Holocaust Memoirs, Testimonies, Histories
Select Bibliography (English)

Compiled by Dr. Karin Doerr©
Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

(*Signifies by or about Women)
(#Signifies recommended Readings)

Updated: September, 2021
 

There are literally thousands of personal testimonies. This compilation contains a collection of varied and different perspectives and experiences of those who lived through and witnessed the Shoah. I have provided short annotations if the content is not obvious from the title.

There is a separate bibliography for Critical Writing on Literary and Artistic Responses to the Holocaust, one for Secondary Sources on the Holocaust, and one for Antisemitism..

For a list of Holocaust novels, stories, plays, and poems, see Literary Responses to the Holocaust.

See also the Azrieli Foundation Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program online at https://memoirs.azrielifoundation.org/recollection/#home|view-all.  

*#Altbeker Cyprys, Ruth. A Jump for Life: A Survivor's Journal from Nazi-Occupied Poland. New York: Continuum, 1997. [Excellent account of the constantly threatened Jewish life (here of a woman) in Poland during the Holocaust and the difficulty of survival afterwards.]

*Anthology of Holocaust Literature. Eds. Jacob Glatstein, Israel Knox, and Samuel Margoshes. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969. [Collection of eyewitness accounts]

#Appelfeld, Aharon. The Story of a Life. Trans. Aloma Halter. 1999; New York: Schocken Books, 2004. [Includes contemplations on memory, language and mother tongue, humanity after the Holocaust]

*Appignanesi, Lisa. Losing the Dead. London: Chatto & Windus, 1999.

Améry, Jean. At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities. Trans. Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980

Amichai, Yehuda. Not of This Time, Not of This Place. Trans. Shlomo Katz. New York: Harper, 1963.

Appelfeld, Aharon. Beyond Despair: Three Lectures and a Conversation with Philip Roth. Trans. Jeffrey M. Green. New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporations, 1994.

*Auschwitz--The Nazi Civilization: Twenty-Three Women Prisoners' Accounts. Ed. and trans. Lore Shelley; Foreword Yehuda Bauer. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992. [Auschwitz camp administration, SS enterprises, and special workshops]

*Barach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Frown, 1994. [Historical overview, personal stories, photographs, maps]

*Batalion, Judy. The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, April 2021.

Bau, Joseph. Dear God, Have you Ever Gone Hungry? Memoirs. Trans. from the Hebrew Shlomo “Sam” Yurnan. .New York: Arcade Publishing, 1990.

Begley, Louis. Wartime Lies. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1991. [Novelistic form based on the experiences of the author]

*Beil, Szeflan Dana. Danusia: The Story of a Child Survivor. Montreal: a.n.: 2013.

Berenbaum, Michael, ed. Witness to the Holocaust. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997. [German government policy and personal narratives]

*Berger, Leon. Lunch with Charlotte: A True Saga. Houston: Grey GeckPress, 2012.

*#Berr, Hélène. Hélène Berr Journal, 1942-1944. Foreword by Patrick Modiano. Trans. from the French by David Bellos. Paris: Éditions Tallandier January, 2008. [The diary of a (Jewish) Sorbonne student during the time of Nazi occupation of France]

*Birger, Trudi with Jeffrey M. Green. A Daughter's Gift of Love: A Holocaust Memoir. Philadelphia, Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society, 1992.

*Bitton Jackson, Livia E. Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust. 1980; rpr. London: Grafton Books, 1984.

*Bitton Jackson, Livia E. I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust. London: Simon & Schuster, 1999. [Experiences during WW II when she and her family were sent to Auschwitz]

Blatt, Thomas Toivi. From The Ashes Of Sobibor: A Story Of Survival. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997.

*Bolle, Miriam. Letters Never Sent. Trans. from the Dutch. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2014. [A diary in letter form from Amsterdam during the war]

Bor, Joseph. The Terezin Requiem. Trans. E. Pargeter. New York: Knopf, 1963.

*Boraks-Nemetz, Lillian. Ghost Children: Poems. Vancouver, BC: Ronsdale Press, 2000. [The survivor-poet stands “transfixed at the edge of the apocalypse.”]

Borowski, Tadeusz. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. trans. Barbara Vedder. New York: Penguin Books, 1982. [Experiences of a Polish inmate of Auschwitz]

*Brewda, Alina. I Shall Fear No Evil. London: Kimber, 1966.

*Brodoff, Ami Sands. The White Space Between. Toronto: Second Story Press, 2008.

