Holocaust Memoirs |
Twenty years ago while I was on a university exchange, I lived for several months in what had been the Warsaw Ghetto. But it was only in the first couple of weeks that I was conscious of the history of the site. Afterwards in the hustle and bustle of those months (Poland was then under martial law, a fact which created a number of distractions from looking to the past), the history of the place receded into the back of my mind.In many ways mankind's most horrific moments tend to do that. For me the most incredible illustration of this point is that (as I learned from reading Howard Fast's Being Red: A Memoir) in 1943 the British carried out a forced famine in Bengal that killed millions. Yet there is not a book in English about this horror.There are many Holocaust memoirs. I particularly recommend , Ruth Sender's The Cage. (Macmillan,1986), for use in high school and even junior high school classes, although adults will want to read it too. |
To read Holocaust memoir reviews about a book or order it, click on its title. To quickly reach one of the subtopics immediately below, click on it.
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| Anne Frank | Armenian Holocaust | Jewish Holocaust | Auschwitz | Belarus | France | General | |
Anne Frank
Gies, Miep and Allison L. Gold. Anne Frank Remembered. Bantam Press. 1987. By an intimate of Anne’s family who helped them until their hiding place in Amsterdam was found. Grade: 07-09
Balakian, Peter. Black Dog of Fate . Broadway Books, 1998. Author' s tale of growing up Armenian in New Jersey, a journey of personal discovery centered on the 1915 genocide killed as many as one million Armenians.
Katchadourian, Stina. Efronia: An Armenian Love Story. Gomidas Institute, 2001. About the author' s Christian Armenian mother-in-law's experience as a survivor of the 1915 massacres in Ottoman Turkey.
Cetin, Fethiya. My Grandmother: a Memoir . Verso, 2008. About an Armenian from a small Turkish town who lived most of her life as a Muslim after a Turkish gendarme saved her from a death march and adopted her.
Borowski, Tadeusz. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Penguin, 1976. Daily life in Auschwitz, relations among inmates, their various duties within the camp, and their hardships. High school.
Buergenthal, Thomas. A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy. Profile Books, 2009. By a Czech born Jew, who at age 10 was one of the death camp's youngest prisoners, and who later became the American judge at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
Höss, Rudolf. Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz. Prometheus Books, 1996.
Jacobs, Benjamin. The Dentist of Auschwitz:A Memoir. The University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Young dental student spends five years in extermination camps.
Leitner, Isabella. Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz. Dell, 1983. A survivor holds her family together after her mother’s death. High school.
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. Collier, 1973. Young Italian-Jewish chemist describes life inside Auschwitz. High school.
Levi, Primo and Feldman, Ruth. Moments of Reprieve: A Memoir of Auschwitz. Penguin, 1995.
Raab, Elisabeth M. And Peace Never Came. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 1997. Author’s life before and after internment at Auschwitz.
Sender, Ruth M. The Cage. Macmillan, 1986. This account begins just before the Nazis invaded Poland and continues through life in the Lodz ghetto and finally, at Auschwitz. High school. Howard’s Pick
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| Anne Frank | Armenian Holocaust | Jewish Holocaust | Auschwitz | Belarus | France | General | |
Kolpanitzky, Kopel. Sentenced to Life: The Story of a Survivor of the Lahwah Ghetto . Valentine-Mitchell & Co., 2007. The Holocaust in a Byelorussian town.
Diamond, Hanna. Fleeing Hitler: France 1940. Oxford University Press, 2008.
Lipton, Eunice. French Seduction: An American's Encounter with France, Her Father and the Holocaust . Da Capo Press, 2006.
Michlin, Gilbert. Of No Interest to the Nation: A Jewish Family in France , 1925- 1945, A Memoir. Wayne State University Press, 2004.
Steinberg, Paul. Speak You Also: A Survivor’s Reckoning. Picador, 2001. By Holocaust survivor.
Abramovitch, Stanley. From Survival To Revival: A Memoir of Six Decades in a Changing Jewish World. Gefen. 2008. A Jew escapes from Poland to England.
