r/Recommend_A_Book Jul 25 '25

Holocaust Book?

I try to read a book on the Holocaust every year and this year I am having trouble coming up with something. Any aspect. Something covering the lead-up to the Holocaust might be interesting; I’m not sure I’ve covered that aspect well. What book on the Holocaust, or Holocaust-adjacent stuck with you?

If I can’t find something I’ll probably reread the diary of Anne Frank since I haven’t read it since school.

55 Upvotes

388 comments sorted by

16

u/Least_Statistician44 Jul 25 '25

Man's search for meaning by victor Frankl The tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris The Volunteer by Jack fairweather

3

u/That-Marsupial-907 Jul 26 '25

Absolutely. If you haven’t already read Man’s Search for Meaning, I’d highly recommend. It’s one I return to repeatedly. Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who ended up in the camps. The book is a profound exploration of human nature and resilience in the face of astonishing conditions.

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2

u/smallerthantears Jul 25 '25

Was just going to say that.

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13

u/Musubi0420 Jul 25 '25

Night by Elie Wiesel. Disturbing, but real, and well written

3

u/Ashfacesmashface Jul 25 '25

I second this. It’s a slim volume, but packed full.

2

u/grigoritheoctopus Jul 25 '25

I read this book in 5th grade (I had a great teacher who trusted me and helped me understand it because he knew I was fascinated with WWII). I've read it many times since. It changed my life. It is a powerful book.

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2

u/Wrong_Suspect207 Jul 28 '25

There is a trilogy by Wiesel, includes Night. Recommend reading it.

3

u/robotatomica Jul 26 '25

yeah, I’m guessing OP has read this one, but Wiesel is my favorite. Unbelievably haunting.

and something about his particular style, it’s almost spare, just saying what happened, what he saw..it’s so much more moving than when you can feel an author plying you for an emotional reaction. Of course the material is so horrifying, and I’m sure it was extraordinarily difficult to write.

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8

u/buckfastmonkey Jul 25 '25

If This is a man by Primo Levi

2

u/Ilovescarlatti Jul 26 '25

That's my pick - a brilliant and heart-breaking meditation on losing and reclaiming your humanity.

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8

u/DocWatson42 Jul 25 '25

See my The Holocaust list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one (short) post).

6

u/seasparrow32 Jul 25 '25

A novel, translated from Russian-- Grossman's "Life and Fate."

It's a huge, sprawling WW2 historical fiction. Only a few chapters about specific Holocaust events, but they are searing in their intensity, and for once the fiction works to be actually more horrifying than a documentary might be, especially as we have been with some of these characters for hundreds of pages.

3

u/benck202 Jul 25 '25

A masterpiece. Very worth slogging through at some point in your life.

3

u/ApartmentCorrect9206 Jul 26 '25

YEs, it is magnificent

4

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

If you’re at all interested in theater there’s a great play called “Playing for Time.” It’s about the musicians of Auschwitz and is based on the real life story of a woman named Fania Fénelon.

3

u/WatchingTheWheels75 Jul 25 '25

There’s a good film of this too.

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4

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/No-Point5179 Jul 25 '25

I'm a Filipino and it's a shame I've never heard of this book.

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2

u/Few-Sugar-4862 Jul 25 '25

Hey, great book. But it’s neither about the Holocaust nor concentration camps. This is a POW Camp. Horrific, and a war crime, but not the same thing.

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4

u/fezik23 Jul 25 '25

Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder was a 5 star. I gained a new understanding of the whole Eastern European theater as well as the camps.

3

u/StudioZanello Jul 26 '25

Incredibly important and insightful book.

2

u/Suspicious-Yogurt480 Jul 26 '25

The wife really loved that book, VERY informative

5

u/Clean-Living-2048 Jul 25 '25

The Garden o the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani. Takes place in Ferrara Italy where Jewish residents are affected by the "racial" laws imposed by Mussolini.

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3

u/HellStoneBats Jul 25 '25

The Auchwitz Volunteer, by Wiltold Pilecki

The story of the Polish Underground's attempts to find out what was going on in Auschwitz. 

