As the FDU community is honored by the presence of Tova Friedman, a survivor of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp; we think about the horrors that took place for millions of men, women, and children in the form of genocide. Through studying the history of the 1933-1945 Holocaust, we see how a state orchestrated the systematic murder of innocent individuals based on institutionalized hatred and prejudice.
Books available at FDU Library cover the historical details of German-occupied Europe and the stories of the victims of the Holocaust and the victims' families.
The daughter of Auschwitz : my story of resilience, survival and hope by 
Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away by
It is the catalogue of the first-ever traveling exhibition about the Auschwitz concentration camp, where 1.1 million people--mostly Jews, but also non-Jewish Poles, Roma, and others--lost their lives. More than 280 objects and images from the exhibition are illustrated herein. Drawn from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and other collections around the world, they range from the intimate (such as victims' family snapshots and personal belongings) to the immense (an actual surviving barrack from the Auschwitz III-Monowitz satellite camp); all are eloquent in their testimony. An authoritative yet accessible text weaves the stories behind these artifacts into an encompassing history of Auschwitz--from a Polish town at the crossroads of Europe, to the dark center of the Holocaust, to a powerful site of remembrance. Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away. is an essential volume for everyone who is interested in history and its lessons.
The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis by
The Book Smugglers is the nearly unbelievable story of ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts--first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets--by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. It is a tale of heroism and resistance, of friendship and romance, and of unwavering devotion--including the readiness to risk one's life--to literature and art. And it is entirely true. Based on Jewish, German, and Soviet documents, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and the author's interviews with several of the story's participants, The Book Smugglers chronicles the daring activities of a group of poets turned partisans and scholars turned smugglers in Vilna, "The Jerusalem of Lithuania." The rescuers were pitted against Johannes Pohl, a Nazi "expert" on the Jews, who had been dispatched to Vilna by the Nazi looting agency, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, to organize the seizure of the city's great collections of Jewish books. Pohl and his Einsatzstab staff planned to ship the most valuable materials to Germany and incinerate the rest. The Germans used forty ghetto inmates as slave-laborers to sort, select, pack, and transport the materials, either to Germany or to nearby paper mills. This group, nicknamed "the Paper Brigade," and informally led by poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, a garrulous, street-smart adventurer and master of deception, smuggled thousands of books and manuscripts past German guards. If caught, the men would have faced death by firing squad at Ponar, the mass-murder site outside of Vilna. To store the rescued manuscripts, poet Abraham Sutzkever helped build an underground book-bunker sixty feet beneath the Vilna ghetto. Kaczerginski smuggled weapons as well, using the group's worksite, the former building of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, to purchase arms for the ghetto's secret partisan organization. All the while, both men wrote poetry that was recited and sung by the fast-dwindling population of ghetto inhabitants. With the Soviet "liberation" of Vilna (now known as Vilnius), the Paper Brigade thought themselves and their precious cultural treasures saved--only to learn that their new masters were no more welcoming toward Jewish culture than the old, and the books must now be smuggled out of the USSR. Thoroughly researched by the foremost scholar of the Vilna Ghetto--a writer of exceptional daring, style, and reach--The Book Smugglers is an epic story of human heroism, a little-known tale from the blackest days of the war.
The Boys: The Untold Story of 732 Young Concentration Camp Survivors by
They Call Themselves The Boys, though there are a few women among them. In 1945 they numbered 732 -- most in their teens, some as young as twelve. They came from Poland and Hungary, from the working poor and the well-to-do, but they shared one bond: they were the remnant, among the few Jews to survive the Holocaust. From 1939 to 1945 they underwent the deportations, camps, slave labor, and death marches, often witnessing the murder of entire families in circumstances of utter savagery. In 1945, starved and alone, they drifted into Prague, and it was there that they came together.In 1993 one of their members urged them to tell Sir Martin Gilbert their stories. For many, this was to break a lifelong silence; but with sympathy and understanding, Sir Martin drew them out. The Boys is their story. A re-creation of the nightmare years in their own voices, it tells as well of the spiritual legacy they carried with them, which helped them not only to survive but also to repair their lives and regenerate their souls. As such, it is a tale of hope overcoming horror and of the enduring triumph of the human spirit.
Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe by
"The little children had little parents in the [twins'] block [in Auschwitz]. For example, I was a little mama for twins, two girls named Evichka and Hanka...My sister was the mother for Hanka and I was the mother for Evichka...Evichka told me that she got a mother and a father, but that they had gone away on transport. The twins were four years old. I said to her, 'I will be your mother.' She said, 'But you are only sixteen years old; it doesn't matter?' I said, 'No, it doesn't matter because it is more important that we are together and that we are not alone. You have a mother and I have a daughter.'" --Magda Magda Somogyi Many books have been written about the experiences of Jews in Nazi Europe. None, however, has focused on the persecution of the most vulnerable members of the Jewish community--its children. This powerful and moving book by Deborah Dwork relates the history of these children for the first time. The book is based on hundreds of oral histories conducted with survivors who were children in the Holocaust, in Europe and North America, an extraordinary range of primary documentation uncovered by the author (including diaries, letters, photographs and family albums), and archival records. Drawing on these sources, Dwork reveals the feelings, daily activities, and perceptions of Jewish children who lived and died in the shadow of the Holocaust. She reconstructs and analyzes the many different experiences the children faced. In the early years of Nazi domination they lived at home, increasingly opposed by rising anti-Semitism. Later some went into hiding while others attempted to live openly on gentile papers. As time passed, increasing numbers were forced into transit camps, ghettos, and death and slave labor camps. Although nearly ninety percent of the Jewish children in Nazi Europe were murdered, we learn in this history not of their deaths but of the circumstances of their lives. Children with a Star is a major new contribution to the history of Europe during the Nazi era. It explains from a different perspective how European society functioned during the wary years, how the German noose tightened, and how the Jewish victims and their gentile neighbors responded. It expands the definition of resistance by examining the history of the people--primarily women--who helped Jewish children during the war. By focusing on children, it strips away rationalizations that the victims of Nazism somehow "allowed or "deserved" their punishment. And by examining the experience of children and thereby laying bare how society functions at its most fundamental level, it not only provides a unique understanding of the Holocaust but a new theoretical approach to the study of history.
Ethics after the Holocaust: Perspectives, Critiques, and Responses by
Contributions from a 1996 symposium examine moral and ethical implications of the Holocaust and link them to more recent attempts at mass population elimination. Subjects include Emmanuel Levinas and the primacy of ethics in post-Holocaust philosophy, science and the determination of good, and parad
Holocaust Museum in Washington by
The founding director of the Holocaust museum explores the museum's committment to truth and authenticity while describing its exhibits.
Lily Renée, Escape Artist: From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer by
In 1938, Lily Renée Wilheim is a 14-year-old Jewish girl living in Vienna. Her days are filled with art and ballet. Then the Nazis march into Austria, and Lily's life is shattered overnight.
Maus II: A Survivor's Tale by
The bestselling second installment of the graphic novel acclaimed as "the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust" (Wall Street Journal) and "the first masterpiece in comic book history" (The New Yorker) * PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * One of Variety's "Banned and Challenged Books Everyone Should Read" A brutally moving work of art--widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written--Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author's father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history's most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma.
