KL

By Nikolaus Wachsmann,

Book cover of KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps

Book description

Winner of the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize and the Wolfson History Prize

In March of 1933, a disused factory surrounded by barbed wire held 223 prisoners in the town of Dachau. By the end of 1945, the SS concentration camp system had become an overwhelming landscape of terror. Twenty-two…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

2 authors picked KL as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

To ensure we’ll never repeat the Holocaust, we must understand it. One of the most difficult books you may ever read, KL is a comprehensive and impressive history of the Nazis’ camp system. The New York Times called this nearly 900-page work by Nikolaus Wachsmann, a history professor at London University, a work of “prodigious scholarship.”

Time and again, when researching my own book for young readers, I turned to Wachsmann for nuanced detail, impeccable research, and a better understanding of some of the “choiceless choices” faced by Jewish men, women, and children. Not for the faint of heart, but…

From Deborah's list on World War II in Europe.

How I wish I had had access to this book when I was researching my own book on my grandfather’s role in the Holocaust. There have been so many academic books about the concentration camps and this one, published 70 years after the last camp was liberated, feels like a landmark.

If you love KL...

Ad

Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

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…

Want books like KL?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like KL.

Browse books like KL

Book cover of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Book cover of The Long Night: A True Story
Book cover of East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,901

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like KL, you might also like...

Book cover of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

No Average Day by Rona Simmons,

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.

The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on…

Book cover of Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle against the Nazi Occupation of France

Doctors at War by Ellen Hampton,

Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle against the Nazi Occupation of France takes readers into the moral labyrinth of the Occupation years, 1940-45, to examine how the medical community dealt with the evil authority imposed on them. Anti-Jewish laws prevented many doctors from practicing, inspiring many to form secret medical…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in concentration camps, Germany, and prisoners?

Germany 496 books
Prisoners 107 books