Buber-Neumann, Margarete. Milena. London: Collins Harvill, 1989. [About Milena Jesenská with whom the author shared her days in captivity in the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women]

Burman, Faiga & Simon Wajcer. So You Can Tell: Prisoner 48378 Auschwitz. Montreal: Sir Press, 2004.

Cargas, Harry J. Voices from the Holocaust. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993. [Holocaust survivors’ interviews]

*#Chalmers, Beverley Birth, Sex and Abuse:  Women’s Voices Under Nazi Rule. United Kingdom: Grosvenor House Publishers, 2015. [Based on women’s own voices expressed in diaries, memoirs and testimonies.]

*Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs: Correspondence. Ed. Barbara Wiedemann. Trans. Christopher Clark. Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY: The Sheep Meadow Press, 1995.

*Czech, Danuta. Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945. London: Tauris, 1990. [Chronological day-to-day account of the death camp's operation drawn from extensive sources collected in the archives of the official Auschwitz Museum.]

*Dawidowicz, Lucy S. From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938-1947. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. [Journeys, Lithuania]

#Debenedetti, Giacomo. October 16, 1943/Eight Jews. Trans. Estelle Gilson; preface Alberto Moravia. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 2001. [Written in Italian in 1944; moving eyewitness account of a German roundup of Jews in Rome]

*#De Gaulle Anthonioz, Geneviève. The Dawn of Hope: A Memoir of Ravensbrück. Trans. from the French Richard Seaver. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1999. [Short account by political prisoner and niece of Charles de Gaulle about her solitary confinement at the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück]

Dekel, Michael. Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey. New York: W.W. Norton, 2019.

*#Delbo, Charlotte. Auschwitz and After. Trans. Rosette C. Lamont. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. [Experiences at Auschwitz and post-survival of a French woman]

*#Delbo, Charlotte Days and Memory. Trans. and Preface by Rosette Lamon. The Marlboro Press, 1990. [Experiences and observations in Auschwitz and post-survival of a French woman]

*#Delbo, Charlotte. None of Us Will Return. Vol I of Auschwitz and After. Trans. John Githens. Boston: Beacon Press 1978. [Experiences at Auschwitz and post-survival of a French woman]

*Denes, Magda. Castles Burning: A Child’s Life in War. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.

#Des Pres, Terrence. The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. [Physical and psychological aspects of being incarcerated in concentration camps]

*Deutsch, Mina. Mina’s Story: A Doctor’s Memoir of the Holocaust. Toronto: ECW Press, 1994. [Mina Kimmel is liberated by the Russians after her journey eastward through Nazi-occupied Europe and hiding in an underground bunker.]

Drukier, Manny. Carved in Stone: Holocaust Years, A Boy's Tale. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.

*Dwork, Debóra. Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991.

*#Eger, Edith Eva with Esmé Schwall Weigard. The Choice: Embrace the Possible. New York: Scriber, 2017. [This memoir recounts experiences at Auschwitz, Mauthausen and on death marches, as well as postwar sufferings and decisions made towards freedom in the U.S. Concise and moving, we read that inner freedom and old fears have to be dealt with for a long time towards success.]

*Ehrlich, Catherine. Irma’s Passport: One Woman, Two World Wars, and a Legacy of Courage. New York: She Writes Press, 2021.

*#Eibeshitz, Jehoshua and Anna. Eds. and trans. Women in the Holocaust: A Collection of Testimonies. Vol. I. Brooklyn, NY: Remember, 1993.

*Eichengreen, Lucille. From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust. San Francisco: Mercury House, 1994.

Eisenberg, Azriel. Witness to the Holocaust. New York: Pilgrim, 1981. [An anthology of individual bibliographies with specific topics]

*#Elias, Ruth. Triumph of Hope: From Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to Israel. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

*Epsztein, Maria. Motherhood Behind Barbed Wire. Montreal: Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, 2006.

*Exile and Displacement: Survivors of the Nazi Persecution Remember the Emigration Experience. Ed. Lauren Levine Enzie. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. [Accounts by W. Ernest Freud, Peter Heller, Guy Stern, Elizabeth Welt Trahan, Harry Zohn, et al]

*Ferderber-Salz, Berta. And the Sun Kept Shining. New York: Holocaust Library, 1980.

*#Fink, Ida. A Scrap of Time and Other Stories. Trans. from the Polish Madeline Levine and Francine Prose. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987. [Based on her experiences]

*#Finkelstein, Genya. Trans. from the Hebrew by Shuli Sharvit. New York: CT Publishing, 1998. [Left on her own aat the age of eleven, she survived the Holocaust.]

