Non-Fiction Holocaust Reading List
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
— Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran pastor
The THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE project
(* denotes a direct connection to the THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE play)
This 7-minute film by Centropa.org starts in 1815 and goes to the start of the 21st Century:
Jewish Victims of the Nazis
Escape or Die: True Stories of Young People Who Survived the Holocaust by Ina R. Friedman (1982)
Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust by Alexandra Zapruder (2002)
Regina Jonas — first woman ordained as a rabbi — murdered in Auschwitz
Artist Charlotte Salomon murdered in Auschwitz
Murder of American Jewish soldiers
Other Victims of the Nazis Including the Romani and Jehovah’s Witnesses
The Other Victims: First-Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis by Ina R. Friedman (1990)
Sinti Auschwitz survivor account
Sinti survivor of the Nazis fights for compensation
Europe remembers Sinti and Roma murdered under Nazi rule (including map of Sinti and Roma Holocaust sites in Nazi-occupied Europe in 1942)
Rescuers and Resisters
*Heroes of the Holocaust: Extraordinary True Accounts of Triumph by Arnold Geier (1993)
Two Trees in Jerusalem by Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen (2015); watch 2022 short documentary on YouTube based on this book about two ordinary Germans who saved Jews
Children’s picture book: The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust by Karen Gray Ruelle and Deborah Durland DeSaix (2009)
Children’s picture book: Miep and the Most Famous Diary: The Woman Who Rescued Anne Frank’s Diary written by Meeg Pincus and illustrated by Jordi Solano (2019)
Dutch non-Jewish resistance fighter saved children via the Kindertransport
Dutch village of Nieuwlande has unique Holocaust rescue story
Dutch artist and cellist forged identity cards for thousands of Jews
Honoring couple who helped Jewish families flee Nazi Germany
Remembering Justus Rosenberg for his resistance activities in France
Gilberto Bosques Saldívar – Mexico’s consul in Marseille, Vichy France
French resistance forger saved thousands of lives and short 2016 documentary about Adolfo Kaminsky
Hungarian colonel who saved Jews during WWII commemorated
Jewish Foundation for the Righteous
2003 documentary UNLIKELY HEROES highlights seven extraordinary Jews who resisted:
Holocaust and Human Rights Education
The Holocaust: Remembrance, Respect, and Resilience by Michael Polgar and Suki John
U.K.
Albania
Albania to build museum to citizens who saved Jews during the Holocaust
Belgium
Andrée Geulen, Belgian woman who rescued hundreds of Jewish children, dies at 100
Bulgaria
Beyond Hitler’s Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews by Michael Bar-Zohar (1998). Describes the complicated pressures to deport the Bulgarian Jews and the opposing forces to this enormous pressure: “Not one Bulgarian Jew was sent to the death camps in Poland.”
Denmark
Savior of Danish Jews dies at 100
Norway
Norwegian Jews commemorate deportation to concentration camps
The Netherlands
Children’s book All About Anne by Anne Frank House and illustrated by Huck Scarry (2018)
First Nazi raids on Dutch Jews — February 1941
France
Commemorative plaque unveiled on anniversary of “Green Ticket Round-up” in France
France/Portugal
Portugal honors envoy who saved thousands in France from Nazis with National Pantheon tomb
Jerusalem square named for Portuguese diplomat who saved 10,000 Jews in WWI
An account of the rescuing actions of Aristides de Sousa Mendes is in the chapter “We Are All Refugees” in the book In the Garden of the Righteous by Richard Hurowitz (2023)
France/Switzerland
The Fate of Others: Rescuing Jewish Children on the French-Swiss Border by Nancy Lefenfeld (2013)
Polish Resistance to the Nazis
Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World by Jan Karski (originally published in 1944 before the end of WWII, this book is for committed students of WWII resistance history)
The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos by Judy Batalion (Young Readers’ Edition with Winifred Conkling (2020)
Jozef Walaszczyk, Poland’s oldest rescuer of Jews, dies at 102
Warsaw (Poland) Ghetto
*The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan translated and edited by Abraham I. Katsh (original title: Scroll of Agony) (1965, 1973)
Children’s picture book: Janusz Korczak: The Man Who Knew How to Love Children written and illustrated by Itzchak Belfer (raised and educated by Janusz Korczak) (2016)
Poland and Auschwitz
One Voice, Two Lives: From Auschwitz Prisoner to 101st Airborne Trooper by Cantor David S. Wisnia (2015)
September 12, 2012, article about Regina Landowicz Hirsch, a younger sister of Sala Landowicz Marco. The arrival of Sala (Sally), her mother and three younger sisters at Auschwitz is recounted in the nonfiction play THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE.
