| The following
are just a few of the compelling memoirs and other accounts written
about the Holocaust. Though these are most appropriate for young
adults, readers of all ages will glean insight into the Holocaust
through the experiences of those who survived it.
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NEW ADDITION: Cantor Hans Cohn, Risen from
the Ashes: Tales of a Musical Messenger
Lanham: Hamilton Books, 2005. In this memoir of hope and survival,
Cantor Cohn recounts his Holocaust experiences and his progression
toward spiritual renewal by means of faith, perseverance,
and humor.
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NEW ADDITION: Lucille Eichengreen, From
Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust
San Francisco: Mercury House, 1993. This memoir narrates
Ms. Eichengreen's experiences from a privileged childhood
through the horrors of Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, Neuengamme,
and Bergen-Belsen, and follows her to a new life in the United
States. Soon after the war, she testified against the Nazi
officers at Neuengamme at a war crimes tribunal. She is also
the author of Rumkowski and the Orphans of Lodz,
a recounting of Chaim Rumkowski's abuses of children that
provides a larger examination of his actions as the Nazi-appointed
leader of Lodz Ghetto.
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Toby Axelrod, In the Camps: Teens Who Survived
the Nazi Concentration Camps in series “Teen Witnesses
to the Holocaust,” Yaffa Eliach, ed. New York: The Rosen
Publishing Group, Inc., 1999. Introduction to the horrors
of the Holocaust by retelling the stories of those who were
teenagers at the time.
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Alicia Appleman-Jurman, Alicia:
My Story, New York: Bantam Books, 1988. After losing
her entire family to the Nazis at age 13, Alicia Appleman-Jurman
went on to save the lives of thousands of Jews, offering them
her own courage and hope in a time of upheaval and tragedy.
Not since the Diary of Anne Frank has a young voice so vividly
expressed the capacity for humanity and heroism in the face
of Nazi brutality.
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Livia Bitton-Jackson, I Have Lived a Thousand
Years: Growing up in the Holocaust, New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1997. This intimate memoir describes in agonizing
detail what it was like to survive the Nazi regime. Imprisoned
in Auschwitz as a teenager, Bitton-Jackson describes her terrible
experiences as one of the camp's few adolescent inmates. |
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Jacob Boas, We are Witnesses: Five Diaries
of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust, New York: Henry
Holt & Co., 1995. World War II Jewish teens David, Yitzhak,
Moshe, Eva and Anne tell their tragic stories as victims at
Hitler’s death camps through journal entries that introduce
the horrors of the Holocaust to present-day readers. |
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Ruth Elias, Triumph of Hope: From Thereisenstadt
and Auschwitz to Israel, translated by Margot Bettauer
Dembo, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in association
with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1998. This
is an internationally acclaimed memoir of a young Czech woman
who undergoes a disturbing variety of hellish experiences including
being deported to Auschwitz while several months pregnant. She
powerfully describes her experiences in the camps and the agonizing
choices imposed upon her. |
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Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning,
New York: Washington Square Press, 1963. The book begins with
a personal essay about Frankl's imprisonment in Auschwitz and
his struggle to find reasons to live. The second part of the
book describes the psychotherapeutic method that Frankl, a psychiatrist,
pioneered as a result of his experiences in the concentration
camps. |
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Helen Farkas, Remember the Holocaust: A Memoir
of Survival, Santa Barbara: Fithian Press, 1995. This moving
memoir traces the author’s harrowing journey from her
hometown in Romania to a ghetto to Auschwitz and along a death
march and finally to her escape from the communist regime after
the war. |
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Ina R. Friedman, The Other Victims: First-Person
Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis, Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1990. This book focuses on non-Jewish victims
of the Holocaust. Friedman interviews Gypsies, Jehovah’s
Witnesses and other religious figures, the disabled, and members
of other victim groups. Information is also included on black
people and homosexuals. |
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Gerda Weissman Klein, All But My Life,
New York: Hill and Wang, 1995. This is an account of Klein's
wartime experiences and the strength that enabled her to survive.
It tells how she, along with 4,000 other young women, began
a 300-mile march from a labor camp in Germany to Czechoslovakia,
and how she survived the march along with 120 other women. |
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Anita Lobel, No Pretty Pictures: A Child of
War, New York: Greenwillow Books, 1998. This is a hauntingly
potent memoir of a childhood of imprisonment and uncommon bravery
in Nazi-occupied Poland. This book is illustrated with the author’s
archival photos and is the remarkable account of her life during
those years. |
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Erna Rubinstein, The Survivor in Us All,
Hamden: Archon Books, 1983. Rubenstein recounts her experiences
as a Polish Jew who, with her three sisters, survived the concentration
camps where her parents and younger brother perished. It shows
the strength of four women as they struggle for survival. |
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Anne Grenn Saldinger, Life in a Nazi Concentration
Camp, San Diego: Lucent Books, 2001. Part of “The
Way People Live” series, this text provides a powerful
portrayal of historical circumstances, brought to life by a
focus on descriptions of daily routines and the unbearable conditions
of concentration camps, as well as personal struggles and triumphs. |
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Ruth Minsky Sender, The Cage, New York:
Aladdin Paperbacks, 1986. Sender’s account of her experiences
is one of the most graphic and dramatic in young people’s
literature. Her story begins just before the Nazi invasion of
Poland and continues through life in the Lodz ghetto and, finally,
at Auschwitz. |
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Ruth Minsky Sender, To Life, New York:
Macmillan Publishing Company, 1988. This is a sequel to The
Cage, which continues Sender’s story from the time of
her liberation from Auschwitz to her arrival in the United States
in 1950. |
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Dora Apsan Sorell, Tell the Children: Letters
to Miriam, San Rafael: Sighet Publishing, 1998. In these
letters to her grandchild, through stories about events witnessed
during the Holocaust, Sorell chronicles the life of a Jewish
family against the backdrop of the historical events of 20th
century Europe. |
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Elie Wiesel, Night, New York: Avon, 1969.
Wiesel is one of the most eloquent writers of the Holocaust,
and this book is his best-known work. This compelling narrative
describes his experience in Auschwitz. |
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