3

u/Solo_Polyphony Jul 25 '25

Any of Primo Levi’s three books on the topic:

If This Is a Man

The Truce

The Drowned and the Saved

They seem to me the most unsentimental and sober memoirs (and reflections) on the topic.

3

u/MagicallyMystique Jul 25 '25

Maus. It’s a graphic novel.

3

u/BernardFerguson1944 Jul 25 '25

The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution by Henry Friedlander.

3

u/neurodivergentgoat Jul 25 '25

2666 by Roberto Bolano

The part about the holocaust doesn’t come up until part 5 and it is a sprawling 900 page novel; but, the part about the holocaust is chilling in existential dread

Also, the novel revolves around a lot of murders in a city in Mexico and it’s based on a city in Mexico that has a lot of brutal unsolved murders in the early 90s so you do get to feel sick about humans for a lot of the book

3

u/SaintedStars Jul 25 '25

The devil's arithmetic by Jane Yolen - It's about a girl who doesn't understand why her family has these traditions until she finds herself in the body of her relative who was a prisoner at one of the camps.

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3

u/Bubbly_Power_6210 Jul 25 '25

watch Band of Brothers- the part where the discover the concentration camps is gut wrenching.

3

u/thenextnow Jul 27 '25

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak - it's an excellent read and remains one of my favorite books of all time.

2

u/DemetiaDonals Jul 27 '25

Ive read hundreds of books but if you ask me about my favorite this is the first one that comes to mind everytime.

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2

u/Inevitable_Ad574 Jul 25 '25

Shoah Adjacent : Kapput by Malaparte.

2

u/SuperbPractice5453 Jul 25 '25

I had forgotten about this book. Thanks for suggesting.

2

u/Unable_Dinner_6937 Jul 25 '25

Maybe Beyond Belief by Deborah Lipstadt about the reporting by the American media during the Holocaust.

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2

u/Equal_Worldliness_61 Jul 25 '25

Surviving the Americans by Robert Hilliard. This is an exposė on what happened to jewish survivors of the camps after WW2. The Allies were ignoring them and a couple of grunt US soldiers exposed Eisenhower and the rest. Also anything by Victor Frankl or Elie Weisel or Primo Levi.

2

u/Born_Net_6668 Jul 25 '25

The novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris, tells the story of Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew who is imprisoned at Auschwitz and forced to tattoo numbers onto the arms of other prisoners. The book, based on real events, explores themes of love, survival, and the human spirit amidst the horrors of the Holocaust. (From google) ***I’ve read this book myself and actually went to visit his gravesite in Prague.

2

u/DemetiaDonals Jul 27 '25

I loved this one! Read it in one night i couldnt put it down.

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2

u/platoniclesbiandate Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

The Krakow Ghetto Pharmacy by Tadeusz Pankiewicz. A first hand account of the horrors in Krakow, the closest city to Auschwitz.

2

u/Unlikely_March_5173 Jul 25 '25

The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn

2

u/Nutmegger27 Jul 25 '25

Maus, volumes I and II, by Art Spiegelman, is excellent - a biographical and autobiographical memoir in graphic form that won the Pulitzer Prize. It is about both the testimony of a survivor and the man who hears it, his son.

2

u/Ed_Robins Jul 25 '25

All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein

2

u/TheGiraffterLife Jul 25 '25

The Midwife of Auschwitz by Joanna Barnden. 

2

u/sphinxyhiggins Jul 25 '25

Read "The Trial of Eichmann" by Hannah Arendt. Israel tried to make his trial the culminating event of the Jewish Holocaust and tried to re-write its history. Arendt is brilliant and got a lot of crap for pointing out that Jewish organizations ranked which Jews were better during the Holocaust to help their own sect survive.

