Fiction and Nonfiction about the Holocaust
Explore powerful fiction and nonfiction books about the Holocaust, featuring gripping narratives and historical accounts. Discover essential reads to understand this tragic chapter in history.
Book
Smoke and Ashes
by Barbara Rogasky
Gr. 6-12. First published in 1988, this authoritative history has now been expanded to include newly available facts and crucial issues for discussion. The core of the book remains the same, with a writing style both passionate and controlled, combining eyewitness accounts, statistics, and commentary in a spacious format that includes documentary photos (many of them taken by the Nazis) on almost every page. Rogasky has added material about the roles of Nazi "helpers," including German police and bystanders. There's a new section on the Nazi persecution of gay men, and there's more about the rescuers. The chapter on whether the Holocaust is unique covers horrifying recent events, such as the genocide in Rwanda, and a new chapter gives details about contemporary hate groups and answers those who deny that the Holocaust happened. The bibliography now includes Web sites and chapter source notes. This is an outstanding resource for the Holocaust curriculum
Book
The Nazi Officer's Wife
by Edith H. Beer
Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman and went underground. With the help of a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich as Grete Denner. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite Edith's protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity a secret. In wrenching detail, Edith recalls a life of constant, almost paralyzing fear. She tells of German officials who casually questioned the lineage of her parents; of how, when giving birth to her daughter, she refused all painkillers, afraid that in an altered state of mind she might reveal something of her past; and of how, after her husband was captured by the Soviet army, she was bombed out of her house and had to hide while drunken Russian soldiers raped women on the street. Yet despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith created a remarkable record of survival. She saved every document and set of papers issued to her, as well as photographs she managed to take inside labor camps. Now part of the permanent collection at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., these hundreds of documents, several of which are included in this volume, form the fabric of a gripping new chapter in the history of the Holocaust -- complex, troubling, and ultimately triumphant.
Book
Night
by Elie Wiesel
Presents a true account of the author's experiences as a Jewish boy in a Nazi concentration camp.
Book
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
by Judith Kerr
Recounts the adventures of a nine-year-old Jewish girl and her family in the early 1930s as they are divided, reunited, and travel from Germany through Europe to England to escape persecution.
Book
Until We Meet Again
by Michael Korenblit
1942. A small town in Poland. Two Jewish families flee to hiding places, hoping to evade deportation by the Nazis. At the last moment, 17-year-old Manya makes the heart-wrenching decision to leave her family and join her sweetheart, Meyer, also 17, with his family. For three long years, Manya and Meyer endure the loss of their parents and siblings, separation from each other, and the horror of concentration camps, including Auschwitz--but are helped at key points by courageous Polish Catholics and are constantly sustained by their faith and their love for each other. Co-authored by the couple's son Michael, this absorbing and suspenseful narrative reads like a novel, yet tells a true story of love and horror, sacrifice and courage, with a conclusion that is truly miraculous. Book jacket.
Book
The Complete Maus
by Art Spiegelman
The definitive edition of the graphic novel acclaimed as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” (Wall Street Journal) and “the first masterpiece in comic book history” (The New Yorker) • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • One of Variety’s “Banned and Challenged Books Everyone Should Read” A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history's most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma.
Book
The Diary of Anne Frank
by Anne Frank
The account of World War II Jewish refugees hiding in occupied Amsterdam from the viewpoint of a young teenaged girl in the group.
Book
Anne Frank and Me
by Cherie Bennett
After suffering a concussion while on a class trip to a Holocaust exhibit, Nicole Burns finds herself living the life of a Jewish teenager in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Reprint.
Book
Hana's Suitcase
by Karen Levine
In March 2000, a suitcase arrived at a children's Holocaust education center in Tokyo, Japan. Hana Brady was written on the outside. Children who saw the suitcase on display were full of questions and the director decided to find the answers.
Book
Those who Save Us
by Jenna Blum
A professor of German history begins a long journey back into a past she has pushed aside, returning to Germany to reopen the wounds of her own life--as well as that of her mother--as a child living in Nazi Germany. Reprint.
Book
Daniel's Story
by Carol Matas
Daniel, whose family suffers as the Nazis rise to power in Germany, describes his imprisonment in a concentration camp and his eventual liberation.
Book
Schindler's List
by Thomas Keneally
Historical fiction about a man and the Jews he saved from the Holocaust in Poland.