Fishman, Charles. Ed. Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust. Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 1991. [Holocaust poetry collection]

*Fiszer, Ludwika. “The Story of Ludwika Fiszer” 'Testimonies' (www.womenandtheholocaust.com)   [Unaltered testimony, deposited to the Polish Jewish National League in Warsaw in 1944.] Frankl, Viktor. Man's Search for Meaning. 1959 rpt. New York: Washington Square, 1985.

Frankl, Viktor.  Man's Search for Meaning. 1959 rpt. New York: Washington Square, 1985.

*Frenkel, Françoise. A Bookshop in Berlin: The Rediscovered Memoir of One Woman’s Harrowing Escape From the Nazis. Trans. Stephanie Smee. New York: Atria Books, 2019.

Friedländer, Saul. When Memory Comes. Trans. from the French Quand vient le souvenir Helen R. Lane. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1991.

Friedman, Saul S. Amcha: An Oral Testament of the Holocaust. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979.

Friling, Tuvia. A Jewish Kapo in Auschwitz: History, Memory, and the Politics of Survival. Trans. from the Hebrew Haim Watzman. Waltham MS: Brandais University Press, 2014.

*#Furth, Valerie Jakober. Cabbages and Geraniums: Memories of the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.

*Gammon, Carolyn. The Unwritten Diary of Israel Unger. Waterloo, ON: Wilfried Laurier University Press, 2013. [Survivor of Tarnow in Poland]

Geve, Thomas with Charles Inglefield. The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz. New York: Harper, 2021. [With the author’s early, eyewitness drawings]

Gilbert, Martin. The Boys: Triumph Over Adversity: The Untold Story Of 732 Young Concentration Camp Survivors. New York: Holt, 1997.

#Richard Glazar. Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995.

*Goldenberg, Rita. Motherland: Growing up With the Holocaust. New York: The New Press, 2015.

*#Goldenberg, Myrna. Ed. Before All Memory is Lost: Women’s Voices from the Holocaust. Canada, The Azrieli Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoir, 2017.

Grade, Chaim. "My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner." Trans. Milton Himmelfarb. In The Seven Little Lanes. New York and Tel Aviv: Bergen Belsen Memorial Press, 1972.

*#Hart, Kitty. Return to Auschwitz: The Remarkable Story of A Girl Who Survived The Holocaust. New York: Atheneum, 1982.

*Heifetz, Julie, ed. Too Young to Remember. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989.

*Heilman, Anna. Never Far Away: The Auschwitz Chronicles of Anna Heilman. Ed. Sheldon Schwartz. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. 2001. [Diaries and memoirs written between 1944 and 1994]

*Heller (Stopnicka), Celia. On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between the Two World Wars. Wars. Columbia University Press, 1977.

*#Heller, Gottesfeld, Fanya. Strange and Unexpected Love: A Teenage Girl's Holocaust Memoirs. New Jersey: Ktav, 1993. [In hiding in Poland]

*#Hellmann, Peter. The Auschwitz Album: A Book Based Upon an Album discovered by a Concentration Camp Survivor, Lili Meier. New York: Random House, 1981.

Herbst, Jürgen. Requiem for a German Past: A Boyhood Among the Nazis. Madison, Wisconsin:  University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.

Hirschprung, Pinchas. The Vale of Tears. Toronto: Azrieli Foundation, 2016. [An Orthodox rabbi fleeing persecution from Nazi-occupied Europe, finding inspiration and hope in Jewish scripture]

Holocaust Survivor Cookbook: Collected from Around the World. Port St-Lucie, FL: Caras & Associates, Inc., 2007.

Holocaust Chronicles: Individualizing The Holocaust Through Diaries And Other Contemporaneous Personal Accounts. Ed. Robert Moses Shapiro; Introduction Ruth R. Wisse. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1999.

Horowitz, Gordon J. In the Shadow of Death: Living Outside the Gates of Mauthausen New York: Free Press, 1990.

Höss, Rudolf. Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz, Trans. Andrew Dollinger, ed. Steven Paskuly. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1992.

Jeruchim, Simon. Hidden in France: A Boy’s Journey Under the Nazi Occupation. McKinleyville CA: Fithian Press, 2001.

Jockel, Helena. We Sang in Hushed Voices. Intro. Dorota Glowacka. Toronto: The Azrieli Foundation, 2014. [Holocaust survival story: Czechoslovakia, Halifax]

The Journal of Hélène Berr. Trans. from the French David Bellos. Toronto, ON: McClelland & Stewart, 2008.

