I have a friend who comes to town once a year for a weekend, and she loves to read books set in or during the Holocaust. I'm usually a SFF fan. About the only kind of books I avoid are romances.
What I have read set in/during the holocaust (that I liked) is
Night by Elie Wiesel
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
by Bird_Commodore18
26 Comments
The gates of the forest by elie wiesel
Does it have to be the holocaust specifically or do you mean world war II, which also touches upon the persecution of the Jews?
If you haven’t read The Book Thief then you absolutely MUST. It’s incredible in so many ways. Five stars for sure!
Le Assaggiatrici by Rosella Postorino
The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer
*Thanks to My Mother* by Schoschana Rabinovici Mrs Rabinovici was a child in the Vilnius ghetto and her incredibly brave mother kept her alive through that, three camps, and a death march.
*The Painted Bird* by Jerzy Kosinski This one is written as if it’s a memoir but it’s fiction. Kosinski’s family were hidden from the Nazis by their Catholic neighbors. Nevertheless, it is a book that’s stayed with me for decades now.
*Destined to Witness* by Hans Massaquoi Mr Massaquoi grew up mixed race in Hamburg in the 1930s
*Five Chimneys* by Olga Lengyel a very early memoir of Auschwitz; I think Mrs Lengyel wrote it only a couple years after the end of the war.
*After Auschwitz* or *Eva’s Story* by Eva Schloss (Ms Schloss’ mother married Otto Frank after the war)
* *The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution* by Henry Friedlander.
* *Rubber Truncheon: Being an Account of Thirteen Months Spent in a Concentration Camp* by Wolfgang Langhoff.
* *Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women* by Sarah Helm.
* *At Last the Truth About Eichmann’s Inferno Auschwitz* by Miklós Nyiszli.
* *Escape from Sobibor* by Richard Rashke.
* *Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel* by Anatoly Kuznetsov (fictionalized memoir).
* *Germans into Nazis* by Peter Fritzsche.
* *Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography* by John Toland.
* *Hitler: A Study in Tyra*nny by Alan Bullock.
* *Hitler* by Joachim C. Fest.
* *The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation* by Ian Kershaw.
* *Hitler: The Policies of Seduction* by Rainer Zitelmann.
* *Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism* by Ernst Nolte.
* *Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century* by Eugen Weber.
* *Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History* by Gerhard L. Weinberg.
* *The Last Days of Hitler* by H. R. Trevor-Roper.
* *The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements* by Eric Hoffer.
* *Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin* by Timothy Snyder.
* *The Coming of the Third Reich* by Richard J. Evans.
* *The Third Reich in Power* by Richard J. Evans.
* *The Third Reich at War* by Richard J. Evans.
* *Nuremberg Diary* by G.M. Gilbert.
* *Spandau: The Secret Diaries* by Albert Speer.
If she doesn’t mind satire, she might give The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis a read. It’s a bit of a weird book though.
The Teacher of Warsaw by Mario Escobar
Mala’s Cat by Mala Kacenberg
X Troop by Leah Garrett
The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland
The Holocaust by Laurence Rees (all his wwii books are excellent btw)
Story of a Secret State by Jan Karski
The Krakow Ghetto Pharmacy the Tadeusz Pankiewicz
The Pianist by Władysława Szpilmana
The House of Fragile Things by James McAuley
Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finkelstein
If This Is A Man by Primo Levi
I had more but Reddit ate my comment before I had finished it lol
*Tales of the Master Race* by Marcie Hershman
The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult is one you might both enjoy. In current times, the granddaughter of a holocaust survivor is dealing with grief, and there are flashbacks to her grandma coping with life in the camps by polishing a vampire novel she’d been writing when she was rounded up. It’s surprisingly deep, and the horror story grandma was writing is so good I’ve skimmed through the book multiple times to read it again
Two classics that have not been mentioned yet are:
Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101, by Christopher Browning, and
Into That Darkness, by Gitta Sereny
Well, and Raul Hilberg’s masterpiece, The Destruction of the European Jews.
Rescue in Denmark by Harold Flender.
I just finished a YA book, Under the Same Stars by Libya Bray, that is partly set in during the Holocaust. Bray did a great job interweaving multiple story/time lines.
{{Briar Rose: A Novel of the Holocaust by Jane Yolen}}
I haven’t read every comment, but All the Light We Cannot See is great also. By Anthony Doerr.
Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz
We Were the Lucky Ones (recently made into a TV series)
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (also made into a TV show)
I’d recommend *The Book of Lost Names* by Kristin Harmel.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
The Boy in the striped Pajamas
Maus by Art Spiegelman
In the mouth of the wolf. We Germans. A joe Rubenstein story. Maus.
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Lilac Girls – Martha Hall Kelly
Don’t sleep on Maus
All But My Life by Gerda Klein