Appleman-Jurman, Alicia. Alicia: My Story. Bantam Books, 1988. The author was 13 when she escaped from a firing squad and, while hiding from Nazis and collaborators, began saving the lives of strangers. High school.Beck, Gad and Heibert, Frank, and Brown, Allison. An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin. University of Wisconsin Press,2000.
Birger, Trudy. A Daughter’s Gift Of Love; A Holocaust Memoir. Jewish Publication Society, 1992. A daughter remains with and protects her mother at every crossroad from their comfortable home to the ghetto, concentration camp, and even the gas chamber. Their survival is a tribute to her love and loyalty. High School
Bitton-Jackson, Livia. Saving What Remains: A Holocaust Survivor's Journey Home to Reclaim Her Ancestry. The Lyons Press, 2009.
Cohn, Lillian L. A Shadow Over My Life. Green Books, 1994. The two years of the author’s life when Hitler was beginning his destruction of Jewish life in Berlin. Grade: 6-9Deutschkron, Inge. Outcast: A Jewish Girl in Wartime Berlin. Froom Intl Pub, 1990. A journalist, raised in a middle class, secular family describes how at age 10 her Jewish identity was thrust on her, after which she and her mother hid and survive the Holocaust and the war.
Einhorn, Erin. The Pages in between: a Holocaust Legacy of Two Families, One Home . Touchstone, 2009.
Fass, Paula S. Inheriting the Holocaust: A Second-generation Memoir. Rutgers University Press, 2009. By the daughter of Holocaust survivors.
Gastfriend, Edward. My Father's Testament: Memoir of a Jewish Teenager, 1938-1945. Temple University Press, 1999. Portrait of a teenage boy trying to stay alive without losing his humanity--in hiding, in the camps, and during the death marches at the end of the war.
Isaacson, Judith Magyar. Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor . University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Kahane, David. Lvov Ghetto Diary. Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1990. A rabbi recalls the large ghetto in the Polish city of Lvov. High school.
Keneally, Thomas. Searching for Schindler: A Memoir. Nan A. Talese,2008
Klein, Gerda Weissmann. All But My Life. Hill and Wang, 1971. The author was one of only 120 women who survived a 300-mile march from a labor camp in western Germany to Czechoslovakia. High school. High school.
Kramer, Clara. Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival. Ecco, 2009. Jewish teen and other Polish Jews are saved by a German couple living in a Polish town.
Kurzem, Mark. The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood. Plume, 2008. After years of hiding the fact that as a young boy he was sheltered by a Lithuanian SS unit, the author's father reveals his astounding story to his son. Howard's Pick
Lanckoronska, Karolina. Michelangelo in Ravensbruck: One Woman’s War Against the Nazis. Da Capo Press, 2008.
Lemelman, Martin. Mendel's Daughter: A Memoir. Free Press, 2006. Son tape records and then writes of mother’s experiences as Holocaust survivor.
Lipski, Jane, Kalina, Margit Raab, KahanaAufleger, Lotti, Irwin, Frances and Choko, Isabelle. Stolen Youth: Five Women's Survival in the Holocaust. Yad Vashem and Holocaust Survivors Memoirs Project, 2005.
Olczak-Ronikier, Joanna. In the Garden of Memory: A Family Memoir . Phoenix, 2005. Four generations of Polish Jews.
Reiss, Johanna. The Upstairs Room. Harper Collins, 1972. Author and her sister spent 2 years hiding in the upstairs room of a gentile family’s house. Grade: 06-08.
Schulman, Faye. A Partisan's Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust. Second Story Press, 1995. Author was a teenager during the Holocaust.
Schwartz, Mimi. Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village. University of Nebraska Press, 2008. Daughter of a German Jew reclaims her father's village for herself, by recording stories of both Jews and non-Jews from the village who now live in New York City, Germany and Israel.
Shapiro, Irene, Revisiting the Shadows: Memoirs from War-torn Poland to the Statue of Liberty. DeForest Press, 2004. A Jewish teenager involved in the 1941-1943 resistance movement and uprising of the Bialystok Ghetto survives three concentration camps, and is one of the few who survives the massacre of Bialystok’s Jews.
