Please recommend Holocaust books - 1st person accounts only

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amother

Sunflower

Sun, Jul 24 2022, 1:07 am

amother [ Cyan ] wrote:

Just as a side note, I don't think Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust is true.

One of the people featured in the book is Livia Bitton Jackson, who wrote her own Holocaust memoirs. Whatever was described about her experiences in Yaffa Eliach's book are in hers, too, just with more details. Also, you can look up a fairly recent interview of her on Youtube that was filmed and posted a couple of years ago (during covid, because it was filmed outside, in Israel, and you can see she is holding a mask in her hand).

Another person was the Bluzhever Rebbe, as well as his wife/her sons, and I am sure he/his family would have spoken out if those stories about their experiences were not true.

amother

Chicory

Sun, Jul 24 2022, 3:10 am

I did not go through the thread, so I don't know whether those books were already mentionned:

Kitty Hart Moxon: I am alive

Anita Lasker Wallfisch: Inherit the truth

Alex Faitelson: The truth and nothing but the truth: Jewish resistence in Lithuania

Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz (He was a politcal prisoner in Auschwitz for 6 years, and he has a very good analysis of the different types of prisoners, kapos, also of the guardians and commanders)

Primo Levi: If this is a man
The drowned and the saved
the periodic system

Elie Wiesel: the night

Joseph Joffo: A bag of marbles

ladYdI

Sun, Aug 07 2022, 2:08 pm

I usually like to read and watch holocaust things on Tisha baav and nine days.
Just finished the redhead of Auschwitz and highly recommend. Easy quick reading, very well written. I don’t meAn easy to read the content just written in easy reading style. Short chapters and short book.

mommyisbest

Sun, Aug 07 2022, 2:12 pm

Mala's Cat
(Previously published as Alone On the Forest)

amother

Dahlia

Fri, Dec 02 2022, 12:35 am

bringing up this thread again....

I'm in my high 20's and also got into reading everything I can on the holocaust.
I bought many used books on thriftbooks and amazon.
Im surprised by how many books were not mentioned.

My favorites were: "The seamstress" by Sara Tuvel Bernstein, "Elli" by Livia Bitton Jackson and "Auschwitz" by Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, she was a nurse in one of the so called hospitals of Auschwitz. you get very detailed accounts of what happened inside and of Mengala.

Here's a list of many memoirs I read:

*Underground in Berlin by Marie Jalowitz Simon
*Triumph of Hope by Ruth Elias
*Rutkas notebook by Rutka Laskier - She did not survive they found her diary
*From ashes to life by Luicille Eichengreen
*Hiding in the open by Sabina S. Zimering
*Eves Story by Eva Schloss
*The Pianist by Wladyslow Spilman
*A lucky child by Thomas Buergenthal
*Survivors Club by Michael Bornstein
*Claras War by Clara Kramer
*Echos of the Holocaust by Mira Ryczke Kimmelman
*I will plant you a lilac tree by Laura Hillman
*Thanks to my mother by Schoschana Rabinovici
*A bookshop in Berlin by Francoise Frenkel
*Each child in my only one by Miriam Gillis Carlebach
*The girl in the red coat by Roma Ligocka
*Surviving the angel of death by Eva Nor
*Helgas Diary by Helga Weiss
*Close Calls by Felicia Berland Hyatt
*My endless war by Sonia Kaplan
*Four perfect pebbles by Lila Perl

The book "On Hitlers mountain" by Irmgard A. Hunt is also a must read. A child growing up with Nazi parents on the mountains were the eagles nest is. Very detailed of how they suffered from Nazi dictatorship.

cbsp

Fri, Dec 02 2022, 12:57 am

I recently read
Somewhere there is still a sun / Michael Gruenbaum ; with Todd Hasak-Lowy

First person account of a child's experience (Michael Gruenbaum). Todd Hasak-Lowy wrote it together with Mr. Gruenbaum - the edition I read explains some of the literary choices that were made in how to tell the story. Definitely not sanitized...

(since OP said she's interested in the history)
The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders by Ernst Klee

The blurb from Goodreads, etc:
The title "The Good Old Days" ("Schone Zeiten" in German) comes from the cover of a private photo album kept by concentration camp commandant Kurt Franz of Treblinka. This gruesomely sentimental and unmistakably authentic title introduces an disturbing collection of photographs, diaries, letters home, and confidential reports created by the executioners and sympathetic observers of the Holocaust.

