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by Timothy Snyder
Nonfiction
In this epic history, the acclaimed author of “On Tyranny” presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks now facing us. Recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think, and thus all the more terrifying.
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by Tilar J Mazzeo
Nonfiction
(Young Readers’ Edition)
With guts of steel and unfaltering bravery, Irena smuggled thousands of children out of the walled Jewish ghetto in toolboxes and coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through the dank sewers and into secret passages that led to abandoned buildings, where she convinced her friends and underground resistance network to hide them.
Book: BCCLS
by Art Spiegelman
Nonfiction
The author re-enters his hugely influential Pulitzer Prize-winning “Maus,” answering the most commonly asked questions about it: Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics?—offering an essential new work about tragedy, memoir and creative metamorphosis.
Book: BCCLS
by Anne Frank
Nonfiction
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has since become a world classic — a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the ” Secret Annex” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death.
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by Peter Sis
Nonfiction
In 1938, twenty-nine-year-old Nicholas Winton saved the lives of almost 700 children trapped in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia-a story he never told and that remained unknown until an unforgettable TV appearance in the 1980s reunited him with some of the children he saved. Czech-American artist, MacArthur Fellow, and Andersen Award winner Peter Sís dramatizes Winton’s story in this distinctive and deeply personal picture book. He intertwines Nicky’s efforts with the story of one of the children he saved-a young girl named Vera, whose family enlisted Nicky’s aid when the Germans occupied their country.
Book: BCCLS
by Livia Bitton Jackson
Nonfiction
Thirteen-year-old Elli Friedmann’s life was changed forever when the Nazis invaded her homeland of Hungary. In excruciating and immediate detail, the author describes her descent into the hell of Auschwitz and recounts what it was like to be one of the few teenaged camp inmates. Through a series of tiny but miraculous twists of fate, Elli managed to come out of the camp alive, together with her mother and her brother. Although her story is heartbreaking, Elli’s enduring hope, perseverance, strength, and love throughout her ordeal make it an inspiring one as well. Readers will be moved by the intensity of Elli’s spirit and will rejoice in her ability to overcome the nightmare that was her daily reality.
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by Diane Ackerman
Nonfiction
The true story of how the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, bombers devastated Warsaw–and the city’s zoo along with it. The zookeepers began smuggling Jews into empty cages and storing ammunition…while keeping up the pretense of a light, happy existence at the same time.
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by Alan Gratz
Fiction
Based on the life of Jack Gruener, this book relates his story of survival from the Nazi occupation of Krakow, when he was eleven, through a succession of concentration camps, to the final liberation of Dachau.
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by Elie Wiesel
Nonfiction
The classic autobiography of a young man who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald; he remembers the death of his family, the loss of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man.
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by Erik Larsen
Nonfiction
How could the Holocaust happen? In the tale of an American ambassador and his family in 1933 Berlin, we see the Third Reich’s pomp give way to attacks on the Jews, censorship of the press, and the proposal of frightening new laws. His urgent telegraphs home are largely ignored until a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ambitions.
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by K. R. Gaddy
Nonfiction
Fritz, Gertrud, and Jean were classic outsiders: their clothes were different, their music was rebellious, and they weren’t afraid to fight. But they were also Germans living under Hitler, and any nonconformity could get them arrested or worse. Their earliest memories were of the Nazi rise to power and of their parents fighting Brownshirts in the streets, being sent to prison, or just disappearing. By the time they were teenagers, the Nazis expected them to be part of the war machine. Fritz, Gertrud, and Jean and hundreds like them said no. They grew bolder, painting anti-Nazi graffiti, distributing anti-war leaflets, and helping those persecuted by the Nazis. In World War II’s desperate final year, some Pirates joined in sabotage and armed resistance, risking the Third Reich’s ultimate punishment. This is their story.
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by Art Spiegelman
Fiction
A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history’s most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma.
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by Bernhard Schlink
Fiction
Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an illiterate older woman came to a mysterious end, a law student re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.
