May We Never Forget: The Value of Holocaust Literature

Liz Walton

May 10, 2006

English 112B

Dr. Warner

The stories of the Holocaust are examples of hope, strength, and courage. The imprisoned Jews had the hope that the atrocities they had to face everyday wouldn't get any worse and that they would be liberated soon. Their strength and will made it possible for them to hold on even when they felt as if they had nothing left within themselves to survive. Not only were there were many courageous Jews, but there were numerous brave non-Jews who risked their lives by hiding so many from extermination.

The term Holocaust was chosen by the Jews themselves, and is related to the word olah in the Jewish Bible meaning burnt offering. Six million Jews, or two out of every three Jews in Europe, or one-third of the world's Jewish population were sacrificed as the Germans enacted the "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" by solving the "Jewish Question" (Vashem 22).

Those of Jewish heritage were systematically rounded up, confined to ghettos, and eventually transported to death camps also known as concentration camps. Here they were gassed, burned, or worked to death. The memoirs and autobiographies are full of accounts of unbelievable mistreatment, abuse, torture, and starvation of a group of innocent people all because of their ancestry. Many children also suffered such atrocities that no child should ever have to endure. Fortunately there were many brave non-Jews who reached out to help or hide as many Jews as they could. Not only should the Holocaust survivors be regarded as heroes, but those who risked their lives to help them escape certain death deserve that status as well.

This annotated bibliography includes fictional stories based on factual events, memoirs, autobiographies, and first-hand accounts of these historic events during World War II. Never should there be another event of such abhorrence and intentional extermination of any group of people because of their heritage. Most authors admit that they wrote their stories down so that we will never forget this unbelievable tragedy. As Gabriele Siten wrote in her book Between Two Worlds: Autobiography of a Child Survivor of the Holocaust,

"Survivor's Shema"

Let the Holocaust be

A symbol before our eyes

Of such darkness as must never be repeated;

Let our tattooed numbers be

A sign upon our arms

Of such evil as must never happen again;

So let us consecrate ourselves

To bearing witness

From generation to generation

So that no one will ever forget (193).

May we always remember these tragic events so that they will never be repeated again!

Annotated Bibliography

Adler, David A. We Remember the Holocaust. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1989.

This book contains historical descriptions of Jewish life in Europe prior to the 1930's and Hitler's violent rise to power. It also describes the Nazi rule and the humiliations that Jews had to endure as they struggled to keep families intact and survive in Jewish ghettoes and as they bravely fought for their lives in the concentration camps. It also contains first person narratives, including those of child survivors, interspersed among the historical facts making it an intensely personal memoir. It also includes a chronology of events and a glossary. This book would be very informative for students who want historical information and personal accounts of those events. The chronology would make it a helpful study of events surrounding the Holocaust.

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank. Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler. Switzerland: Random House, 1995.

Anne Frank kept a diary from 6/2/1942 to 8/1/1944 while she and her family were hiding out in Amsterdam. In 1944 the Dutch government announced that they would be collecting eyewitness accounts of the Dutch people under German occupation after the war and that they would make them available to the public. Anne had already been keeping a journal and decided to publish a book based on her diary. She began rewriting and editing her diary as she added new entries. Her story describes her families experience while hiding in a secret annex of the building where her father worked. Two secretaries and other non-Jewish friends kept the Franks and 4 other Jewish people hidden for over two years. Eventually they were discovered and Anne died at Auschwitz just months before the war ended. Her accounts are insightful and teenagers would find her going through fairly normal adjustments even though there was always the fear of being discovered and the possibility of death.

Greenfield, Howard. The Hidden Children. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1993.

This informative book chronicles the evolution of the war and is interspersed with Holocaust survivor accounts of these tragic events. It recounts stories from Jewish children who were hidden and survived the war. Some of these children remained visible in society, but hid their Jewish heritage masked behind Christian names with fictitious backgrounds. Other children disappeared from sight taking refuge in orphanages, convents, or adopted by non-Jewish families. All of the children had to learn to lie, to deny their true identities, conceal their emotions, and remain silent in potentially dangerous situations. This book was difficult to read because many of the young, innocent children were unwillingly separated from home and family, and many of them were mistreated or isolated from society.

Kertesz, Imre. Fatelessness. Translated by TimWilkinson. New York: Random House, 2004.

Fourteen-year old Georg Koves is sent from home in the Jewish section of Budapest, Poland, to Auschwitz. He does not understand why he was sent there or what his fate will be. He doesn't consider himself to be Jewish and other prisoners don't consider him Jewish either because he can't speak Yiddish. He remains an outsider in the concentration camp. This fictional story is devoid of much sentiment yet the protagonist is relentlessly insistent on making sense of what he is witness to. He begins to understand what his fate is, that he lived, and now needs to do something with that fate. Georg is a stereotypical teenager who is unsure of who he is, but the experience in the camps helped him to learn that he has control of some part of his fate. Young adults will learn about the strength of an individual's will when faced with extreme experiences.

Lowry, Lois. Number the Stars. New York: Bantam Doubleday, 1989.

