The Holocaust

[lordsummerisle]

Can anyone recommend a good book on this? There are so many out there so I thought I'd start here.
Thanks...

[Nye Bevan]

1. Saul Friedlander

Volume 1: Nazi Germany and the Jews: the Years of Persecution

http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Germany-Jews-Persecution-1933-1939/dp/0060928786/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1339371950&sr=8-2

Volume 2: The Years of Extermination

http://www.amazon.com/The-Years-Extermination-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060930489/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339371950&sr=8-1

Absolute must-reads. Comprehensive, compelling and horrifying. Read these books and you will understand the Holocaust better than about 99% of the population.

I don't need to praise these books any further. The Amazon reviews speak for themselves.

[CTyankee]

2. there are myriad books which your library will have. I can recommend movies.

One is called "Night and Fog" I think and I remember it as very good.

sophie's Choice is great.

Schindler's List is great.

Judgment at Nuremberg.

There was a PBS special about 20+ years ago entitled "The Holocaust." A young Meryl Streep was featured.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Is there a particular aspect that's of interest?

I studied the Holocaust by studying how Germany came to become a place that could support a holocaust. I did not read a lot about the camps themselves, although I did visit Dachau. An astonishing place.

I also studied the united states history during the 1920s &30s, to get a sense of why the United States did not become like Nazi Germany. Both countries were in a terrible depression before their charismatic leaders took over. One country got hitler, the other got FDR.

[cali]

4. for what its worth, The Destruction of the European Jews by the late

Raul Hilberg is considered the definitive work on the subject.

[Poll_Blind]

6. +1

PB

[Woody Woodpecker]

5. I can recommend a thousand, but Art Spiegelman's Maus graphic comic does the best

job of describing what the Holocaust is about. I plan to give my son a set when he becomes 12 - so he can learn a little bit more about his great-grandfather who was a survivor of Auschwitz.

[Posteritatis]

7. Just finished reading that this morning, actually. Yow. (nt)

[justabob]

8. here are a few

These are all books I read in a Holocaust literature class a few years ago:

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski
Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo
Night by Elie Wiesel

[lunatica]

9. Treblinka by Jean-Francoise Steiner

http://www.amazon.com/Treblinka-Jean-Francois-Steiner/dp/0452011248

excellent history of the run up to the only Jewish uprising within a death camp. At the link you can read the preface by clicking on the book and see if it would interest you.

[Mira]

10. I have about 25 or so on the subject in my bookcase

that I have not yet read. And I read about it a lot - presently am reading Guido Knopp "Secrets of the Third Reich" (I am reading the original in German, I assume this is close to the English translation)

I suggest you take a weekend and watch Shoah.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090015/
It's over 9 hours of film, an immersion, and after that you will have a basis to chose from what you want to read.
You should not watch it alone.

[no_hypocrisy]

11. It's hard to recommend one book because

you need to have the background from whence the Holocaust was born. The history of anti-semitism in Europe, esp. Germany in the 19th century; Germany's loss at WWI with the Reparations; the Weimar Republic; the appointment of Hitler as Chancelor; Mein Kampf; and the Third Reich itself.

[lordsummerisle]

12. Thanks

for all of the suggestions. I actually read a lot about the history of Germany and WWII when I was in college many years ago. Today, though I just came back from a visiting the Holocaust Museum in DC and was pretty overwhelmed by it. I wanted to reacquaint myself with the subject by reading some books and so I posted this...

[Woody Woodpecker]

14. My dad couldn't even finish the museum

Both of his parents were survivors of death camps such as Auschwitz and Bergen Belson. He was the first child born to the family post-war in 1947. He has only one other brother.

Prior to his death, my grandfather recorded his story for the Shoah museum. We still have the VHS version that we need to transfer to DVD.

[SheilaT]

13. There are so many. Just start reading.

I will add, to the ones already mentioned, Sophie's Choice by William Styron and Treblinka by Jean Francois Steiner, originally published in 1967.

Also, the PBS thing referred to earlier with Meryl Streep is actually a mini-series that is fictional, excellent, and is one of the very first things she ever did. Don't think it was actually on PBS . . . Okay, I just used the google to find out. It was an NBC miniseries in 1978. Excellent. Watch it.

[JustAnotherGen]

15. You already have some good recs

Here are a few more that I like
The Musicians of Auschwitz - Movie was made in 1980 called Playing For Time. Fenelon gives you an idea of beauty in horror - and survival at all costs.

The Holocaust, The French, and the Jews - This one I read back in the 1990's. Check your library as I believe it may be out of print.


For truth woven through fiction - A Memory by Phillipe Grimbert. There is a beautiful movie called Un Secret that brings his memory of his parents survival of the holocaust to life.

Au revoir les enfants - a memory of Louis Malle - based upon his witnessing of a Gestapo raid at his Catholic Boarding School and the Priest that was arrested for hiding Jewish Children.