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by Meg Wiviott
Fiction
In 1938 Berlin, Germany, a cat sees Rosenstrasse change from a peaceful neighborhood of Jews and Gentiles to an unfriendly place where, one November night, men in brown shirts destroy Jewish-owned businesses and arrest or kill Jewish people. Includes facts about Kristallnacht and a list of related books and web resources.
Book: BCCLS
by Deborah Lipstadt
Nonfiction
The first full-scale history of Holocaust denial shows how – despite thousands of living witnesses and vast amounts of documentary evidence that 6 million Jews were murdered in Nazi concentration camps – an irrational conspiracy theory has gained the support of an international movement.
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by Louise Murphy
Fiction
A poignant and suspenseful retelling of a classic fairy tale. In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their parents to find safety in a dense forest. To hide their Jewish identity, they rename themselves Hansel and Gretel, wandering in the woods until they are taken in by an eccentric and stubborn old woman called “witch” by the nearby villagers.
by Deborah Hopkinson
Nonfiction
Ruth David was growing up in a small village in Germany when Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s. Under the Nazi Party, Jewish families like Ruth’s experienced rising anti-Semitic restrictions and attacks. By November 1938, anti-Semitism erupted into Kristallnacht and unleashed a wave of violence and forced arrests. Days later, desperate volunteers sprang into action to organize the Kindertransport, a rescue effort to bring Jewish children to England. Young people like Ruth David had to say good-bye to their families, unsure if they’d ever be reunited. Somehow, these rescued children had to learn to look forward, to hope.
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by Kath Shackleton
Nonfiction
In a time when people were ruthlessly persecuted and killed, some were able to make it through alive. Whether it was thanks to lucky twists of fate or the loving sacrifices of others, they lived to tell their stories, which serve as reminders to never allow such a tragedy to happen again. These are the unbelievable true stories of six children, in their own words, of how they survived one of the darkest times in human history.
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by Tatiana de Rosnay
Fiction
Paris, July 1942: Ten-year-old Sarah is arrested with her family in the infamous Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup. Before the police come to take them, she locks her younger brother in their favorite hiding place, thinking she’ll return in a few hours.
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by Phillip Hoose
Nonfiction
At the outset of World War II, Denmark did not resist German occupation. Deeply ashamed of his nation’s leaders, fifteen-year-old Knud Pedersen, his brother, and a handful of schoolmates resolved to take action against the Nazis. Naming their secret club after the fiery British leader, the young patriots in the Churchill Club committed countless acts of sabotage, infuriating the Germans, who eventually had the boys tracked down and arrested.
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by Trudy Ludwig
Nonfiction
Gifts from the Enemy is the powerful and moving story based on From a Name to a Number: A Holocaust Survivor’s Autobiography by Alter Wiener, in which Alter recalls his loss of family at the hands of the Nazis and his internment in five prison camps during World War II. This picture book tells one moving episode during Alter’s imprisonment, when an unexpected person demonstrates moral courage in repeated acts of kindness to young Alter during his imprisonment.
Book: BCCLS
by Doreen Rappaport
Nonfiction
Through twenty-one meticulously researched accounts– some chronicled in book form for the first time– Doreen Rappaport illuminates the defiance of tens of thousands of Jews across eleven Nazi-occupied countries during World War II.
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by Kip Wilson
Fiction
Disillusioned by the propaganda of Nazi Germany, Sophie Scholl, her brother, and his fellow soldiers formed the White Rose, a group that wrote and distributed anonymous letters criticizing the Nazi regime and calling for action from their fellow German citizens. The following year, Sophie and her brother were arrested for treason and interrogated for information about their collaborators.
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by Rachel Seiffert
Fiction
The Holocaust as viewed by three ordinary Germans: Helmut, a patriotic young photographer in 1930s Berlin; Lore, a twelve-year-old who guides her young siblings across postwar Germany after their Nazi parents are seized by the Allies; and, fifty years later, Micha, a young teacher obsessed with what his loving grandfather did in the war.
Book: BCCLS
by Daniel Mendelsohn
Nonfiction
A writer’s search for the truth behind his family’s tragic past in World War II Ukraine is part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work.