Never Forget Your Name: The Children of Auschwitz by
The children of Auschwitz: this is the darkest spot in the ocean of suffering that was the Holocaust. They were deported to the concentration camp with their families, with most being murdered in the gas chambers upon their arrival, or were born there under unimaginable circumstances. While 232,000 children and juveniles were deported to Auschwitz, only 750 were liberated in the death camp at the end of January 1945. Most of them were under 15 years of age. Alwin Meyer's masterwork is the culmination of decades of research and interviews with the children and their descendants, sensitively reconstructing their stories before, during and after Auschwitz. The camp would remain with them throughout their lives: on their forearms, as a tattooed number, and in their minds, in the memory of heart-rending separation from parents and siblings, medical experiments, abject confusion, ceaseless hunger and a perpetual longing for home and security. Once the purported liberation came, there was no blueprint for piecing together personal biographies after the unthinkable had happened. Many of the children, often orphaned, had forgotten their names or ages, and had only fragmented understandings of where they came from. While some struggled to reconnect to the parents from whom they had been separated, others had known nothing other than the camp. Some children grew up without the ability to trust and to play. Survival is not yet life - it is an in-between stage which requires individuals to learn how to live. The liberated children had to learn how to be young again in order to grow into adults like others did. This remarkable book tells the stories of the most vulnerable victims of the Nazis' systematic attempt to extinguish innocent lives, and rescues their voices from historical oblivion. It is a unique testimony to the horrific suffering endured by millions in humanity's darkest hour.
Postcards from Auschwitz: Holocaust Tourism and the Meaning of Remembrance by
The uneasy link between tourism and collective memory at Holocaust museums and memorials Each year, millions of people visit Holocaust memorials and museums, with the number of tourists steadily on the rise. What lies behind the phenomenon of "Holocaust tourism" and what role do its participants play in shaping how we remember and think about the Holocaust? In Postcards from Auschwitz, Daniel P. Reynolds argues that tourism to former concentration camps, ghettos, and other places associated with the Nazi genocide of European Jewry has become an increasingly vital component in the evolving collective remembrance of the Holocaust. Responding to the tendency to dismiss tourism as commercial, superficial, or voyeuristic, Reynolds insists that we take a closer look at a phenomenon that has global reach, takes many forms, and serves many interests. The book focuses on some of the most prominent sites of mass murder in Europe, and then expands outward to more recent memorial museums. Reynolds provides a historically-informed account of the different forces that have shaped Holocaust tourism since 1945, including Cold War politics, the sudden emergence of the "memory boom" beginning in the 1980s, and the awareness that eyewitnesses to the Holocaust are passing away. Based on his on-site explorations, the contributions from researchers in Holocaust studies and tourism studies, and the observations of tourists themselves, this book reveals how tourism is an important part of efforts to understand and remember the Holocaust, an event that continues to challenge ideals about humanity and our capacity to learn from the past.
The Sisters of Auschwitz: The True Story of Two Jewish Sisters' Resistance in the Heart of Nazi Territory by
A New York Times bestseller The unforgettable story of two unsung heroes of World War II: sisters Janny and Lien Brilleslijper who joined the Dutch Resistance, helped save dozen of lives, were captured by the Nazis, and ultimately survived the Holocaust. Eight months after Germany's invasion of Poland, the Nazis roll into The Netherlands, expanding their reign of brutality to the Dutch. But by the Winter of 1943, resistance is growing. Among those fighting their brutal Nazi occupiers are two Jewish sisters, Janny and Lien Brilleslijper from Amsterdam. Risking arrest and death, the sisters help save others, sheltering them in a clandestine safehouse in the woods, they called "The High Nest." This secret refuge would become one of the most important Jewish safehouses in the country, serving as a hiding place and underground center for resistance partisans as well as artists condemned by Hitler. From The High Nest, an underground web of artists arises, giving hope and light to those living in terror in Holland as they begin to restore the dazzling pre-war life of Amsterdam and The Hague. When the house and its occupants are eventually betrayed, the most terrifying time of the sisters' lives begins. As Allied troops close in, the Brilleslijper family are rushed onto the last train to Auschwitz, along with Anne Frank and her family. The journey will bring Janny and Lien close to Anne and her older sister Margot. The days ahead will test the sisters beyond human imagination as they are stripped of everything but their courage, their resilience, and their love for each other. Based on meticulous research and unprecedented access to the Brilleslijpers' personal archives of memoirs and photos, Sisters of Auschwitz is a long-overdue homage to two young women's heroism and moral bravery--and a reminder of the power each of us has to change the world.
