Compiled by Workshop Leaders, Terryn Berry, University of Idaho; Janis Haswell, Texas A & M University; Jayne A. Moneysmith, Kent State University Stark Campus; Sondra Perl (Workshop Chair), CUNY-Herbert Lehman College; and Gordon P. Thomas, University of Idaho.

Memoirs/Testimonies/Interviews

Bar-on, Dan. Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989.

A sequence of interviews conducted with children whose fathers were involved in atrocities. Bar-on studies different aspects of denial as coping mechanisms. Children of perpetrators, upon learning about their parent’s involvement, must cope with the moral meaning of the atrocity, their own anger, of course, and their natural, warm feelings for the parent. In the end, they must integrate these responses into a "moral self."

Bettelheim, Bruno. "The Ignored Lessons of Anne Frank." Writing Exploratory Essays. Ed. S. W. Strong. Mt. View, CA: Mayfield, 1995. 369-79.

A psychologist and survivor, Bettelheim writes this essay to challenge the idea that the Otto Frank family's tactics for avoiding capture were heroic, or even sensible. Bettelheim criticizes the recent play based on Anne Frank's diary because Anne's horrible suffering and ultimate death in Auschwitz cannot and should not be viewed as anything other than a tragic incomprehensible loss. This essay challenges typical, erroneous thinking about the Holocaust—that although it was bad, because Anne lived on through her diary and became the famous writer she always wanted to become, we can take comfort in knowing that some good things came out of the Holocaust in the end. Bettelheim rebukes us for swallowing such a lie.

Bitton-Jackson, Livia. I Have Lived a Thousand Years. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Simply written testimony by a woman who survived Auschwitz along with her mother. Written for an audience of teenagers or young adults, it is especially useful for nonnative speakers of English, and a nice change from some of the denser writing.

Block, Gay and Malka Drucker. Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust. NY: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1992.

Opening with a prologue by Cynthia Ozick since reprinted as "On Christian Heroism," this volume provides interviews with over 40 people designated as "Righteous Among the Nations." Pictures of the rescuers themselves, along with pictures of their family members and or those individuals they rescued, help personalize their amazing and inspiring stories. See additional information in description of the video, below.

Langer, Lawrence. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991.

Building on his lifetime of scholarship dedicated to the Holocaust, Langer defines the differences between oral and written testimonies based on a series of interviews conducted in the 1980s. In his analysis of oral testimony, Langer observes five types of memories: Deep Memory, Anguished Memory, Humiliated Memory, Tainted Memory, and Unheroic Memory, all of which convey a reality that ultimately resists moral simplification and widens the gap between listeners and survivors.

Leitner, Isabella and Irving Leitner. Isabella: From Auschwitz to Freedom. NY: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1994.

Directly after her internment in Auschwitz and final escape from the long march to Bergen-Belsen in 1945, Leitner began to record her feelings about her time under Nazi persecution. This survivor narrative is unique because it looks at the author's life not only during ghettos and deportation to Auschwitz, but also after her escape and ultimate immigration to the United States. Also, Leitner's journal entries give a needed female perspective to what happened in Auschwitz. Her journal is more of an emotional journey than a catalog of occurrences.

Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. NY: Touchstone, 1996.

This survivor testimony is one of the major works in Holocaust studies. Very controlled use of language. A bit more difficult than Wiesel for some students but equally important.

Rashke, Richard. Escape from Sobibor. Chicago: U. of IL Press, 1995.

The story of the resistance movement at Sobibor told by a man who interviewed the survivors. Much better than the film. Also includes chapters about the US, England, the Polish resistance, Jan Karski, and how the world turned its back. Very readable and gripping, and a story most students have not heard before.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus a Survivor’s Tale. I, My Father Bleeds History, and Maus a Survivor’s Tale. II, And Here My Troubles Began. NY: Pantheon Books, 1986.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning book defies classification. Written in the form of a comic book, it is both the story of how Art Spiegelman's father survived the Holocaust and the story of his own tortured relationship with his father. Students become involved easily in the material, become practiced at "reading" both the text and the images, and reflect willingly on the historical, philosophical, and human issues presented.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. NY: Bantam Books, 1982.

A haunting and poignant account of a young boy's experiences during the Holocaust, including the horrors of the concentration camps and witnessing the death of his family, based on Wiesel's own experiences. Night carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

Wiesenthal, Simon. The Sunflower. NY: Shocken Books, 1997.

A dying Nazi soldier asks Simon Wiesenthal for forgiveness. Simon asks the reader what he or she would do in his place. The second half of the book includes responses to Wiesenthal's question from theologians, Holocaust scholars and writers.

Anne Frank Memorial Society. Anne Frank Remembered. Documentary Film.