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by Rosemary Sullivan
Nonfiction
The controversial bestseller that claims to have finally solved the mystery that has haunted generations since World War II: Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family? And why? Led by a retired FBI agent, an international team used new technology, recently discovered documents and sophisticated investigative techniques to come to a shocking conclusion.
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by Elizabeth Wein
Fiction
A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it’s barely begun. When “Verity” is arrested by the Gestapo, she’s sure she doesn’t stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she’s living a spy’s worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution. As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?
Book: BCCLS
by Meg Wiviott
Fiction
Making a birthday card in Auschwitz was all of those things. But that is what Zlatka did, in 1944, for her best friend, Fania. She stole and bartered for paper and scissors, secretly creating an origami heart. Then she passed it to every girl at the work tables to sign with their hopes and wishes for happiness, for love, and most of all—for freedom. Fania knew what that heart meant, for herself and all the other girls. And she kept it hidden, through the bitter days in the camp and through the death marches. She kept it always.
Book: BCCLS
by Jennifer Voigt Kaplan
Fiction
Friedrich Weber is a member of the Jungvolk in Hannover. Membership is mandatory if quietly reluctant on his part. Emil Rosen is a Jewish boy in Hannover. Restrictions on Jewish life are coming into force, but Emil is still required to practice the piano and study for his bar mitzvah. The two meet at a remote spot on the Leine River, Emil finding peace and Friedrich remembering that it was his papa who had shared this “special place, their secret.” But in the weeks leading up to Kristallnacht, each is caught up in the all-consuming anti-Semitism of their country. Family loyalty, government opposition, bullying, and facing total upheaval in one’s life are dealt with memorably in this multilayered tale.
Book: BCCLS
by Neal Bascomb
Nonfiction
In 1945, at the end of World War II, Adolf Eichmann, the head of operations for the Nazis’ Final Solution, walked into the mountains of Germany and vanished from view. Sixteen years later, an elite team of spies captured him at a bus stop in Argentina and smuggled him to Israel, resulting in one of the century’s most important trials, one that cemented the Holocaust in the public imagination.
Book: BCCLS
by Roberto Innocente
Fiction
During World War II, a young German girl’s curiosity leads her to discover something far more terrible than the day-to-day hardships and privations that she and her neighbors have experienced.
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by Markus Zusak
Fiction
When Death has a story to tell, you listen.
It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
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by Antonio Iturbe
Fiction
As a young girl, Dita is imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken from her home in Prague in 1939, Dita does her best to adjust to the constant terror of her new reality. But even amidst horror, human strength and ingenuity persevere. When Jewish leader Fredy Hirsch entrusts Dita with eight precious volumes the prisoners have managed to sneak into the camp, She embraces the responsibility—and so becomes the librarian of Auschwitz. From one of the darkest chapters in history comes this extraordinary story of courage and hope.
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by Primo Levi
Nonfiction
In 1944, Levi, a 25-year-old chemist and member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance, was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. This is his classic, harrowing, firsthand experience of the infamous concentration camp and the story of his miraculous survival.
Book: BCCLS
by Rachel DeWoskin
Fiction
The year is 1940 and Lillia is fifteen when her mother, Alenka, disappears and her father flees with Lillia and her younger sister, Naomi, to Shanghai, one of the few places that will accept Jews without visas. There they struggle to make a life. Meanwhile Lillia is growing up, trying to care for Naomi. Lillia finds an outlet for her artistic talent by making puppets. She attends school sporadically, makes friends with Wei, a Chinese boy, and finds work as a performer at a “gentlemen’s club” without her father’s knowledge. But the conflict grows more intense as the Americans declare war, and the Japanese force the Americans in Shanghai into camps. More bombing, more death. Can they survive, caught in the crossfire?
Book: BCCLS
by Judy Batalion
Nonfiction
A previously untold story. Witnesses to the murder of their families and the destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland–some still in their teens–became the nerves of a wide-ranging resistance network that fought the Nazis.
