Joshua M. Greene is the author of a dozen Holocaust biographies that have sold more than a half-million copies worldwide. He sits on the board of Yale University Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies and has spoken on issues of Holocaust memory for such outlets as NPR and Fox News. His editorials on Holocaust history have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune.
Unstoppable is the story of an American hero--a man who survived the hell of Auschwitz to become one of the most successful, mesmerizing, and outrageous personalities in postwar America. Siggi Wilzig was a force of nature: a Holocaust survivor who arrived in New York penniless and without formal education at just twenty-one years old yet went on to build a $4 billion oil-and-banking empire. This is the ultimate immigrant story, an epic rags-to-riches adventure that follows Siggi from starvation on death marches to dinner at the White House--a story that starts in Auschwitz and ends with one of the most lucrative bank sales in Wall Street history. A survivor's saga in a category of its own, Unstoppable does not dwell on tragedy, but instead celebrates Siggi's ingenuity, hope, resolve, and message: no matter how cruel or unjust the world may be, humans can overcome the past to achieve a bright future.
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Langer has written the finest analysis available on the workings of traumatic memory, one that contributes to our understanding of history as autobiography—a brilliant mapping of the tortured terrain of Holocaust remembrance.
The world knows about Anne Frank through her diary. Yet Anne Frank knew nothing about the Holocaust apart from reports on radio and glimpses of roundups through the window of her attic hideaway. She never lived long enough to write a second volume, which would have included her experiences in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen (where she died of typhus). In her diary, Hanna Levy-Hass provides us with a more realistic, first-hand account of the Holocaust as experienced by a young woman inside Hitler’s camps.
Many written survivor accounts succumb to the temptation of literary embellishment, which can camouflage the stark reality of what occurred. Levi succeeds in engaging the convention of writing without compromising the content of memory. His philosophic analysis of what he experienced adds to the power of events recalled with disturbing honesty. This is an ideal work for understanding the similarities and differences between written and spoken testimony.
To derive a full perspective on the power of personal testimony, Hillesum’s diary and letters are an essential complement to the standard literature. Hillesum died in Auschwitz at age 29, having already lived the full life of a Dutch Jewish bohemian. Her brutally honest confrontations with feelings of inadequacy and self-betrayal form a unique backdrop to accounts from inside Hitler’s camps.
Kraft has drawn on 200 hours of testimony by Holocaust survivors to demonstrate how memory responds to atrocity. His juxtaposition of accounts allows one individual to be presented in relation to others, showing personal tragedies as well as the collective atrocity from the insights of multi-voice narratives.
5,810 authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about the Holocaust, Holocaust survivors, and prisoner of war.
We think you will like Night, The Destruction of the European Jews, and Why? if you like this list.
From Jack's list on the Holocaust and its aftermath.
I have used Night in teaching the Holocaust with great results. The book provides us with the full scope of the steps from freedom to arrest, to ghettoization, to deportation to surviving the death camps to liberation. The book challenges the reader to raise important moral questions linked to belief in God, and what one does to survive, including difficult choices made under extreme duress, such as sharing a slice of bread with a parent.
From Michael's list on the Holocaust and the horror it inflicted.
There are several major histories of the Holocaust. Each has strengths and weaknesses, but they offer the reader an in-depth view of the events described in this work. The most influential of these histories is Raul Hilberg's The Destruction the European Jews: Revised and Definitive Edition, a three-volume study has also been condensed into a one-volume college edition. It provides an unequaled insight into how the Holocaust was perpetrated. The work is considered magisterial by many scholars of the Holocaust. Hilberg used German documentation as his major source. He has been criticized by scholars for what they consider an overreliance on German material as well as his depiction of Jewish leadership as inept in responding to the events of the Holocaust. No one, including those who criticize, has written a better or more enduring work. First published more than a half-century ago, it has stood the test of time.
From Rebecca's list on the Holocaust and the United States.
To be honest, Hayes’s book has just a chapter on American and world response to the Holocaust (which he calls “Onlookers”) but the book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand this subject. Hayes, a Holocaust studies professor emeritus at Northwestern University, basically took all his lectures to undergrads and put them into this book, explaining why and how the Holocaust happened. It’s an incredibly readable book reflecting the latest scholarship, answering all the most frequently asked questions, and giving you all the context you need to make sense of why the United States—the people and the government—responded the way they did.