This documentary records the testimony of those people who knew Anne Frank personally, such as childhood friends, Otto Frank, neighbors, relatives, fellow camp mates, and so on. Most information comes from Meip Giest, Otto Frank's secretary, who later became a central contributor to their survival in the annex. The film works well with Bettelheim's essay in that it supports his claims about the inappropriateness of the Franks' planning and leaves the audience with a more realistic view of what Anne and her family endured in Auschwitz.

 

Block, Gay. They Risked Their Lives: Rescuers of the Holocaust. Ergo Media Inc., 1992. 54 minutes documentary film.

This video chronicles the stories of many ordinary citizens from various European countries. Block painstakingly interviews a range of people, poor farmers, merchants, intellectuals, who participated in hiding Jews. However varied their experiences, all share a common feeling—they do not consider themselves to be heroes, just simple people taking the only option available to them during the time. This film offers a useful perspective: one moral person can stand against oppression and hatred and force lasting change.

Frontline: Memory of the Camps. Documentary Film. Public Broadcasting System, 1985.

This documentary combines segments of unedited film recently (1980s) released from British archives. As British military personnel arrived at the various camps in Germany and Poland, they documented what they saw, so the films focus on the most revolting aspects of camp life and the Nazis' attempts to hide the truth of the camps. These horrifying images would probably be considered voyeuristic by some Holocaust experts and, for this reason, the film may not be appropriate for all Holocaust courses. However, the film visually represents camps such as Auschwitz and supports the credibility of survivor narrative. The fact that the film is silent makes viewing it a powerful, experience.

Shoah. 5 video cassettes. Claude Lanzmann.

In this powerful film, Lanzmann chronicles, through interviews, the memories of those involved in the Holocaust, including survivors, slave laborers, railroad workers, technicians, and ordinary onlookers. Even short segments can prove a valuable addition to a class.

Schindler’s List. Videocassette. Director Steven Spielberg. Amblin Entertainment/Universal Pictures. 1992.

The story of the unlikely hero, profiteer Oskar Schindler, who risked his life and went bankrupt to save more than 1,000 Jews from certain death in concentration camps by employing them in his factory.

Survivors of the Holocaust. Videocassette. Dir: Steven Spielberg. Turner Productions, 1995.

This film gives an overview of the Holocaust through survivor testimony. It is extremely effective and can be shown in 50 minutes.

Delbo, Charlotte. Auschwitz and After. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995.

Stunning poetry written by a non-Jewish French woman who was taken to Auschwitz as a resister. Cuts very close to the bone . . . amazing language.

Langer, Lawrence, ed. Art from the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology. NY: Oxford UP, 1995.

Though this collection contains nonfiction, too, it includes a wonderful collection of short fiction, drama, and poetry, some of which is not easily found elsewhere. Fiction writers include Ida Fink, Aharon Appelfeld, Arnost Lustig, Tadeusz Borowski, and Sara Nomberg-Przytyk. There's one playwright represented, Joshua Sobol, whose Ghetto is presented in full. Also included are 72 poems by six poets, most notably those of Nobel Prizewinner Nelly Sachs. Twenty works of art created in the Terezin concentration camp are also reproduced here.

Ozick, Cynthia. The Shawl. NY: Vintage Books, 1990.

This volume contains a short story and a novella, which together tell the story of Rosa's Lubin's life. The title story, telling of Rosa's baby daughter's death in a concentration camp and the shawl that sustained her, has been called the single most evocative picture of the horrors of the Holocaust. The novella, "Rosa," takes place more than thirty years later, in southern Florida, where Rosa's prime reality centers on the letters she writes to her long-dead daughter.

Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. NY: Little, Brown, 1993.

Based on the collection at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Simply and clearly written, the text provides a comprehensive historical understanding of the major turning points from the 20s through the 40s. Many photographs. Invaluable for teachers and students who cannot devote time to reading one of the major histories of the period.

Hilberg, Raul. Destruction of the European Jews. Student Edition. NY: Holmes & Meier, 1985.

As one of the most notable Holocaust historians (and Holocaust survivor), Hilberg's multi volume work has been condensed into a version suited to college-level purposes. The book thoroughly analyzes the process of destruction which combined factors such as European relations with Jews, the history of anti-Semitic propaganda, the Nazi's uncreative propagation of this propaganda, the machinery that made destruction possible, the roles of ordinary people and of Jews themselves in the process, and so on.

Baer, Ulrich. "Contemporary Holocaust Images: the Landscape of Loss and the Limits of the Photograph." South Atlantic Quarterly 96.4 (Fall 1997): 741-53.

This article argues that images of the Holocaust restore a sense of place "to an event that would appear to be both geographically and conceptually placeless" (744).

Reinartz, Dirk. Deathly Still: Pictures of Former German Concentration Camps. New York: Scalo, 1995.

This is a profoundly disturbing collection of black and white photographs taken in recent years of numerous concentration camps in Europe.

Cybrary of the Holocaust. http://remember.org/

In addition to resources for teachers, this site includes photographs of concentration camps, remembrances from survivors, selected passages from books, and information about new films related to the Holocaust.