Books for Holocaust Remembrance Day

A landmark achievement in Holocaust scholarship, Remembering Voices of the Holocaust is culled from hours of first person accounts from survivors recorded for inclusion in the sound archives of both the Imperial War Museum in London, and the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. In their own words, Jewish survivors as well as Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and both perpetrators and ordinary observers recount the entire horrific arc of the Holocaust from the ominous rise of the Nazi party during the Weimar days through the liquidation of the ghettos and the institution of Hitler's "final solution," continuing on to the liberation of the camps and the harrowing aftermath of the War.

The people of Denmark managed to save almost their country's entire Jewish population from extinction in a spontaneous act of humanity -- one of the most compelling stories of moral courage in the history of World War II. Drawing on many personal accounts, Emmy Werner tells the story of the rescue of the Danish Jews from the vantage-point of living eyewitnesses- the last survivors of an extraordinary conspiracy of decency that triumphed in the midst of the horrors of the Holocaust. A Conspiracy of Decency chronicles the acts of people of good will from several nationalities. Among them were the German Georg F. Duckwitz, who warned the Jews of their impending deportation, the Danes who hid them and ferried them across the Oresund, and the Swedes who gave them asylum. Regardless of their social class, education, and religious and political persuasion, the rescuers all shared one important characteristic: they defined their humanity by their ability to act with great compassion. These people never considered themselves heroes -- they simply felt that they were doing the right thing.

n June 1944, Freda Wineman and her family arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous Nazi concentration and death camp. After a cursory look from an SS doctor, Freda's life was spared and her mother was sent to the gas chambers. Freda only survived because the Allies won the war -- the Nazis ultimately wanted every Jew to die. Her mother was one of millions who lost their lives because of a racist regime that believed that some human beings simply did not deserve to live -- not because of what they had done, but because of who they were.

Laurence Rees has spent twenty-five years meeting the survivors and perpetrators of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. In this sweeping history, he combines this testimony with the latest academic research to investigate how history's greatest crime was possible. Rees argues that while hatred of the Jews was at the epicenter of Nazi thinking, we cannot fully understand the Holocaust without considering Nazi plans to kill millions of non-Jews as well. He also reveals that there was no single overarching blueprint for the Holocaust. Instead, a series of escalations compounded into the horror. Though Hitler was most responsible for what happened, the blame is widespread, Rees reminds us, and the effects are enduring.

The Holocaust: A New History is an accessible yet authoritative account of this terrible crime. A chronological, intensely readable narrative, this is a compelling exposition of humanity's darkest moment.

Thousands of Jews and "Aryan" Germans opposed to Hitler led illegal lives under the Nazi terror and survived the relentless hunt of the Gestapo, the concentration camps, and the bombing. They survived in various ways; some as ordinary citizens taking part in the work-day life, others with fake passports, hidden in cellars, living precariously in all the dark corners of a vigilantly policed country. In fourteen autobiographical accounts, author Eric Boehm offers a cross-section of these heroic personalities. We Survived is itself an historical document, giving a window back into this epoch period during World War II. Now reappearing in print over fifty years after its original publication, We Survived remains as relevant and necessary as ever before - an honest testimony to the strength of the human spirit when it triumphs over adversity.

In this masterpiece of Holocaust literature, David Clay Large tells the wrenching story of Max Schohl, a German Jew who, in the midst of the Second World War, could not find a government that would allow his family to immigrate, despite wealth, education, and business and family connections. After repeated but fruitless efforts to gain entry first to the United States and then to Britain, Chile, and Brazil, Max died in Auschwitz and his wife and daughters were sent to hard labor in Wiesbaden. Much has been written about the West's unwillingness to attempt the rescue of tens of thousands of European Jews from the hands of the Nazis; now David Clay Large gives a human face to this tragedy of bureaucratic inertia and ill will. The youngest daughter of the Schohl family, today a seventy-four-year-old widow living in Charleston, South Carolina, has opened her family's records to Large: a unique collection of family letters and other documents chronicling the experiences of the Schohls and those who tried to bring them to England and America. From these papers Large has fashioned a gripping and intimate narrative of one family's efforts to escape the Holocaust in Europe and the inadequate response from abroad.

From the survivor of ten Nazi concentration camps who went on to create the New England Holocaust Memorial, a "devastating...inspirational" memoir (The Today Show) about finding strength in the face of despair.

On August 14, 2017, two days after a white-supremacist activist rammed his car into a group of anti-Fascist protestors, killing one and injuring nineteen, the New England Holocaust Memorial was vandalized for the second time in as many months. At the base of one of its fifty-four-foot glass towers lay a pile of shards. For Steve Ross, the image called to mind Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass in which German authorities ransacked Jewish-owned buildings with sledgehammers.

Ross was eight years old when the Nazis invaded his Polish village, forcing his family to flee. He spent his next six years in a day-to-day struggle to survive the notorious camps in which he was imprisoned, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau among them. When he was finally liberated, he no longer knew how old he was, he was literally starving to death, and everyone in his family except for his brother had been killed.

Ross learned in his darkest experiences--by observing and enduring inconceivable cruelty as well as by receiving compassion from caring fellow prisoners--the human capacity to rise above even the bleakest circumstances. He decided to devote himself to underprivileged youth, aiming to ensure that despite the obstacles in their lives they would never experience suffering like he had. Over the course of a nearly forty-year career as a psychologist working in the Boston city schools, that was exactly what he did. At the end of his career, he spearheaded the creation of the New England Holocaust Memorial, a site millions of people including young students visit every year.

Equal parts heartrending, brutal, and inspiring, From Broken Glass is the story of how one man survived the unimaginable and helped lead a new generation to forge a more compassionate world.

This story of an anti-fascist's dramatic and remarkable victory against Nazism in 1935 is an inspiration to anyone compelled to resist when signs of oppression are on the horizon

By 1935, Hitler had suppressed all internal opposition and established himself as Germany's unchallenged dictator. Yet many Americans remained largely indifferent as he turned his dangerous ambitions abroad. Not William Bailey.

Just days after violent anti-Semitic riots had broken out in Berlin, the SS Bremen, the flagship of Hitler's commercial armada, was welcomed into New York Harbor. Bailey led a small group that slipped past security and cut down the Nazi flag from the boat in the middle of a lavish party. A brawl ensued, followed by a media circus and a trial, in which Bailey and his team were stunningly acquitted. The political victory ultimately exposed Hitler's narcissism and violent aggression for all of America to see.

The Agitator is the captivating story of Bailey's courage and vision in the Bremen incident, the pinnacle of a life spent battling against fascism. Bailey's story is full of drama and heart--and it's an inspiration to anyone who seeks to resist tyranny.

2017 Christian Book Award Finalist

Thirty captivating profiles of Christians who risked everything to rescue their Jewish neighbors from Nazi terror during the Holocaust.

My Brother's Keeper unfolds powerful stories of Christians from across denominations who gave everything they had to save the Jewish people from the evils of the Holocaust. This unlikely group of believers, later honored by the nation of Israel as "The Righteous Among the Nations," includes ordinary teenage girls, pastors, priests, a German army officer, a former Italian fascist, an international spy, and even a princess.

In one gripping profile after another, these extraordinary historical accounts offer stories of steadfast believers who together helped thousands of Jewish individuals and families to safety. Many of these everyday heroes perished alongside the very people they were trying to protect. There is no doubt that all of their stories showcase the best of humanity -- even in the face of unthinkable evil.