BOOKS/ TEXTS ON THE HOLOCAUST - RECOMMENDED READING
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Rome, 16 October 1943
Sarah Laing's visual adaptation of Giacomo Debenedetti's 1944 short story, 16 October 1943, retelling the roundup and deportation of Rome’s Jews. ISBN 978-0-473-45544-6 Giacomo Debenedetti’s 16 October 1943 is one of the best and most accurate eyewitness accounts of the shockingly brief and efficient roundup of more than one thousand Roman Jews from the oldest Jewish community in Europe for the gas chambers of Auschwitz. |
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The Holocaust, Laurence Rees, 2017.
Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday: “By far the clearest book ever written about the Holocaust, and also the best at explaining its origins and grotesque mentality, as well as its chaotic development”. Antony Beevor: “This landmark work answers two of the most fundamental questions in history - how and why did the Holocaust happen?”. |
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Night, Elie Wiesel, 1956.
A first-hand account of Wiesel’s experience at Auschwitz - one that all avid readers of The Holocaust should have on their Top 10 list; powerful and engaging. |
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Schindler's List, Thomas Keneally, 1993.
The acclaimed best-selling classic of Holocaust literature, winner of The Booker Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, and the inspiration for the classic film. “A masterful account of the growth of the human soul”. |
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The Complete Maus, Art Spiegelman, 1996.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe and his son, a cartoonist, coming to terms with his father’s story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form - the cartoon (the Nazis are cats/the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in “drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust” (New York Times). |
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Survival in Auschwitz (The Nazi Assault on Humanity), Primo Levi, 1995.
The true and harrowing account of Primo Levi’s experience at Auschwitz and his miraculous survival. |
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Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Jan T.Gross, 2002.
"One day, in July 1941, half of the population of a small east European town murdered the other half - some 1,600 men, women and children." This summarises the subject of Neighbours, historian Jan Gross's account of a massacre that occurred in Jedwabne, in north-eastern Poland. Gross describes the atrocities of Jedwabne in unbearable detail. |
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Last Letters from the Shoah, Walter Zwi Bacharach, 2013.
This is a unique collection of letters uncovered over 60 years – kept by victims’ families and friends, and ultimately collected by Yad Vashem. The letters reflect their hopes and aspirations for the future, the anxieties of the present and bittersweet memories of the past |
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Promised New Zealand - Fleeing Nazi Persecution. Freya Klier, 2009.
Author Freya Klier depicts the plight of these immigrants, fleeing to New Zealand - their promised land at the end of the earth. |
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Kristallnacht, Prelude to Destruction, Martin Gilbert, 2006.
Gilbert uses witnesses to tell their stories about what happened that night and makes us think about what we would do in the same position. |
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The Avengers - A Jewish War Story, Rich Cohen, 2000.
The story of the Jewish partisan fighters in WWII, the hope and survival that these men and women held onto while fighting on their terms against the Nazis. |
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Nazi Germany and the Jews 1933-39, Saul Freidlander, 1997.
Friedlander uses the voices of Jews and members from all parts of society (including ordinary German citizens) to understand how The Holocaust happened. |
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Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning, 1993.
This book describes in detail how a series of events and reactions can turn “ordinary men” into killers - a deep investigation into the psychology of perpetrators. |
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Hitler’s Willing Executioners – Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Daniel Goldhagen, 1992.
This ground breaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about The Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of the Jews, that the killers were all SS men and that those who murdered Jews did so reluctantly. |
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The Bielski Brothers, Peter Duffy, 2003.
The true story of three men who defied the Nazis, built a village in the forest and saved 1,200 Jews. |
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The Diary of a Young Girl, The Definitive Edition, Anne Frank, 2000
Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is an inspiring and tragic account of an ordinary life lived in extraordinary circumstances that has enthralled readers for generations. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler, translated by Susan Massotty, and includes an introduction by Elie Wiesel, author of Night. Available from our HCNZ SHOP |
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Te Rātaka a Tētahi Kōhine (The Diary of a Young Girl, in te reo Māori), Anne Frank, translated by Te Haumihiata Mason, 2019.
"This book is a very welcome addition to the literature of te reo Māori. A strength of the Māori language is that it developed within a story-telling culture. Its many narrative forms lend themselves to stories such as this and the capturing, in Māori, of the authentic voice of the writer." - Professor Rawinia Higgins, Chairperson of Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori / Māori Language Commission. "This book is a gift from Anne Frank to the world and to coming generations of New Zealanders to read it in te reo Māori. I commend Te Haumihiata for the beautiful translation and the publishers who have made this possible." - Ngahiwi Apanui, Tumuaki/Chief Executive, Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori/Maori Language Commission. Available from our HCNZ SHOP |
Other Key Readings
Ann Beaglehole - Jewish Refugees in New Zealand
A history of New Zealand immigration policy post-war.
Historians’ Interpretations of the Holocaust
A summary of the key interpretations, particularly the intentionalist vs. functionalist arguments.
Traditional Hatred of Judaism
A summary of Jewish history in Europe and the origins of anti-Semitism.
The Minutes of the Wannsee Protocol
A group of leading Nazi officials involved with the implementation of measure involving Jews came together at a villa outside Berlin to plan the mass murder of European Jewry. The Wannsee Conference lasted a mere hour. It approved the programme to kill the approximately 11 million Jews living in Europe, breaking the numbers into Jewish populations country by country.
Speeches
Ann Beaglehole - Jewish Refugees in New Zealand
A history of New Zealand immigration policy post-war.
Historians’ Interpretations of the Holocaust
A summary of the key interpretations, particularly the intentionalist vs. functionalist arguments.
Traditional Hatred of Judaism
A summary of Jewish history in Europe and the origins of anti-Semitism.
The Minutes of the Wannsee Protocol
A group of leading Nazi officials involved with the implementation of measure involving Jews came together at a villa outside Berlin to plan the mass murder of European Jewry. The Wannsee Conference lasted a mere hour. It approved the programme to kill the approximately 11 million Jews living in Europe, breaking the numbers into Jewish populations country by country.
Speeches