Poland, Auschwitz, Liberation, Afterwards
A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy by Thomas Buergenthal (2007)
Children’s book (ages 10 up): Survivors Club: The True Story of a Very Young Prisoner of Auschwitz by Michael Bornstein and Debbie Bornstein Holinstat (2017)
Slovakia and Auschwitz
999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz by Heather Dune Macadam (2019)
Hungary and Auschwitz
March to Freedom: A Memoir of the Holocaust by Edith Singer (2008) (originally published 1993)
Lily’s Promise: Holding On to Hope Through Auschwitz and Beyond — A Story for All Generations by Lily Ebert and Dov Forman (2022)
Greece and Auschwitz
A Liter of Soup and Sixty Grams of Bread: The diary of prisoner number 109565 by Heinz Salvator Kounio; adapted and translated by Marcia Haddad Ikonomopoulos (2003) (originally published in Greece in 1981)
Greece
Miracle at Zakynthos: The only Greek Jewish community saved in its entirety from annihilation by Deno Seder (20114)
“Righteous Among the Nations” Awarded to Greek Heroes Who Rescued Jews in Corfu
Greek savior 10-minute video account
Crete
Greek Jewish Community honors the memory of the victims of the “Tanais” steamship sinking
Poland/Central Asia/Iran
Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey by Mikhal Dekel (2019)
U.S.’s Role
While 6 Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy by Arthur D. Morse (1967, 1968) “The breathtaking story of how America ducked chance after chance to save the Jews.”
Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America by Ruth Gruber (2010). “Award-winning journalist Ruth Gruber’s powerful account of a top-secret mission to rescue one thousand European refugees in the midst of World War II.”
Latvia
Rumbula victims remembered in Latvia
Lithuania
Honoring Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara for Saving Jews in Lithuania
How Alyza Lewin’s grandmother helped Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara save thousands of Jews
Times of Israel report on October 11, 2021, ceremony dedicating Chiune Sugihara Square in Jerusalem
Road to Memory 80th commemoration event in Lithuania
Hungary
Rescuer Tibor Baranski Saved Hungarian Jews
Sweden’s ambassador to Budapest Raoul Wallenberg
The “Spanish Schindler” Saved 5,200 Jews, and Spain Wants to Find Their Descendants
Giorgio Perlasca saved Hungarian Jews
Hungarian colonel who saved Jews during WWII commemorated
July 2021: Israeli paratroopers jump to honor WWII heroine Hannah Senesh
Pursuit of Freedom: A True Story of the Enduring Power of Hope and Dreams by Susanne M. Reyto (2004). Author is in LA and speaks on her book and experiences under Nazism and Communism — email susanne@pursuitoffreedom.com
Italy
It Happened in Italy: Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust by Elizabeth Bettina (2009, 2011)
Newly discovered document lists more than 3,000 Jews the Catholic Church sheltered from Nazis
See also documentary MEMORIA — survivor accounts of the deportation of Italian Jews to Auschwitz
Romania
*The Last Escape: The Launching of the Largest Secret Rescue Movement of All Time by Ruth Kluger and Peggy Mann (1973)
Iancu Ţucărman, one of last remaining Holocaust survivors in Romania passes away at 98
Romanian Jews honor Chilean diplomat who saved over 1,200 during the Holocaust
Ukraine
The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed by Wendy Lower (2021)
Former Soviet Union
Mapping the Holocaust by bullets
Father Patrick Desbois, founder of Yahad – In Unum
Turkey
Germany
Germany marks 80th anniversary of first Jewish deportations
“The first so-called ‘East Transport’ left Berlin on October 18, 1941 with 1,089 Jewish men, women and children on board. Their final destination was the Lodz ghetto in Poland.”
Germany and Terezin
(Czech pronunciation:[ˈtɛrɛziːn]; German: Theresienstadt — town in Litoměřice District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic.)
Children’s book (ages 10 up): I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust by Inge Auerbacher (1986)
Children’s book: The Cat With the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin by Susan Goldman Rubin with Ela Weissberger (2006)
Czechoslovakia
Children’s book: Hana’s Suitcase: The Quest to Solve a Holocaust Mystery by Karen Levine (2016 edition)
Prague’s Stolpersteine — Stumbling Stones: Defiant in Their Memory — 2008-2021 by Trevor Sage (2021)
Block 66 at Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Young Adult book The Boy From Block 66 by Limor Regev (2021); there is also a 2012 documentary on this subject titled “Kinderblock 66: Return to Buchenwald”
Schindler’s List Child Survivor
The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler’s List by Leon Leyson (2013)
Resistance to Nazis
The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews by Michael Good (2009)
Hans and Sophie Scholl Were Once Hitler Youth Leaders. Why Did They Decide to Stand Up to the Nazis?
Children’s book: Hans and Sophie Scholl; German Resisters of the White Rose by Toby Axelrod (2001) (Holocaust Biographies)
Children’s book: Rescuers Defying the Nazis: Non-Jewish Teens Who Rescued Jews by Toby Axelrod (1999) (Teen Witnesses to the Holocaust)
How the Philippines saved 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust
Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps
Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps by Robert H. Abzug (1985) — GRAPHIC BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOS
NUTS! A 101st Airborne Division Machine Gunner at Bastogne: Chapter 11, Pages 66-68 by Vincent J. Speranza (2014)– emotional depiction of liberating a concentration campJustice for Nazi Crimes Against Humanity
*Wherever They May Be! by Beate Klarsfeld (1972) — Beate Klarsfeld is a non-Jewish German who married a French Jew, Serge Klarsfeld; together they have sought justice against the Nazis.
For a list of chronological events leading up to, during and post WWII affecting all across the globe — see this Holocaust timetable on the website of the Zachor Foundation.
For an overview of the breadth of the countries from which Jews were murdered by the Nazis — see the brief survivor bios in this video presentation for the 75th Holocaust Memorial Day by the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
2021 commemoration of February 25, 1941, strike by Dutch workers to protest Nazi persecution of Jews