Ten-year old Annemarie has a best friend who is Jewish. When the Germans come looking for the Rosens in their Denmark city, Annemarie's family hides Ellen in their own home. Eventually they take Ellen to Uncle Henrik's where she and her parents will be secretly transported to the free country of Sweden. Annemarie must be brave as she delivers a secret package to her Uncle while being confronted by the German soldiers and their dogs. Two years later, the war ends and the Danish people open up the homes of their Jewish friends that they had been taking care of all the while their neighbors were in hiding. Although this book deals with the Holocaust, it treats the subject fairly lightly and would be a good book for younger teens to begin their first readings of that tragic event.

Meltzer, Milton. Rescue: The Story of How Gentiles Saved Jews in the Holocaust. New York : Harper & Row, 1988.

This book recounts in the actual stories of rescuers of Jews. It includes the story of Oskar Schindler, in his own words, who himself alone saved 1,200 Jews. There is also the story of a peasant girl, a housemaid, a bricklayer, a policeman, a pastor, a priest, a consul, a washer woman, a clerk, librarian, and countess who all offered hope and belief in the goodness of humankind as they risked their own lives to rescue their fellow countryman. These rescuers realized that they did not have to give into the evil they were witnessing and are examples of the goodness in humanity even when surrounded by the evils of war. The book contains brief backgrounds of the stories of these "Righteous Gentiles".

Opdyke, Irene Gut with Jennifer Armstrong. In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer. New York: Anchor Books, 1999.

Autobiography of what it was like for a non-Jew to risk her life day after day, year after year, to save the lives of many Jews. Opdyke is a sixteen-year old Catholic girl who is captured, brutally assaulted, and left for dead by Russian soldiers. She escapes into German occupied territory and is forced to work for the German army in the officer's dining room. This access to food, supplies, and information allows her to smuggle things to Jews in the ghettos. She arranges for work camp prisoners to escape to the forest and hide out in an enclave. She bravely hides dozens of Jews in the home of the Nazi major where she is housekeeper. This book about one of the true heroines of the war also includes a guide to Polish and German pronunciations, and some historical backgrounds.

Rosenberg, Maxine B. Hiding to Survive. New York: Clarion Books, 1994.

This book contains stories of fourteen men and women and how their lives as youth were turned upside down at the hands of Hitler's Nazi's. They write of the horrors, their will to survive, and their rescuers courage. These are first person narratives from youth who were hidden away during the war. It is estimated that 10,000 to 500,000 Jewish children were hidden. It covers a broad spectrum of children hidden from certain death from many countries including Greece, Belgium, Poland, Holland, Hungary, Lithuania, and France. Each chapter begins with photographs then and now of the child survivor, and postscripts about their feelings of these events.

Silten, R. Gabriele S. Between Two Worlds: Autobiography of a Child Survivor of the Holocaust. Santa Barbara: Fithian Press, 1995.

Silten waited fifty years to publish her autobiography of her experiences in the concentration camps of World War II. In 1943 at the age 10, she was sent to Westerbork concentration camp and then she and her parents were sent to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia until 1945. This is her memoir of those confusing and brutal years of her childhood. She testifies to the alienation and loss of innocence suffered by young Holocaust victims. Silten creatively intersperses her narrative with entries of what she might have been thinking at the time the events were happening. There are many photographs, maps, copies of the Jewish Star and schematics of Westerbork. Interestingly, because she was a young girl, she did not have to work, but was left alone all day long in the barracks with nothing to do. Silten includes a "What Happened to Whom" section and a glossary.

Van Maarsen, Jacqueline. A Friend Called Anne. Retold for children by Carol Ann Lee. New York: Penguin Group, 2005.

Twelve-year old Jacqueline was best friends with Anne Frank. Jopie, as Anne called her, was half Jewish. In this memoir, Van Maarsen recalls her friendship with Anne and her own experiences of narrowly escaping deportation by the Nazi's as she helplessly watches her friends and family just disappear. Van Maarsen also remembers what life was like after the war and how difficult it was to star over again. The chapters are easy to read and include several pictures of Anne and Jacqueline as pre-teens. Van Maarsen includes a timeline of important events in the Netherlands in relation to World War II.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Bantam Books, 1960.

The true story of fourteen-year old Wiesel's experiences as a Jewish boy sent to Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. He recounts many of the horrors he is witness to that turn his innocent hope and faith into despair and disbelief. He witnesses the death of a father at his son's hands for a morsel of bread. Another son was forced to place his own father in the ovens. When Elie's father dies, he feels the heavy weight of guilt because he was not able to do anything to save him. On April 10, 1944 at 6:00 PM when the first American tanks rolled into Buchenwald to liberate the camp, he said no one spoke or thought of revenge. They thought mainly of food. This account is very graphic and only a calloused person will get through it without shedding tears for the loss of innocence of a young teenage boy.

Other Works Cited

Vashem, Yad. The Holocaust: Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. Jerusalem: W. Turowsky & Son Ltd. (No date listed anywhere)