There are several forms of literature dealing with the Holocaust. From true-to-life accounts, to comics, to made-up stories, there is a Holocaust novel for every reader.
It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl,some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter,and quite a lot of thievery. . . . Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau. *courtesy of RandomHouse
Number the Stars
Number the Stars tells the tale of Annemarie Johansen, a young girl living in Denmark during World War II. The book opens in 1943, three years after German soldiers first arrived to occupy the small country. After three years of living uneasily with this occupying force, the gloves finally come off as the German Nazis begin their campaign to "relocate" all the Jews of Denmark. The Danish Resistance, made up of ordinary citizens like the Johansen family, works steadily to smuggle the Jews out of Denmark and over the sea to nearby Sweden. Annemarie, only ten years old, must find courage and maturity beyond her years within herself in order to help her best friend, Ellen Rosen, escape from the Nazis. *courtesy of bookrags.com
The Diary of a Young Girl
The diary opens on June 12, 1942. Frank and her family have gone into hiding to escape persecution by the Nazis, and Frank has decided that the diary she received for her thirteenth birthday will make the perfect friend and confidante. She names the diary "Kitty," and explains that because she has never had a real friend to whom she could tell everything, she will create one in the persona of Kitty. *courtesy of bookrags.com
Nonfiction
We are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust
Each diary reveals one voice, one teenager coping with the impossible. We see David Rubinowicz struggling against fear and terror in Poland. Yitzhak Rudashevski in Lithuania shows us how Jews clung to culture, to learning, and to hope, until there was no hope at all. In Belgium, Moshe is the voice of religion, constantly seeking answers from God for relentless tragedy. Finally, in Hungary, Eva Heyman demonstrates the unquenchable hunger for life that sustained her until the very last moment. Yet We Are Witnesses is not just about any single victim in the Holocaust. *courtesy of goodreads.com
I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing up in the Holocaust
This is a book for those who really feel they need to know what happened to Jews in Nazi Europe during the Holocaust. It is written by one of the very few who survived a term in the death camp Auschwitz. Her story is told in the form of the memoir of Elli Friedmann, who was thirteen years old in March 1944 when the Nazis invaded her homeland, Hungary. It is a truly shocking read, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read it. *courtesy of readingmatters.co.uk
Night
Night begins in 1941, when, the narrator of the story, Elie, is twelve years old. Having grown up in a little town called Sighet in Transylvania, Elie is a studious, deeply religious boy with a loving family consisting of his parents and three sisters. One day, Moshe the Beadle, a Jew from Sighet, deported in 1942, with whom Elie had once studied the cabbala, comes back and warns the town of the impending dangers of the German army. No one listens and years pass by. But by 1944, Germans are already in the town of Sighet and they set up ghettos for the Jews. After a while, the Germans begin the deportation of the Jews to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. *courtesy of bookrags.com