Council in Warsaw from the
German invasion in 1939 until his suicide in 1942. His diaries record the history of the
period and his personal involvement with the Germans
.
Holiday, Laurel. Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries.
New York: Washington Square Press, 1996.
This anthology includes twenty-three excerpts from diaries written by Jewish and nonJewish children aged ten to eighteen during the Holocaust. The children represent a
range of experiences: ghettos, concentration camps, cities and a prison camp.
Kaplan, Chaim. A Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim Kaplan.
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999.
Warsaw resident Chaim Kaplan’s journal begins on September 1, 1939, the day the Nazi
blitzkrieg stunned the world-the Jews of Poland most of all. It ends of August 1942,
when Kaplan realized the Nazi noose was around his neck. Today Kaplan’s diary stands
as an extraordinary record of the Nazi destruction of the Warsaw Jewish community. It is
timely as ever.
Lengyel, Olga. Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz. New York: Howard Fertig,
Inc., 1983.
This survivor’s memoir is stark like many of the early accounts written when the
memories of the camp were fresh. Under the regime of Auschwitz interpersonal relations
between are devoid of the veneer of civilization. The competition for food and other
necessities puts people at odds. “You will crack too, like so many of us,” they tell her.
Ringelblum, Emmanuel. Notes From the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel
Ringelblum. New York: Schocken, 1974.
The official archivist of the Warsaw ghetto, Ringelblum’s training as a historian made
him uniquely qualified to understand the importance of documenting events inside the
ghetto. He carefully collected and hid documentary evidence and personal notes.
Sierakowiak, Dawid, Alan Adelson, and Kamil Turowski. The Diary of Dawid
Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996.
Dawid Sierakowiak was a 15-year-old boy in the Lodz ghetto in German-occupied
Poland when he began writing this diary. Edited and annotated by Alan Adelson and
Kamil Turowski, Dawid provides vivid account of daily life in the Lodz ghetto.
Tory, Avraham. Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1990.
Tory, a ghetto inmate and secretary of the Jewish Council, wrote this account under
conditions of extreme danger. This chronicle documents life and death in the Jewish
ghetto of Kovno, Lithuania, from June 1941 to January 1944. Translated from the
Yiddish, the book includes a collection of photos and sketches by artists in the ghetto.
Zapruder, Alexandra. Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
LITERATURE AND THE ARTS
Adam, Peter. Art of the Third Reich. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992.
Adam presents hundreds of examples of artwork, officially sanctioned by the Third
Reich. Many of the illustrations are taken from German publications of the period and
demonstrate how the nation’s fine arts – including painting, film and architecture – were
manipulated by the regime into propaganda tools. Adam’s book is based on his film
documentary of the same name.
Ezrahi, Sidra D. By Words Alone: The Holocaust in Literature. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1982.
This literary history of the Holocaust discusses a number of specific works, including
works in American literature. The author also focuses on the language of the Holocaust
and the ways in which different writers interpret the same facts.
Fuchs, Elinor, ed. Plays of the Holocaust: An International Anthology. New York:
Theater Communications Group, 1987.
The author has selected plays from a variety of nations in a number of literary styles. In
addition to the plays themselves, the book includes a bibliography of Holocaust drama.
Heinemann, Marlene E. Gender and Destiny: Women Writers and the Holocaust.
Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1986.
Focusing on six books by women writers, including Charlotte Delbo’s None of Us Will
Return, Heinemann examines the areas in which Holocaust literature by female writers
differs from that created by male writers.
Hochhuth, Rolf. The Deputy. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. New
York: Grove Press, 1964.
Hochhuth’s play examines the relationship that the Catholic Church had with Nazi
Germany. The work raises important issues about authority and the courage to confront
evil. The author grapples with the church’s failure to act when faced with the news of the
mass murder of European Jews and Catholic priests in Poland. Hochhuth’s work ignited
a firestorm of debate when it premiered in Berlin in 1963.
Insdorf, Annette. Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Films from both Hollywood and Germany are examined here as well as films produced in
other, mostly western, European countries. Both documentaries and fictional films are
included as are short and feature-length films. Insdorf particularly looks at whether a
film confronts or evades the real issues of the Holocaust.
Kramer, A. ed.. The Last Lullaby: Poetry from the Holocaust. Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press. 1998.
This collection includes poems by Europeans and Russians who attained recognition as
published writers, as well as poems and songs by people who never intended to become
poets but who were driven to express the unbearable emotions aroused by the horrors of
the Nazi era. Kramer has translated and preserved poems written under nightmarish
circumstances in Jewish ghettos, way stations, extermination camps and forests.
Langer, Lawrence L. The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1975.
Examining specific literary works, Langer provides detailed analysis of a number of
novels, including Schwarz-Bart’s The Last of the Just and Kosinski’s The Painted Bird.
He also includes some poetry and Wiesel’s Night, which, although nonfiction, qualifies
as literature due to its “imaginative power and artful presentation.”
Roskies, David. Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish
Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1984.
This scholarly study of Jewish literature includes both pre- and post-Holocaust literature
in addition to Holocaust literature itself. It also includes monuments and other works of
art. It focuses on the literary and artistic expression of modern Jewish experience in
Eastern Europe, beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing through World
War I and the Holocaust into the post-Holocaust world.
Schiff, Hilda. Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
This volume includes the work of 85 poets on subjects that are linked with the Holocaust.
The contributors range from world-renowned writers to those who are relatively
unknown.
Skloot, Robert, ed. The Theater of the Holocaust: Four Plays. Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1982.
The four plays by Shimon Wincelberg, Harold and Edith Lieberman, George Tabori and
Charlotte Delbo reflect a range of stylistic and artistic approaches. Together, they
constitute an eloquent testimony to the possibility of survival during times of extreme
oppression and human degradation.
Volavkova, Hana. ed. I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and
Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp 1942-1944. New York: Schocken, 1993.
This is a collection of paintings and poems that were left by some of the 15,000 children
who passed through Terezin (Thereseinstadt) concentration camp between 1942 and
1944.