Kaiser, Charles, The Cost of Courage. [Resistance and deportation from France]. New York: Other Press, 2015.

*Kalman Naves, Elaine. Journey to Vaja: Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian Jewish Family. Montreal: McGill-Queen's. University Press, 1996.

*Katin, Miriam. We Are on Our Own: A Memoir. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2006. [Illustrated graphic memoir of a women’s attempt to rebuild her earliest childhood memories.]

Kaplan, Chaim A. The Warsaw Diary Scroll of Agony; The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan. Trans. and ed. Abraham I. Katsh. New York: Macmillan, 1965.

*Kaplan, Vivian Jeanette. Ten Green Bottles: The True Story of One Family's Journey from War-torn Austria to the Ghettos of Shanghai. Vancouver, BC: St. Martin's Press, 2004.

*Karmel, Ilona. An Estate of Memory. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969.

*Karpowitz Song, Ellen-Ruth. Girl in Hiding: Remembrances of a Holocaust Survivor. 2017. Amazon.

*Katz, Dori. Looking for Strangers: The True Story of My Hidden Wartime Childhood. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

*Katz, Etunia Bauer. Our Tomorrow Never Came. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000. [Experiences of surviving pogroms, mass murder, and transportation to death camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe.]

Katzenelson, Yitzak. The Song of the Murdered Jewish People. Trans. Noah H. Rosenbloom. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 1980.

Ka-tzetnik135633 [Dinur, Yehiel]. Atrocity. Trans. Nina De-Nur. New York: Kensington, 1977.

*#Ka-tzetnik 135633 [Dinur, Yehiel]. The House of Dolls. Trans. from the Hebrew by Moshe M. Kohn. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955.

Ka-tzetnik 135633 [Dinur, Yehiel]. Star Eternal. Trans. Nina Dinur. New York: Arbor House, 1982.

#Ka-tzetnik 135633. Piepel. London: Anthony Blond, 1961.Trans. from the Hebrew Moshe M. Kohn [Karu lo Pipl]. [Graphic account of Auschwitz]

Ka-tzetnik 135633. Shivitti. Trans. from the Hebrew Eliyah N. De-Nur and Lisa Herman. New York: Harper, 1989. Ka-tzetnik. Sunrise over Hell. Trans. from the Hebrew Nina De-Nur. London: Allen, 1977.

Ka-tzetnik. Sunrise over Hell. Trans. from the Hebrew Nina De-Nur. London: Allen, 1977.

*Kazimirski, Ann. Witness to Horror. Montreal: Devonshire, 1993. [Witnessing Auschwitz]

#Kertész, Imre. Fateless. 1975; Trans. Christopher C. and Katharina M. Wilson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992. [Based on experiences mainly in Buchenwald, its hospital ward, and return to Hungary]

Kershaw, Alex. Avenue of Spies: A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family’s Heroic Resistance in Nazi-Occupied France. New York: Crown Publishing, 2015.

Kielar, Wieslaw. Anus Mundi: Five Years in Auschwitz. New York: Penguin Books, 1982.*Kirschner, Ann. Sala’s Gift: My Mother’s Holocaust Story. Free Press, 2006. [Letters, 

illustrated; also a play by Arlene Hutton: Letters To Sala]

*Klein, [ Weissmann] Gerda. All But My Life. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957. [Experiences working in Landeshut in a weaving mill (Weberei) under acceptable conditions with a compassionate German female guard; otherwise a love story contrasting the lack off love between herself and Abek in Poland and that of her future husband Kurt Klein, an American G.I. with whom she later went to the U.S.]

#Klemperer, Victor. I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941. New York: Random House, 1998. [Experiences inside of Germany; contemplations on language use and change and the Germans during National Socialism]

*Kliot, Rasia and Helen Mitsions. Waltzing with the Enemy: A Mother and Daughter Confront the Aftermath of the Holocaust. Israel: Penina Press, 2011.

*# Kluger, Ruth. Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. Foreword Lore Segal. New York: Feminist Press, 2001. [Trans. from an important German Holocaust memoir with reflections on German memory, women’s stories, and the Holocaust in general]

*Korman Mains, Ellen. Buried Rivers: A Spiritual Journey into the Holocaust. Westlake Books, 2018.

*Kroh, Aleksandra. Lucien's Story. Trans. Austryn Wainhouse. Marlboro Press, 1996.

*Kuperhand, Miriam and Saul. Shadows of Treblinka. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998.

