Staff Picks
The Banality of Evil: Holocaust Nonfiction
- Sara M.
- Monday, January 14, 2019
Collection
The Zookeeper's Wife
Published in 2017
The true story of how the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw--and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Żabiński began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Żabińskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants--otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes--and keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her.--From publisher description.
The Crime and the Silence
Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne
Published in 2015
"The devastating story of Jedwabne, which was the basis of Jan Gross's controversial Neighbors (2001). Based on the author's encounters with witnesses, survivors, murderers, and their helpers between 2000 and 2004, The Crime and the Silence raises important questions about the responsibility of Poles for the Holocaust"-- Provided by publisher.
Final Solution
The Fate of the Jews, 1933-1949
Published in 2016
" DAVID CESARANI, OBE is Research Professor in History at Royal Holloway, Univ. of London and the award-winning author of Becoming Eichmann and Major Farran's Hat. He was awarded the OBE for services to Holocaust Education and advising the British government on the establishment of Holocaust Memorial Day. He lives in England."-- Provided by publisher.
Violins of Hope
Violins of the Holocaust, Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hour
Published in 2014
A stirring testament to the strength of the human spirit and the power of music, Violins of Hope tells the remarkable stories of violins played by Jewish musicians during the Holocaust, and the Israeli violin maker dedicated to bringing these inspirational instruments back to life. The violin has formed an important aspect of Jewish culture for centuries, both as a popular instrument with classical Jewish musicians-Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman-and also a central factor of social life as part of the enduring Klezmer tradition. But during the Holocaust, the violin assumed extraordinary new roles within the Jewish community. For some musicians, the instrument was a liberator; for others, it was a savior that spared their lives. For many, the violin provided comfort in mankind's darkest hour, and, in at least one case, helped avenge murdered family members. Above all, the violins of the Holocaust represented strength and optimism for the future. In Violins of Hope, music historian James A. Grymes tells the amazing, horrifying, and inspiring story of the violins of the Holocaust, and of Amnon Weinstein, the renowned Israeli violinmaker who has devoted the past twenty years to restoring these instruments in tribute to those who were lost, including 400 members of his own family. Juxtaposing tales of individual violins with one man's harrowing struggle to reconcile his own family's history and the history of his people, it is a poignant, affecting, and ultimately uplifting look at the Holocaust and its enduring impact.
Why?
Explaining the Holocaust
Published in 2017
An exploration of the most commonly asked questions about the Holocaust challenges misconceptions and discusses how no single theory fully explains the tragedy, drawing on a wealth of scholarly research and experience to offer new insights.
The Witness House
Nazis and Holocaust Survivors Sharing a Villa During the Nuremberg Trials
Published in 2010
In the Garden of Beasts
Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
Published in 2011
The bestselling author of "Devil in the White City" turns his hand to a remarkable story set during Hitler's rise to power. The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
Were We Our Brothers' Keepers?
The Public Response of American Jews to the Holocaust, 1938-1944
Published in 2014
In this major work exploring the American Jewish response to the Holocaust as it occurred, by examining contemporary Jewish press accounts of such events as Kristallnacht, the refusal to allow the refugee ship St. Louis to land in America, the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, and the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, Haskel Lookstein provides us with an important perspective on the way in which events are reported on, perceived, and interpreted in their own time.
The Holocaust
A New History
Published in 2017
This landmark work answers two of the most fundamental questions in history - how, and why, did the Holocaust happen? Laurence Rees has spent twenty-five years meeting survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Now, in his magnum opus, he combines their enthralling eyewitness testimony, a large amount of which has never been published before, with the latest academic research to create the first accessible and authoritative account of the Holocaust in more than three decades. This is a new history of the Holocaust in three ways. First, and most importantly, Rees has created a gripping narrative that contains a large amount of testimony that has never been published before. Second, he places this powerful interview material in the context of an examination of the decision making process of the Nazi state, and in the process reveals the series of escalations that cumulatively created the horror. Third, Rees covers all those across Europe who participated in the deaths, and he argues that whilst hatred of the Jews was always at the epicentre of Nazi thinking, what happened cannot be fully understood without considering the murder of the Jews alongside plans to kill millions of non-Jews, including homosexuals, "Gypsies" and the disabled. Through a chronological, intensely readable narrative, featuring enthralling eyewitness testimony and the latest academic research, this is a compelling new account of the worst crime in history.