Wiesel, Elie. The Gates of the Forest. Schocken, 1982. A young Hungarian Jew escapes to the forest during the Nazi occupation, and later joins an anti-Nazi partisan group. High school.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. Hill and Wang, 2006. Classic account by the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner of his experiences as a young boy during the holocaust.
Winter, Miriam. Trains: A Memoir of a Hidden Childhood During and After WWII. Kelton Press, 1997.
Wolf, Jacqueline. Take Care of Josette: A Memoir in Defense of Occupied France. Franklin Watts, 1981. Fourteen year old takes care of 4 year old sister when parents are taken to concentration camp.
Zar, Rose. In the Mouth of the Wolf. Jewish Publication Society, 1983. A young Polish Jew obtains a job in an SS officer’s household, using false papers. High school.
Zuckerman, Abraham. A Voice in the Chorus: Life as a Teenager in the Holocaust. Ktav Pub., 1990.
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| Anne Frank | Armenian Holocaust | Jewish Holocaust | Auschwitz | Belarus | France | General | |
Beer, Edith Hahn. The Nazi Officer's Wife Harper Perennial, 1999. When a Nazi proposes to an Austrian Jew in Germany posing as an Aryan, she confesses her true identity and he marries her anyway. Her secret existence becomes even more complicated when her is drafted. Harper Perennial, 1999. Howard’s Pick
Koehn, Ilse. Mischling, Second Degree Bantam, 1978. A partly Jewish child in Nazi Germany, a member of the Hitler Youth, on life in Germany during the war. Grade: 06-09
Bourla, Isaac. Chimera: A Period of Madness. Bloch Pub. Co., 2007. A Greek Jew's account of his experience in Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
Siegal, Aranka. Upon the Head of a Goat: A Childhood in Hungary 1939-44. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981. The author’s story of her family and her life in Hungary as a child. In 1944 she and her family were taken to Auschwitz. High school.
Drucker, Olga Levy Kindertransport. Henry Holt, 1992. After Kristallnacht, a couple sends their daughter to England, where she learns their language, endures their prejudices, enjoys their kindnesses, and survives in safety. Grade: 5-8
Schogt , Henry G. The Curtain: Witness and Memory in Wartime Holland. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2003. How the author's non-Jewish family and his wife's Jewish family fared in the Netherlands during the German occupation in World War II.
Blaichman, Frank. Rather Die Fighting
Eber, Irene. The Choice: Poland, 1939-1945. Schocken, 2004. German Jewish family is expelled and returns to father’s homeland, Poland.
Halter, Roman. Roman’s Journey: A Memoir of Survival. Arcade Publishing, 2007. A boy’s tight Jewish community in a Polish village is destroyed under Hitler’s regime.
Nir, Yehuda. The Lost Childhood: The Complete Memoir. Bt Bound. 2007. After watching the Nazis take his father away, a boy and his mother and sister go into hiding as Catholics in Warsaw.
Olczak-Ronikier, Joanna. In the Garden of Memory: A Family Memoir. Phoenix, 2005. Four generations of Polish Jews.
Schaller, Arthur. 100 Cigarettes and a Bottle of Vodka: A Memoir. Raincoast Books, 1998. A man’s story of surviving by smarts, courage and luck as a teenager in German occupied Poland where the reward for turning in a Jew was as the title says.
Winter, Miriam. Trains: A Memoir of a Hidden Childhood During and After World War. Kelton Press, 1997. Author's account of her childhood in hiding in Poland during the Holocaust.
Zuckerman, Yitzhak ("Antek") and Harshav, Barbara. A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (A Centennial Book). University of California Press, 1993. A leader of the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto uprising in spring 1943 on the period from Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland to Poland's anti-Semitic pogroms in 1946.
Gabriel, Severin. In the Ruins of Warsaw Streets. Gefen, 2005. By a Jew who survived in Warsaw by taking on an Aryan identity and receiving help from Polish Gentiles.
Hope you enjoy this list of Holocaust Memoir Books!
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| Anne Frank | Armenian Holocaust | Jewish Holocaust | Auschwitz | Belarus | France | General | |