Kuznetsov, Anatoli. Babi Yar. Trans. David Floyd. Rev. Ed. London: Jonathan Cape, 1970.

*Lakder-Wallfisch, Anita. Inherit the Truth: 1939-1945. London: DLM Publishers, 1996.

*Land-Weber, Ellen. To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue. Champaign: IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000. [Six stories of rescuers and rescued Jews; many photos; CD-ROM also available]

*Langfus, Anna. The Whole Land Brimstone. Trans. Peter Wiles. New York: Pantheon Books, 1962.

*#Langley, Eva M. Prison on Wheels: From Ravensbrück to Burgau. Einsiedeln, Switzerland: E. Langley-Damos & Daimon Verlag, 2000. [Vivid memories, recorded in 1945 at St. Ottilien, Bavaria, Germany, of her horrific trip in German cattle cars]

*Lappin, Elena, ed. Jewish Voices, German Words: Growing Up Jewish in Postwar Germany and Austria. Trans. from the German by Krishna Winston. North Haven, CT: Catbird Press, 1994.

*Laska, Vera, ed. Women in the Resistance and in the Holocaust: The Voices of Eyewitnesses. Westport, Connecicut: Greenwood Press, 1983.

*The Last Bright Days: A Young Woman’s Life in a Lithuanian Shtetl on the Eve of the Holocaust. Ed. Frank Buonagurio. New York: Institute for Jewish Research, 2011. [Photographs with notes and poems by Beile Delechky]

*Leitner, Isabella. Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978.

*Leitner, Isabella. Saving the Fragments: From Auschwitz to New York. New York: Nal Books, 1985.

*#Lengyel, Olga. Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz. Trans. Clifford Coch and Paul P. Weiss. Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1947.

#Levi, Primo. The Complete Words of Primo Levi. Ed. Ann Goldstein. Liveright Publishing, 2015.

#Levi, Primo with Leonardo de Benedetti. Auschwitz Report. 1946; Trans. Judith Woolf. London, New York: Verso, 2006. [On the medical conditions and operations of Auschwitz III (Buna-Monowitz, IG-Farben)]

#Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved. New York: Summit Books, 1988.

#Levi, Primo. If this is a Man and The Truce. Trans. Stuart Woolf. Afterword by the author. London: Abacus, 1987.

#Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening: Two Memoirs. Trans. from the Italian Stuart Woolf. New York: Summit, 1985.

Lichtblau, Eric. Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee’s Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis. Boston: Houghton Muffin Harcourt, 2019.

*Lieblich, Ruthka, Ruthka: A Diary of War. Trans. from the Polish and ed. Jehoshua and Anna Eibeshitz. Brooklyn, NY: Remember, 1993. [Covers Aug. 1940 to Dec. 1942; died in Auschwitz in 1943]

Lilienheim, Henry. The Aftermath: A Survivor’s Odyssey Through War-Torn Europe. Montreal: DC Books, 1994.

*#Lingens-Reiner. Ella Prisoners of Fear. London: Victor Gollancz, 1948. [Doctor of Medicine and Law of the University of Vienna, she was a prisoner and doctor in the German hospital wing at Auschwitz-Birkenau.]

Loew, Clemens. Living with the Wounds of War: Personal Essays. Amazon. [A young boy’s Survival in hiding in a Catholic convent in a Polish village.]

*Loridan-Ivens, Marceline. But You did not Come Back: A Memoir. Canada: Penguin Random House, 2016. [Deported from France to Auschwitz with her father, she survived and suffered the loss of her father all her life.]

Lustig, Arnost. "Auschwitz-Birkenau." Trans. Josef Lustig. In Yale Review 71 (1982): 393-403.

Lustig, Arnost. Darkness Casts no Shadow. Washington, DC: Inscape, 1976.

*Lustig, Arnost. The Unloved: From The Diary Of Perla Sch.: A Novel. New York: Arbor House, 1985.

Marks, Jane. The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the Holocaust. New York: Ballantine, [Memories of 23 survivors].

*#In Memory's Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezin. Ed. Cara De Silva. Trans. Bianca Steiner Brown. Introduction Michael Berenbaum. Northvale, NS: Jason Aronson, 1996.

* Mieder, Wolfgang and David Scrase. The Holocaust: Personal Accounts. Burlington VT: The Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont, 2001. [Twenty survivors recounting their experiences]

*Millu, Liana. Smoke over Birkenau. Trans. from the Italian Lynne Sharon Schwartz. New York: The Jewish Publication Society, 1991.

