Reading List
116 Candles Delver Deeper Reading List
Nonfiction For Younger Readers
Bauer, Yehuda. A History of the Holocaust. New York: Franklin Watts, 2001.
The author traces the roots of anti-Semitism that burgeoned through the ages, and provides a comprehensive description of how and why the Holocaust occurred. This history is intensified by moving documentation, including passages from diaries left by concentration camp inmates as their only living testimony to the horrors they endured, plus tales of individual heroism amid unparalleled adversity.
Fletcher, William P. Recording your Family History: A guide to preserving oral history with videotape, audiotape, suggested topics and questions, interview techniques. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986.
A program designed to help record the oral history of a relative or friend and preserve it on audio or video tape for future generations.
Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl.Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1952.
The Diary of a Young Girl is the record of two years in the life of a remarkable Jewish girl whose triumphant humanity in the face of unfathomable deprivation and fear has made the book one of the most enduring documents of our time
Notowitz, David. Voices of the Shoah, Remembrances of the Holocaust. Los Angeles: Rhino Records, 2000.
The stories of those who survived are astounding. Their stories reveal the worst side of human nature. But they also show how, in this world that sometimes seems overwhelmingly permeated by evil, one person can make a difference.
As the Holocaust survivor community ages, the USC Shoah Foundation has embarked on an ambitious new project to transform survivors into 3D digital projections. 116 Cameras follows Eva Schloss, a survivor of Auschwitz and stepsister of Anne Frank, through her story as an interactive hologram that will have conversations with generations to come.
Frankl, Viktor Emil. Man’s Search for Meaning.Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of those he treated in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose.
Lanzmann, Claude. Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust: The Complete Text of the Film. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.
The Nazi extermination of Jews is examined through interviews of survivors, witnesses and perpetrators and through footage of the sites of the death camps and environs as they appear today. Those interviewed include Jewish survivors of the death camps and the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Polish farmers and villagers who lived near the camps and Nazis who worked in the camps and the ghettos.
Lee, Carol Ann. The Hidden Life of Otto Frank.New York: Morrow, 2003.
In this definitive new biography, Carol Ann Lee provides the answer to one of the most heartbreaking questions of modern times: Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis? Probing this startling act of treachery, Lee brings to light never before documented information about Otto Frank and the individual who would claim responsibility -- revealing a terrifying relationship that lasted until the day Frank died.
Rajchman, Chil. The Last Jews of Treblinka: A Survivor’s Memory 1942-1943.New York: Pegasus Books, 2011.
Why do some live while so many others perish? Tiny children, old men, beautiful girls; in the gas chambers of Treblinka, all are equal. The Nazis kept the fires of Treblinka burning night and day, a central cog in the wheel of the Final Solution. There was no pretense of work here like in Auschwitz or Birkenau, only a train platform and a road covered with sand. A road that led only to death. But not for the author, a young man who survived working as a "barber" and "dentist," heartsick with witnessing atrocity after atrocity. Yet he managed to survive so that somehow he could tell the world what he had seen.
Yow, Valerie Raleigh. Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences.Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Provides a comprehensive guide to oral history for researchers and students in diverse fields including history, sociology, anthropology, education, psychology, social work, and ethnographic methods. The text tackles not just the practicalities of interviewing but also the varied ethical, legal, and philosophical questions that can arise, and allows for dedicated discussion of both legalities and ethics.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Bantam Books, 1960.
It is 1944. The Jews of Sighet, Hungary are rounded up and driven into Nazi concentration camps. For the next terrible year, young Elie Wiesel experiences the loss of everything he loves --- home, friends, family --- in an agonizing journey through Birkenau, Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald. The greatest tragedy of our time, told through the eyes of a 15-year old boy.
Apelfeld, Aharon. The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping. New York: Schocken Books, 2017.
At the end of World War II, Erwin makes his way across Europe to the refugee camps in Naples. He spends most of the trek asleep and is helped along the way by other survivors. At the refugee camps, and struggling not to sleep all the time, he and some other young boys begin to prepare for a life in Palestine. Starting his new life at a kibbutz in his new homeland, and with the need to sleep all the time fading, Erwin must deal with learning a new life and try and reconcile that with the memories of his former one.
Presser, Bram. The Book of Dirt. Melbourne, Australia: Text Publishing, 2017.
The Book of Dirt is a completely original novel about love, family secrets, and Jewish myths. And it is a heart-warming story about a grandson’s devotion to the power of storytelling and his family’s legacy.
Rosnay, Tatiana de. Sarah’s Key. St. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2007.
On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Bauer, Yehuda. A History of the Holocaust. New York: Franklin Watts, 2001.
The author traces the roots of anti-Semitism that burgeoned through the ages, and provides a comprehensive description of how and why the Holocaust occurred. This history is intensified by moving documentation, including passages from diaries left by concentration camp inmates as their only living testimony to the horrors they endured, plus tales of individual heroism amid unparalleled adversity.
Fletcher, William P. Recording your Family History: A guide to preserving oral history with videotape, audiotape, suggested topics and questions, interview techniques. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986.
A program designed to help record the oral history of a relative or friend and preserve it on audio or video tape for future generations.
Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl.Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1952.
The Diary of a Young Girl is the record of two years in the life of a remarkable Jewish girl whose triumphant humanity in the face of unfathomable deprivation and fear has made the book one of the most enduring documents of our time
Notowitz, David. Voices of the Shoah, Remembrances of the Holocaust. Los Angeles: Rhino Records, 2000.
The stories of those who survived are astounding. Their stories reveal the worst side of human nature. But they also show how, in this world that sometimes seems overwhelmingly permeated by evil, one person can make a difference.
Boyne, John. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: A Fable.New York: Ember, 2011.
When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move to a new house far, far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people in the distance. But Bruno decides there must be more to this desolate new place than meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different from his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.
Iturbe, Antonio. The Librarian of Auschwitz. New York, NY: Godwin Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2017.
Fourteen-year-old Dita is one of the many imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken, along with her mother and father, from the Terezin ghetto in Prague, Dita is adjusting to the constant terror that is life in the camp. When Jewish leader Freddy Hirsch asks Dita to take charge of the eight precious volumes the prisoners have managed to sneak past the guards, she agrees. And so Dita becomes the librarian of Auschwitz
Lowry, Lois. Number the Stars. St. Petersburg, FL: Cornerstone Books, 1995.
As German troops begin their campaign to “relocate” all the Jews of Denmark, 10-year-old Annemarie Johansen’s family takes Annemarie’s best friend, Ellen Rosen, and conceals her by pretending she’s part of the family. Then, through Annemarie’s eyes, readers watch as the Danish Resistance smuggles almost the entire population of Denmark --- nearly 7,000 people --- across the sea to Sweden.
Nolan, Han. If I Should Die Before I Wake. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1994.
A neo-Nazi teen is transported back in time to World War II Poland, where she is now a Jewish girl in a Nazi ghetto.
Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed forever when she picks up a single object, abandoned in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, and this is her first act of book thievery. So begins Liesel's love affair with books and words, and soon she is stealing from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library . . . wherever there are books to be found.