We'll be welcoming Heather Morris, author of the Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilke's Journey, for a (virtual) visit next week. Since we only have one copy of her books, I thought it would be a good time to let you know about some of he other holocaust stories we have in the library.
I've grouped the books by reading difficulty, from quick reads aimed at yrs 5-8, to teen books, picture books and adult reads. The lists include a mix of well-researched historical fiction, fictionalised biographies and autobiographies.
For non-fiction books on the Holocaust. look downstairs at NF 940.5318. There's a whole shelf of books ranging from personal stories like Hidden Teens to theoretical texts like Jewish resistance against the Nazis and British Attitudes toward the Atrocities.
The books below are all in RGHS library, but you may also be interested in books from these reading lists. Let me know if there's something you'd like me to buy.
I've grouped the books by reading difficulty, from quick reads aimed at yrs 5-8, to teen books, picture books and adult reads. The lists include a mix of well-researched historical fiction, fictionalised biographies and autobiographies.
For non-fiction books on the Holocaust. look downstairs at NF 940.5318. There's a whole shelf of books ranging from personal stories like Hidden Teens to theoretical texts like Jewish resistance against the Nazis and British Attitudes toward the Atrocities.
The books below are all in RGHS library, but you may also be interested in books from these reading lists. Let me know if there's something you'd like me to buy.
- https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/books/reading-lists/holocaust-books-for-young-adults
- https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/childrens-books
- https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=Commemorate-Holocaust-Remembrance-Day-with-this-Booklist-libraries-students
- https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/jul/27/young-adult-fictions-counterfactual-attraction-to-nazi-germany (alternative histories)
Quick Reads
When Hannah and her family are transported to Bergen Belsen camp, her courage that saves the lives of herself and her younger sister. True Story. | A gentle introduction to the Holocaust, which tells real stories of children in hiding, changing their identity, surviving in or escaping the camps and staying one step ahead of the Nazis. | Felix is determined to escape his orphanage nad save his parents from a concentration camp. The series continues with Then, Now, After and Soon. | The title refers to Hitler's lie that jews were responsible for Germany's economic crisis. the this is the story of Jewish-Hungarian girl Isabella Leitner, who survived the camps. |
Marrianne was one of the first Jewish children taken out of Germany to safety in Britain, but life is tough as a Jewish migrant, especially as an 'enemy' German. True Story. Good bye Marrianne is the sequel. | Jo finds out that Jewish children are being smuggled away from the Nazis over the mountains near his village. All goes to plan until German soldiers start patrolling the mountains, and Jo realises the children are trapped. | Almost an introduction to historiography, this story alternates between Hana's life and Japanese peace-museum curator Fumiko Ishioka's quest to find information and artefacts about her life. | This novel tells the story of Miri, describing life pre-war and detailing the impact of the war on the Jewish community and the conditions in the Warsaw ghetto. |
In Austria, Jewish and Aryan best friends fight to survive and escape together. Translated from German. | True story of a Belgian-Jewish girl who survived by being hidden in various homes. Great details of the nice and nasty reactions to Nazi oppression. | A child, who remembers life before life the concentration camp, makes toys to give to the other children at the very special party they are going to have when the soldier liberate the camp. | This true story reveals how Hetty and her siblings survived after they were taken from their parents and encamped at the Children’s House in Belsen, Germany. |
"They risked everything to escape- . Based on the true story of the World War II refugee ship St Louis"-- Cover. | Rachel's father gives her instructions that will save her life. He also tells her not to speak. Rachel remains silent for the rest of the war. But what has happened to her family? And will Rachel regain her voice when she really needs it? | For her Bat Mitzvah, Laura is "twinned" with the real historical figure of Sara Gittler. From Sara's brave story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Laura learns to confront a problem in her own life. | When Theodora is fourteen, her father has a mysterious vision and leaves his family to live with his first wife. Theodora's grandfather is a Holocaust survivor. Complex themes, past and present tensions tell the story of a family falling apart. PRC book. |