*Minney, R. J. I Shall Fear No Evil, the Story of Dr. Alina Brewda. London: William Kimber, 1966.

#Müller, Filip. Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers. With Helmut Freitag. Ed. and trans. Susanne Flatauer. Forword Yehuda Bauer. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999.

*Neumann, Ariana. When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains. New York: Scribner, 2020. [Hans Neumann escape the German death net, traveled to Berlin and hid there in plain sight of the Gestapo.]

*#Nomberg-Przytyk, Sara. Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land. Ed. Eli Pfefferkorn and David H. Hirsch. Trans. Roslyn Hirsch. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

#Nyiszli, Miklos. Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. Trans. Tibere Kremer and Richard Seaver; Foreword Bruno Bettelheim. New York: Arcade Publisher, 1993.

*#Oore, Irene. The Listener: In the Shadow of the Holocaust. Regina, SA: Regina University Press, 2019.

*Ouzan, Françoise S. How Young Survivors Rebuilt Their Lives: France, the United States, and Israel. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018.

*Pawel, Ursula. My Child is Back! Ed. Martin Gilbert et all. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000. [Excellent account of a child’s life in Theresienstadt (Terezin), Auschwitz, and labor camps; also experiences of the time of liberation and post-war decisions to leave her native Germany]

*Pawlowicz, Sala and Kevin Klose. I will Survive. New York: Norton, 1962.

Perechodnik, Calel. Am I a Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 1996. [Exceptional eyewitness testimony of the Holocaust; unique record and important historical document; fusion of confession, chronicle, and diary;]

Pfefferkorn, Eli. The Muselmann at the Water Cooler. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011.

Plant, Richard. The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals. New York: Henry Holt, 1986. [Diaries and letters]

#Polak, Joseph A. After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring. Urim Publications, 2015, [Dutch Child survivor of the camps Westebork and Bergen-Belsen]

*Polak, Monique.  What World is Left. Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers,2008. [Inspired by the experiences of the author's mother, who was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt camp during the Holocaust].

#Poller, Walter. Medical Block, Buchenwald: The Personal Testimony of Inmate 966, Block 35. 1960; London: Grafton Books, 1988.

*Raab, Elisabeth M. And Peace Never Came. Waterloo, ON: Wilfried Laurier University Press, 1997.

#Radnoti, Miklos. Against Forgetting. Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witnessing. New York, 1993.

#Raichman, Chil. The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Survivor’s Memory 1942-1943. Trans from the Yiddish by Salon Beinfeld New York: Pegasus Books, 2011.

Rawicz, Piotr. Blood from the Sky. Trans. Peter Wiles. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961.

*Remember Us: A collection of Memories from Hungarian Hidden Children of the Holocaust. Contr. Eds. Judy Abrams and Evi Blaikie. Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2009.

*Rexin (Evans), Cecelia, Testament To Courage: The Concentration Camp Diary 1940-1945 of A Courageous German Woman Who Risked Her Life to Save Others. Trans. Nancy Rexin Evans with Mark Shaw. Carmel, Indiana: Guild Press of Indiana, 1998. [Excellent eyewitness account of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz.]

#Ringelbloom, Emmanuel. Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelbloom. Ed. and trans. Jacob Sloan. New York: Schocken Books, 1958. [Diaries and notes]

*Ringelheim, Joan. "Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research." In Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 10 (1985) 741-61.

*Rittner, Carol and Sondra Myers, eds. The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. New York: New York University Press, 1986. [Interviews with survivors and rescuers; photographs]

Rochlitz, Imre. Accident of Fate: A Personal Account, 1938-1945.  Waterloo, ON: Wilfried Laurier University Press, 2011.  [Vienna, Yugoslavia, Italy]

*Roden, Eva and Ruda. Lives on Borrowed Time. New York: Carleton Press, 1984. [Prague, Theresienstadt (Terezin) and Auschwitz; Slave labor in North Germany; two narratives of a couple]

Alan Rosen.  The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder.  New York  Oxford University Press, 2010. [Early taped voices of survivors]

*Rosenbaum, Julie Fay. Female Experiences During the Holocaust. Diss. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI, 1993.

Rosenberg, Goran. A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz. New York: Other Press, 2015.

#Rousset, David. The Other Kingdom. Trans. and with an Introduction by Ramon Guthrie. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock ,1947.

*#Salomon, Charlotte. Charlotte, Life or Theater? An Autobiographical Play by Charlotte Salomon. Introduction Judith Herzberg. New York: Viking, 1981.