I couldn't read this the same way I read other holocaust books, even the memoirs...

Frumfemme

Wed, Dec 28 2022, 1:35 pm

Snow Flowers. My MIL A"H who survived multiple camps was mentioned in it.

amother

DarkKhaki

Wed, Dec 28 2022, 1:39 pm

I just read the watchmakers by Harry lenga. Moving and beautifully written.

amother

Burgundy

Wed, Dec 28 2022, 1:42 pm

Didn't read the whole thread, but "The Redhead in Auschwitz" is a must read!!
I've read many Holocaust books, but this one really stands out.

"The Scent of Snowflowers", and the sequel "Morning has Come"

amother

Canary

Wed, Dec 28 2022, 4:50 pm

amother Burgundy wrote:

I didn't know there was a sequel.

Also Scent of Snow flowers was so well written that I always assumed there was a ghostwriter but apparently RL Klein wrote the whole book herself.

amother

Sapphire

Tue, Jan 10 2023, 9:09 am

Before My Eyes, by Mila Bachner. but I must warn, it is a little graphic.

amother

Burgundy

Tue, Jan 10 2023, 9:25 am

amother Canary wrote:

I didn't know there was a sequel.

Also Scent of Snow flowers was so well written that I always assumed there was a ghostwriter but apparently RL Klein wrote the whole book herself.

Morning Has Come was written by her and finished up by her kids.

amother

NeonBlue

Tue, Jan 10 2023, 10:23 am

Lieutenant Birnbaum is not a Holocaust book per se, but it's his first hand account of going through the war as a frum American soldier and liberating the camps, and his life afterwards.

Debbie

Tue, Jan 10 2023, 10:46 am

amother Mustard wrote:

I just read Lily’s Promise by Lily Ebert and her great-grandson. I liked how it connected her past and present and also talked about her experiences before, during, and after the war.

I read Lily's Promise recently and I found it to be an extraordinary book about an extraordinary woman.
I highly recommend it.

amother

Mimosa

Wed, Feb 01 2023, 9:18 am

I found these books in Capitol Seforim. Very graphic
The Sewers of Lvov - about a group of Yidden who survived more than a year in the sewers!
Gizelle Save the children
Yugoslavia survivors. I forgot the name. It's an anthology of different first person accounts.
Interesting because so few Frum survivors from there and that each area had a different experience. but Woh they were such achzorim!

All fascinating

amother

NeonBlue

Wed, Feb 01 2023, 9:58 am

Debbie wrote:

I read Lily's Promise recently and I found it to be an extraordinary book about an extraordinary woman.
I highly recommend it.

She just got an honor form King Charles, an MBE, yesterday!

wiki

Wed, Feb 01 2023, 11:49 am

"Gutta: Memoirs of a Vanished World" by Gutta Sternbuch with David Kranzler is great. What I particularly like about it is that it doesn't fictionalize any narrative dialogue. It records with perceptive detail and doesn't diverge much from what her audio interview probably said.

Several others that I recommend are already recommended upthread; this was the only title I don't think I saw in previous posts.

amother

Chocolate

Wed, Feb 01 2023, 12:13 pm

Survivor without a number

cbsp

Thu, Feb 02 2023, 2:49 pm

Not a book but this week's Mishpacha magazine has a first person account:

REMEMBERING THE UNFORGETTABLE
By Mrs. Sarah Jakobovits (née Kuntslinger), as dictated to her granddaughter, Rayle Rubenstein | JANUARY 31, 2023
"January 26 marked the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Toruń concentration camp, where I was during the war. I have never found mention of the camp anywhere. I share my story in memory of the more than 1,000 women who perished there."

https://mishpacha.com/remember.....able/

amother

cornflower

Wed, Feb 08 2023, 7:51 pm

amother Cyan wrote:

Just as a side note, I don't think Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust is true.

All these stories were true. Many of them were based on interviews students in her classes did with their relatives who were survivors. (I know this from a relative of mine who took her classes in Brooklyn College in the 70's - she did one of the interviews for a story that ended up in the book).

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