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by Jane Yolen
Fiction
Hannah is tired of holiday gatherings−all her family ever talks about is the past. In fact, it seems to her that’s what they do every Jewish holiday. But this year’s Passover Seder will be different−Hannah will be mysteriously transported into the past… and only she knows the unspeakable horrors that await.
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by Rob Sharenow
Fiction
Karl Stern has never thought of himself as a Jew; after all, he’s never even been in a synagogue. But the bullies at his school in Nazi-era Berlin don’t care that Karl’s family doesn’t practice religion. Demoralized by their attacks, Karl longs to prove his worth. Then Max Schmeling, champion boxer and German hero, makes a deal with Karl’s father to give Karl boxing lessons. A skilled cartoonist, Karl has never had an interest in boxing, but now it seems like the perfect chance to reinvent himself. But when Nazi violence against Jews escalates, Karl must take on a new role: family protector. And as Max’s fame forces him to associate with Nazi elites, Karl begins to wonder where his hero’s sympathies truly lie. Can Karl balance his boxing dreams with his obligation to keep his family out of harm’s way?
Book: BCCLS
by Viktor Frankl
Nonfiction
The great psychiatrist, a survivor of four concentration camps, argues in this classic text that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose.
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by Jonathan Safran Foer
Fiction
With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man–who shares the author’s name–sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis, accompanied by an old man haunted by the war; an dog named Sammy Davis, Jr., Jr.; and Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English.
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by Michael Gruenbaum
Nonfiction
Michael “Misha” Gruenbaum enjoyed a carefree childhood playing games and taking walks through Prague with his beloved father. All of that changed forever when the Nazis invaded Prague. The Gruenbaum family was forced to move first into the Jewish Ghetto in Prague and then to the Terezin concentration camp. At Terezin, Misha roomed with forty other boys who became like brothers to him. Life was a bizarre, surreal balance—some days were filled with friendship and soccer matches, while others brought mortal terror as the boys waited to hear the names on each new list of who was being sent “to the East” on trains headed to Auschwitz. When the day came that his family’s name appeared on a transport list, their survival called for a miracle—one that tied Michael’s fate to a carefully sewn teddy bear, and to his mother’s unshakeable determination to keep her children safe.
Book: BCCLS
by Liz Kessler
Fiction
Vienna. 1936. Three young friends spend a perfect day together, unaware that around them Europe is descending into a growing darkness and that events will soon mean that they are ripped apart from each other as their lives take very different directions… Inspired by a true story, this is an extraordinary novel that is as powerful as it is heartbreaking and shows the bonds of love, family and friendship allow glimmers of hope to flourish, even in the most hopeless of times.
Book: BCCLS
by Eve Bunting
Fiction
In this allegory, the author’s reaction to the Holocaust, the animals of the forest are carried away, one type after another, by the Terrible Things, not realizing that if perhaps they would all stick together and not look the other way, such terrible things might not happen.
Book: BCCLS
by Monica Hesse
Fiction
The soldiers who liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp said the war was over, but nothing feels over to eighteen-year-old Zofia Lederman. Three years ago, she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else—her parents, her grandmother, radiant Aunt Maja—they went left. Zofia’s last words to her brother were a promise: Abek to Zofia, A to Z. When I find you again, we will fill our alphabet. Now her journey to fulfill that vow takes her through Poland and Germany, and into a displaced persons camp where everyone she meets is trying to piece together a future from a painful past. But the deeper Zofia digs, the more impossible her search seems. After all, how can she find one boy in a sea of the missing? In the rubble of a broken continent, Zofia must delve into a mystery whose answers could break her—or help her rebuild her world.
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by Lois Lowry
Fiction
In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.
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by Tony Kushner
Fiction
Aninku and Pepicek find their mother sick one morning, they need to buy her milk to make her better. The brother and sister go to town to make money by singing. But a hurdy-gurdy grinder, Brundibar, chases them away. They are helped by three talking animals and three hundred schoolchildren, to defeat the bully. Brundibar is based on a Czech opera for children that was performed fifty-five times by the children of Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp in 1943.
Book: BCCLS