Because the Holocaust deals with ultimate issues, life and death, good and evil, people in the most extreme of conditions, it will continue to be a source of attraction to those who want to confront the ultimate issue. It has entered world culture as a defining event of 20th-century humanity and as the negative absolute in a world drawn to all sorts of relativism. I fear not Holocaust denial but its trivialization and vulgarization, not so much from antisemites and those who don’t understand its importance, but by those consumed by the Holocaust, consumed and overwhelmed. “Handle with care” is the advice of a sage. It is a rebuke to all of us when we do not.
I wrote
The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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.
The Destruction of the European Jews is widely considered the landmark study of the Holocaust. First published in 1961, Raul Hilberg's comprehensive account of how Germany annihilated the Jewish community of Europe spurred discussion, galvanized further research, and shaped the entire field of Holocaust studies. This revised and expanded edition of Hilberg's classic work extends the scope of his study and includes 80,000 words of new material, particularly from recently opened archives in eastern Europe, added over a lifetime of research. It is the work of a scholar who has devoted more than fifty years to exploring and analyzing the…
To understand the Holocaust, one must confront the experience of its victims; they can tell us what it was like to be there. I would suspect that there are more than ten thousand memoirs in virtually every language in the countries touched by the event and in the languages where Holocaust survivors made their post-war home. Two have entered the cannons of Holocaust Literature Elie Wiesel’s Night and Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz. Wiesel described his inner experience, his relationship with his father, and his struggle with God.
Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor's perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of…
Originally published in Italian and entitled, If this be a Man. Both Wiesel and Levi were in Auschwitz III – Buna-Monowitz in 1944-1945, Wiesel as a religious boy of 15 arriving from Sighet as part of the Hungarian deportations, and Primo Levi as a trained chemist deported from Italy. Levi uses his scientific talent to depict the world he encountered, examining both the victims and their perpetrators with unforgiving accuracy. For an understanding of the women’s perspective see Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, eds., Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust.
The true and harrowing account of Primo Levi’s experience at the German concentration camp of Auschwitz and his miraculous survival; hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as a “true work of art, this edition includes an exclusive conversation between the author and Philip Roth.
In 1943, Primo Levi, a twenty-five-year-old chemist and “Italian citizen of Jewish race,” was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from his native Turin to Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz is Levi’s classic account of his ten months in the German death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and miraculous endurance. Remarkable for its simplicity, restraint,…
The Holocaust is not solely the domain of historians or survivors. Lawrence Langer, a distinguished literary scholar, has shown us how much a study of Holocaust literature can contribute to our understanding. His work Art from the Ashes is an incomparable anthology, one that will need to be updated for the years since it was published as literary creativity is flourishing with regard to the Holocaust.
A comprehensive anthology of Holocaust literature that comprises selected fiction, poetry, and drama, as well as memoirs, transcripts of interviews with survivors, and diaries. With works by such authors as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Paul Celan, and Tadeusz Borowski, this collection is envisaged as a textbook for the growing number of courses in the literature of the Holocaust, and as a supplementary text for broader courses in the history of the Holocaust.
Peter Hayes taught the Holocaust at Northwestern University for a generation. Before his retirement, he decided to share the wisdom of his teaching with those of us not fortunate enough to be in his classroom. He asked and addressed eight basic questions: Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Why murder? Why this swift and sweeping? Why didn’t more Jews fight back more often? Why did survival rates diverge? Why such limited help from outside? What legacies? What lessons?
Even if I do not concur with his answers, his questions are essential, his engagement informed, intelligent, wise.
Peter Hayes has been teaching Holocaust studies for decades and Why? grows out of the questions he's encountered from his students. Despite the outpouring of books, films, memorials, museums and courses devoted to the subject, a coherent explanation of why such carnage erupted still eludes people. Numerous myths have sprouted, many to console us that things could have gone differently if only some person or entity had acted more bravely or wisely; others cast new blame on favourite or surprising villains or even on historians.
Why? dispels many legends and debunks the most prevalent ones, including the claim that the…
This book is related to an event, an institution, and a mission. The event is the Holocaust. The institution is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Holocaust Memorial Museum is no ordinary museum. Its holdings cannot be a celebration, nor its catalogue self-regarding. Thus, this work is not a catalogue, but a study of history. It focuses not on the Museum, but on the story of the Holocaust that is told in the Museum. Thus, it is intended as a general introduction to the Holocaust many of the same tools as the Museum, text and graphics, photos, and testimony. text, artifacts, photographs, oral histories, maps, documents, film, and music.
The World Must Know explores the Holocaust for those who seek to learn the history of the event independent of a visit to the Museum. For visitors to the Museum who seek additional information and a more in-depth survey of history, this book intensifies their experience.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