Stolen from her family by the Nazis, Nadia is a young girl who tries to make sense of her confusing memories and haunting dreams. Bit by bit she starts to uncover the truth-that the German family she grew up with, the woman who calls herself Nadia's mother, are not who they say they are. | Lida and her younger sister are caught and separated. Lida is sent to a slave labour camp, where she works from dawn to dusk on only bread and soup, clad in one thin dress and no shoes. Evev if she manages to survive the war, how will she find her sister again? Sequel to Stolen Child | The story of Lily Renee Wilheim, the Jewish girl who escaped from the Nazis through the Kindertransport operation, leaving her parents behind and traveling alone to England, later becoming a comic book artist in New York. In graphic novel format. |
Teen Reads
The story of sleeping beauty is retold to great effect in this novel when a promise to her dying grandmother will lead Recbecca on to uncover the truth of her nana's astonishing claim: I am Briar Rose. One of the most important books here, in my opinion, as it addresses the lesser known Romani (gyspy) holocaust. | A poignant romance "filled with music and sadness and an accidental love," this story is about Hanna, talented pianist who is selected to play the piano for he camp commander and accidentally gets to know his son. | When Sasha and his mother are forced in to hiding, Sasha is learns to to talk, walk and act like a girl, so that he is not discovered as a jew. Based on a true story, this novel details his identity crisis including the way it affects him after the war. | True story of Lale Sokolov who was given the task of tattooing numbers onto his fellow victims' arms. Waiting in line, shaking with terror, was a young woman called Gita. For Lale - full of life, even in this place of death - it was love at first sight. |
Alexander doesn't need to look at the number tattooed on his arm. A10567; he knows it by heart. He also knows to survive Auschwitz, he must toughen up. Being soft will get him killed. | While exploring his new home, Bruno meets a boy on the other side of the fence whose life and circumstances are very different from his own. Their friendship has devastating consequences. | At 5 years, Anita went into hiding moving from place to place until the Nazis finally caught up with her. Freed after the war from a concentration camp, she ended up in the US where she spent her life making pictures. Memoir. | When 16-year-old Helmut Hubner listens to the BBC news on an illegal short-wave radio, he quickly discovers Germany is lying to the people. But when he tries to expose the truth with leaflets, he's tried for treason. |
With his perfect Aryan looks, Peter is adopted by a Nazi leader. But Peter is not quite the specimen they think. He is forming his own ideas about what he is seeing, what he is told. | In 1940s Poland, t twins Chaim and Gittel must rely on each other to endure life in a ghetto and the horrors of a concentration camp where they lose everything but each other. | In WW II Germany, Jenny's father is taken prisoner by Americans and her brother is killed. When the mother of her Jewish friend, Rafael, is taken by the Gestapo Jenny's family hides him. | The true story of a young girl's incredible war-time years in exile in Siberia, told without bitterness and set down in a remarkably compelling and wholly unforgettable narrative. |
Gentle cartoon pictures belie the hard hitting message as an elderly couple prepare for the nuclear holocaust with typically British, stiff upper lips. Graphic novel. | Ruth's world is turned upside down when the Nazis invade Austria. Separated from her family, her only hope to escape Vienna comes from Quin, a young English professor, who unexpectedly offers her a marriage of convenience. | Chaim and his twin sister Gittel find themselves face to face with a cruel Nazi doctor who has an unsettling interest in twins. Yolen draws inspiration from the “Hansel and Gretel” fairy tale to paint a wholly original story of love and hope against all odds. | A young boy's journey of survival across Europe following his assisted escape from a concentration camp. |
Margot Baumann has left school to take up her sister's job in the mailroom of a large prison. Margot steals a few letters, intending to send them in secret, only to find herself drawn to their heart-rending words of hope, of despair, and of love. | Liesel's life is changed forever when she picks up a single object, abandoned in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook. So begins Liesel's love affair with books and words. But when Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, nothing will ever be the same again. | While flying an Allied fighter plane , American ATA pilot and amateur poet, Rose Justice, is captured and sent to Ravensbrück,. Trapped in horrific circumstances, Rose finds hope in the impossible through the loyalty, bravery and friendship of her fellow prisoners. | A classic fantasy novel set in a dystopian future far too close to Nazi Germany, where those who are deemed 'different' are herded into camps. |