Sands, Philippe, East West Street. New York: The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2016. [On the origins of "genocide" and "crimes against humanity"]

Sands, Philippe, The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020.

*Saphier Fox, Elaine. Out of Chaos: Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2013. [Anthology of twenty-four survivors]

*# Schiff, Vera. Theresienstadt: The Town the Nazis Gave to the Jews. Toronto: Lugus, 1996.

*#Schloss, Eva and Evelyn Julia Kent. Eva's Story: A Survivor's Tale by the Step-Sister of Anne Frank. London: W. H. Allen, 1988.

*Schulhof Rybeck, Erika. On My Own: Decoding the Conspiracy of Silence. Columbia, MD: Summit Crossroads Press, 2014. [The three lives of Erika SR: Austria; Kindertransport to Scotland; Amerika]

Schurmacher, Tommy. Makeup Tips from Auschwitz: How Vanity Saved My Mother's Life. Tellwell Publishing, 2019.

*Schwarcz, Vera. In the Crook of the Rock: Jewish Refuge in a World Gone Mad — The Chaya Leah Walkin Story. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2018.

*Schwertfeger, Ruth. Women of Theresienstadt: Voices from a Concentration Camp. Oxford, New York, Hamburg: St Martins's Press, 1989. [Women’s poetry in English translation throughout the book with the original German in the appendix]

#Semprun, Jorge. The Long Voyage. Trans. Richard Seaver. New York: Grove Press, 1964.

*#Shafi, Monica. “Turning the Gaze Inward: Gertrud Kolmar’s Briefe an die Schwester Hilde 1938-1943.” In Facing Fascism and Confronting the Past: German Women Writers from Weimar to the Present. Frederiksen, Elke P. and Martha Kaarsberg Wallach, eds. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000 (103-115). [Excerpts of letters sent by Gertrud Kolmar from Berlin to her sister in exile in Switzerland]

*#Shelly, Lore. Auschwitz--the Nazi Civilization: Twenty-Three Women Prisoners' Accounts. New York and London: University Press of America, 1992.

*Sǿbye, Espen. Kathe—Always been in Norway. Trans. From the Norwegian by Kerri Pierce. Oslo: Krakiel, 2021. [The story of a young Jewish Norwegian girl who was deported to and killed in Auschwitz]

*Silten, R. Gabriele S. Dark Shadows, Bright Life. Santa Barbara, CA: Fithian Press, 1997.

*Simon, Marie Jalowicz. Underground in Berlin: A Young Woman’s Extraordinary Tale of Survival in the Heart of Nazi Germany. Canada: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

*#Spencer, Hanna. Hanna’s Diary, 1938-1941: Czechoslovakia to Canada. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001.

*Spiegel, Renia. Renia’s Diary. Trans. from the Polish. A. Blasiak and M. Dziurosz. 2019. [Poland from 1939 to 1942]

Steiner, Jean-François. Treblinka. Trans. from the French Helen Weaver. Preface Simone de Beauvoir. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967.

#Stiffel, Frank. The Tale of the Ring: A Kaddish; A Personal Memoir of the Holocaust (Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1984) [Treblinka survivor]

*Strauss, Lotte. Over the Green Hill: A German Jewish Memoir, 1913-1943. New York: Fordham University Press, 1999.

Strauss, Herbert A. In the Eye of the Storm: Growing up Jewish in Germany 1918-1943. New York: Fordham University Press, 1999.

Sundquist, Eric J., ed. Writing in Witness: A Holocaust Reader. Albany, NY:  State University of New York Press, 2018.

Survivors Speak Out, [no editor]. Jerusalem: Gefen, 1989.

*#Tec, Nechama. Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. [Survival in Poland with a false identity; epilogue of sad post-war survival]

*#Tillion, Germaine. Ravensbrück: An Eyewitness Account of a Women's Concentration Camp. 1975; rept. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1997.

*Under Swiss Protection: Jewish Eyewitness Accounts from Wartime Budapest. Ed. Hirschi, Agnes and Charlotte Schallié. Forword Timothy Snyder. Stuttgart and Hannover, Germany: ibidem Press, 2017.

*Upjohn, Rebecca. The Secret of the Village Fool. Second Story Press, 2014. [For children; based on a true story; ill. by Benoit, Renné].

*Vaisman, Sima. A Jewish Doctor in Auschwitz: The Testimony of Sima Vaisman. Trans. Charlotte Mandell. Hoboken, NJ: Melville House Publishing, 2002. [Written in the summer of 1945]

*Vegh, Claudine. I Didn't Say Goodbye. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1984.