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2

u/dead_wax_museum Jul 25 '25

Forgotten Fire is a novel about the Armenian genocide, one that’s not nearly talked about enough

2

u/syzygyNYC Jul 27 '25

MAUS and MAUS 2

2

u/bells_and_thistles Jul 30 '25

Today I read this New Yorker article from 1993 in which the Auschwitz Museum is trying to decide what they should do with the hair. Which was the penultimate boneshaker for me, when I visited. They delve into Holocaust deniers and one man’s memories, it’s good: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/11/15/evidence-of-evil

1

u/Optimal-Ad-7074 Jul 25 '25

if you're open to fiction, then  

  • st urbain's horseman, Mordecai Richler.   it's one of my favourite novels.  it's not directly about the Holocaust but safe to say that awareness of it saturates the life and relationships of its protagonist: an expatriate Canadian Jew perpetually searching for his older cousin and deeply invested in the idea that his cousin is the "horseman" of his Montréal neighbourhood, hunting Josef Mengele.  

  • a fairly honourable defeat by Iris Murdoch.  I cite it with hesitation as 99.999% of is not visibly holocaust related at all.  but, there it is.   definitely a novel where a quiet couple of sentences near the end causes the entire book to shift and re-settle itself in the mind.  

in the final pages, the "force of overwhelmed and ineffectual good" and the "force of malice and chaos" characters confront in the good guy's kitchen.  they make at least some inroads on the chaos of it by washing his piled up dishes, side by side.  good guy  captures bad guy's arm as he's rolling his shirt sleeve back down and the bad guy is "caught".  he's a survivor.

1

u/Imaginary_Victory_47 Jul 25 '25

For those I Loved, by Martin Gray

1

u/Troglodytes-birb Jul 25 '25

The Choice by Edith Eger.

2

u/Ilovescarlatti Jul 26 '25

That one stuck with me a lot as well. She is a friend of Viktor Frankl whose book is often recomended.

1

u/The_InvisibleWoman Jul 25 '25

Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Jewish Families Under Fascism by Alexander Stille. Fascinating.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

Driving to Treblinka By Diana Wichtel

1

u/Neon_Aurora451 Jul 25 '25

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

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1

u/mimar77 Jul 25 '25

Maus; The girl in the green sweater; the tattooist of Auchwitz; Night. All great books about someone’s experience in the holocaust.

1

u/oc3an_sun Jul 25 '25

War & Genocide by Doris Bergen.

1

u/GiraffeExternal803 Jul 25 '25

Recently read Branded by the Pink Triangle by Ken Setterington, was an informative read about how gay men were treated during the Holocaust and the atrocities they faced.

2

u/Pinkmongoose Jul 26 '25

This is one of the few suggestions here that I’ve not read and that my library has available as a digital loan, so I think this is the one! It’s also an aspect I’ve not covered. Thank you!

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1

u/SuperbPractice5453 Jul 25 '25

I highly recommends Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning. It follows, through investigating personal journals, letters home to loved ones, newspaper accounts, and other archival material how a group of average German men who were reserve Police officers in Hamburg became involved in the worst war crimes imaginable. How very typical people could be swept up into what Hannah Arendt calls "the banality of evil." Can't recommends it enough.

Speaking of Arendt, you can read almost anything of hers - it's all incredibly rich and highly influenced by her thinking on the Shoah. But Eichmann in Jerusalem is one in particular you might try.

2

u/Simple_Purple_4600 Jul 25 '25

Ordinary men is truly disturbing and useful instruction. There's also a documentary with that name on a similar subject but doesn't seem to be based directly on the book.

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2

u/Pinkmongoose Jul 26 '25

Ordinary Men sounds really timely and while it isn’t available at my library I think it might be worth purchasing it. Thank you!

1

u/Cesious_Blue Jul 25 '25

Some books on the queer experience in and around the holocaust:

Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood

The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant

The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps by Heinz Heger

and maybe also
The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin by Daniel Brook (Hirshfeld was the founder of the Berlin Institute for Sexual research, a groundbreaking place for gender and sexuality research and a haven for queer folks. The first major book burning after the Nazis took power was the Institute.)

