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)

Unknown Holocaust photos – found in attics and archives – are helping researchers recover lost stories and providing a tool against denial

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)

Roma and Sinti in Auschwitz

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)

International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antigypsyism/anti-Roma discrimination

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

Feng-Shan Ho, Chinese Consul-General in Vienna in 1938, issued visas to Shanghai on a large scale against the orders of his superior, the Chinese ambassador in Berlin

French resistance forger saved thousands of lives and short 2016 documentary about Adolfo Kaminsky

Hungarian colonel who saved Jews during WWII commemorated

“Life in a Jar” theatre project commemorating Polish Irena Sendler –- rescuer of 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto

Jewish Foundation for the Righteous

2003 documentary UNLIKELY HEROES highlights seven extraordinary Jews who resisted:

Pinchas Rosenbaum – a rabbi’s son who joined the underground to rescue Jews, often disguised as an SS officer or Hungarian Arrow Cross officer.

Willy Perl – an Austrian Jew who, in 1938, defied Eichmann by going over his head to his superiors in Berlin with a scheme to allow Jews to go to Palestine illegally.

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis – Bauhaus artist who shared her gift with the children of Theresienstadt before being murdered in Auschwitz.

Leon Kahn – after witnessing his sister and father’s murder and then almost his entire village murdered by Lithuanian collaborators, he went on to join the partisans in the forests of Poland, Russia and Lithuania.

Robert Clary – well-known Hollywood actor who, as a French Jewish child, was deported to several concentration camps and sang for his survival and to give hope to other prisoners.

Recha Sternbuch – devoutly Orthodox Jew, the daughter of a rabbi, living in neutral Switzerland who led a rescue effort that brought hundreds of refugees to her small town and who sheltered many of these people in her own home.

Anna Heilman – deported to Auschwitz, she became part of a plot with her sister to steal gunpowder that was then used by the Sondercommandos in the destruction of Birkenau’s infamous Crematorium #4.

Holocaust and Human Rights Education

The Holocaust: Remembrance, Respect, and Resilience by Michael Polgar and Suki John

U.K.

S.S. site on U.K. soil

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)

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

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

2021 Turkish Jewish community commemoration of the 1942 Struma disaster in which 768 Jews, including 103 children, died

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)

Video clip from the 2019 United Nations Holocaust Memorial Ceremony speech by Holocaust child survivor Inge Auerbacher

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”

Yad Vashem “Righteous Among the Nation” Antonin Kalina who, as a non-Jewish Czech political prisoner at Buchenwald, organized Block 66.

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 camp

Justice 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