*#Volavkova, Hana. Ed. I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems From Terezin Concentration Camp. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. [Statni zidovske muzeum, Czech Republic, Detske kresby na zastavce k smrti, Terezin 1942-1944]

*Voticky, Anka. Knocking on Every Door. Intro. Doris Bergen. Toronto: The Azrieli Foundation, 2010. [Holocaust survival story: Prague. Shanghai, Montreal]

#Vrba, Rudolf and Alan Bestic. I Cannot Forgive. England: Byron Press, 1964. [Graphic account of Auschwitz and his amazing escape]

Wallace, Max. In the Name of Humanity: The Secret Deal to End the Holocaust. Toronto: Penguin, 2020. [Documents and accounts of eyewitnesses]

*Waterford, Helen. Commitment to the Dead: One Woman's Journey Toward Understanding. Frederick, CO: Renaissance House, 1987. [Born 1909 in Offenbach, Germany; June 1934, moved with husband Siegfried to Amsterdam; August 1944 camp Westerbork, Sep. 3 Auschwitz-Birkenau; Oct. 28, 1944 forced labor in a factory in Kratzau, Sudetenland.]

*Weber, Ilse.  Dancing on a Powder Keg. Trans. from the German by Michal Schwartz. Halifax, NS: Nimbus Publishing, 2017. [Contains one hundred letters and 63 poems written by Ilse Weber between 1933 and 1944.]

Weiss, David W. Reluctant Return: A Survivor’s Journey to an Austrian Town. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999.

*Welt Trahan, Elizabeth. Walking with Ghosts: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Vienna. New York: Peter Lang, 1998.

*Wertheim Stein, Mathilda. The Way It Was: The Jewish World of Rural Hesse. Atlanta: Frederick Max Publications, 2000.

#Wiesel, Eli. Night; Dawn; Day. Trans. Stella Rodway. Night, 1956; rpt. Northvale, N.J, London: Jason Aronson, 1985.

Wiesel, Eli. Open Heart. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2012.

*Winter, Miriam. Trains: A Memoir of a Hidden Childhood During and After World War II. Jackson, MI, 1997.

Wojdowski, Bogdan. Bread for The Departed. Trans. from the Polish Madeline G. Levine. Foreword Henryk Grynberg. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997. [Life in a Jewish ghetto in Poland]

*The Words to Remember it: Memoirs of Child Holocaust Survivors. Foreword Caroline Jones Scribe. Melbourne,2004.

#Zsolt, Béla. Nine Suitcases. Trans. from the Hungarian Ladilaus Löb. London: Jonathan Cape, 2004. [Béla Zsolt was one of Hungary’s best-known writers in the early twentieth century. He describes his experiences in a ghetto and a concentration camp.]

*Zyskind, Sara. Stolen Years. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company, 1981.

Related Publications

In progress: More than 2,000 war diaries have been collected by the National Office for the History of the Netherlands and are now being transcribed for publication on the archive’s website.

*Albright, Madeleine. Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948. [Incl. history of the Czech and Europe]

*Eliach, Yaffa. Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust: The First Original Hasidic Tales in a Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

*Golabek, Mona with Lee Cohen. The Children of Willesden Lane. Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2003.

*Klarsfeld, Beate and Serge. Memoires. Paris: Fayard/Flammarion, 2015.

Lanzmann, Claude. The Patagonian Hare. Trans. By Frank Wynne. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2012. [Auto biography]

Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors. Ed. Menachem Z. Rosensaft. Prologue Elie Wiesel. Jewish Lights Publishing, 2015.

*Stoessinger, Caroline. Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World’s Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor: A Century of Wisdom. Foreword Vaclav Havel. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2012. [Biography of Pianist Alice Herz from Prague]

*Šukys, Julija. Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2012. [A women helped and protected Jews in Lithuania]

Wiesel, Eli. [as guest speaker] In Nuremberg Forty Years Later: The Struggle against Injustice in Our Time; International Human Rights Conference, November 1987, Papers and proceedings and Retrospective 1993. Ed. Irwin Cotler. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1995 (11-22).

Witness: Passing the Torch of Holocaust Memory to New Generations. Ed. Eli Rubenstein. Intr. Pope Francis. Toronto, ON: Second Story Press, 2015; reissued for 75th anniversary of VE Day, 2020. [In collaboration with the March of the Living organization]

© Copyright Judy Cohen, 2013.
All rights reserved.