Utterly indoctrinated in the Nazi ideology, tells you his story until 1945 ‘Lebensborn’ breeding program, designed to produce perfect Nazi children. When Max meets Lukas, a young Polish rebels , cracks start to appear in Max’s convictions… | In August 1941, most of Riga's Jewish population was marched to the Rumbula Forest just outside town, forced to lie in rows in huge pits and then shot dead by Nazis. Hanna, is desperate to survive, despite being faced with antisemitism, the ghetto, prison and a train to a death camp. | Separated from her father and forced onto a crowded train, Lina, her mother, and her young brother are sent to a Siberian work camp, where Lina documenting these events by drawing. She embeds clues in her drawings of their location, hoping her drawings will make their way to her father’s prison camp. |
Older Readers
By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, this classic graphic novel captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents. True story. | Escaping from a ghetto, Edith tears the yellow star from her clothing goes underground, scavenging for food and searching each night for a safe place to sleep. When a Christian friend shares her identity papers, Edith flees to Munich where she meets a Nazi who falls in love with her. True story. | The facts of the first official Jewish transport to Auschwitz are little known. Sent to almost certain death, the young women were powerless and insignificant not only because they were Jewish--but also because they were female. Detailed research into the experiences of the very few survivors. | Elite gymnast Edith Eger was torn from her family to endure the horrors of Auschwitz, including a close encounter with Dr Menegele. Part 1 discusses the holocaust, Part 2 coming to terms with her pastas a survivor and Part 3 her using her experiences to help trauma survivors and a psychiatrist. Highly recommended |
After a long illness, Michael returns to thank Hanna, the woman who read to him while he was ill. They become lovers until she suddenly disappears. Many years later he enters the courtroom to find her on trial for activities in WW2. | Follows the true story of Dita Kraus, a fourteen-year-old girl from Prague who after being sent to Auschwitz is chosen to protect the eight volumes prisoners have smuggled past the guards. | These events, the persecution of my people, have simply become part of the collection of facts that people now call 'history'. I lived these facts every day. They are part of my memory. memoir | Fifty years after her Polish childood, Roma, an artist living in Germany, attended a screening of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, and instantly knew that “the girl in the red coat” was her. Memoir |
A child of holocaust survivors, the author journeys back with them to Europe, exploring their memories and finding some kind of hope and what it means to be Jewish. Poetic and innovative in structure, this novel has graced the HSC syllabus. | Nobel Peace Prize winner, Elie Wiesel's candid, horrific account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps addresses philosophical questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be. | With the rest of their families gassed, these young wives are determined to hold on to all they have left—their lives, and those of their unborn babies. Having concealed their condition from infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, they are forced to work and almost starved to death... | The booker prize-winning book behind the movie Schindler's List describes extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, a wealthy industrialist who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the war into a compassionate angel of mercy. |
Dr Max Aue is a family man and owner of a lace factory in post-war France. He is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a former SS intelligence officer and cold-blooded assassin. | Varga tells the story of her Hungarian mother's experience of World War 2 and emigration with her extended family to Australia, working through her understanding of and relationship with that mother. | Cilka Klein is 18 years old when Auschwitz-Birkenau is liberated but she is then sentenced to a Siberian labor camp as a Nazi collaborator Nazis (having been chosen as a 'girlfriend' by an officer) where she uses her charm and wit to survive. | 31 members of the Sydney Child Holocaust Survivors Group share personal stories of loss and endurance from their youths in Nazi Germany. Each experience remains an indelible trauma that affects each contributor in profound and unspeakable ways. |
Vera and Edith's mothers threw them from a carriage, promising they would follow. Alone in a frozen, alien land, they find refuge and barter for their lives by working on an isolated farm in Austria. As Vera and Edith grapple with the aftermath of the war, Vera falls in love with an american captain, but hen he disappears.... | To save her father, Ava marries a Nazi officer. Ava joins an underground resistance movement that seeks to help victims survive the horrors of the German war machine. But she must live a double life, hiding her true feelings from her husband, even as she falls in love with him. | In the Summer of 1940, Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to report on Nazi crimes and raise a secret army to stage an uprising. Over the next two and half years, Witold forged an underground army that smuggled evidence of atrocities to the West, His reports from the camp were to shape the Allies response to the Holocaust. |