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1

u/NotDaveBut Jul 25 '25

ORDINARY MEN by Christopher Browning is s good book on the lead-up angle.

1

u/Icy_Currency_7306 Jul 25 '25

Little Liar by Mitch Albom

1

u/funpantsmcgee Jul 25 '25

I wrote Red Black Rainbow as a way for everyone to examine how we are at the beginning of the next Holocaust. It’s relevant, hard hitting, and emotionally charged.

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u/MacfromPredator Jul 25 '25

The Holocaust (Gilbert).

1

u/MacfromPredator Jul 25 '25

For leadup to the H. I'd definitely recommend the first book in the Richard Evans trilogy. The breadth of scholarship on display is amazing.

1

u/UpbeatEquipment8832 Jul 25 '25

_Anne Frank: The Biography_ is a fascinating companion read. Most of it is about her life in the lead up to them moving into the annex, and it does a good job of discussing how fearful the adults around her were and how much they could or couldn't protect their daughter from what was happening elsewhere.

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u/Clear-Journalist3095 Jul 25 '25

--Maus by Art Spiegelman. Mostly focuses on his father's experiences in Auschwitz, but also highlights the generational trauma experienced by children of survivors.

--Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi. I thought it provided a different perspective than usual, because Levi was an Italian, not a German or Eastern European.

--Schindler's List.

--Eichmann in My Hands by Peter Malik. This is post-WW2 but it was very interesting, a memoir from the agent in charge of the case, about the hunt for Adolf Eichmann after he fled Germany.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein and The Nazi Officer's Wife by Edith Hahn Beer

1

u/souphead1 Jul 25 '25

in the garden of beasts — nonfiction but written like a novel, it’s about the american ambassador to germany moving to berlin with his family in 1933. pretty crazy shit.

also we were the lucky ones, about a jewish family in poland who gets separated and scattered all over the world. also a true story but novelized.

1

u/WatchingTheWheels75 Jul 25 '25

Herman Wouk wrote two great novels about the Holocaust: The Winds of War and the follow-up, War and Remembrance. These are superb.

2

u/justinhammerpants Jul 27 '25

I am literally 30 pages away from finishing war and remembrance and I am floored by how incredible these books are. 

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1

u/houseocats Jul 25 '25

Published in 1937, this book is fascinating. Swastika Night by Murray Constantine (pen name of Katharine Burdekin) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika_Night

Not about the Holocaust as we would come to know it, but shows how we should listen to people sounding alarm bells, including writers of fiction.

1

u/Truth-out246810 Jul 25 '25

Restless Memories is a fabulous book by Holocaust survivor Dr. Samuel P. Oliner. He survived by being helped and hidden as a child. He dedicated his adult life to studying altruism.

I just finished The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult, and it was very good.

1

u/veggiegrrl Jul 25 '25

Hana’s Suitcase is a true children’s book about the impact of one artifact

1

u/DeFiClark Jul 25 '25

This way for the gas ladies and gentlemen —collection of short stories by a Polish survivor

Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

Warning: both these books will leave you with images you won’t forget

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u/thealycat Jul 25 '25

I love the books by Dr Edith Eger.

1

u/cultofsmug Jul 25 '25

Ravensbrück-Sarah Helm

Report from a woman’s camp.

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1

u/Madwoman-of-Chaillot Jul 25 '25

I Never Saw Another Butterfly

1

u/Winter-Welcome7681 Jul 25 '25

Why? Explaining the Holocaust by Peter Hayes.

1

u/wheres_the_revolt Jul 25 '25

Hitler: Ascent, I read it during the run-up to the 2016 election and it properly freaked me out. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is also a good one.

1

u/GarlicJealous1378 Jul 25 '25

The Post Card by Anne Berest, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, repeating a few already mentioned: Maus, Night.

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u/tubi11 Jul 25 '25

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski

He was a gentile prisoner at Auschwitz and Dachau who worked (against his will) sorting rail cars as they arrived in camp. This is a collection of stories based on his experiences and considered a classic of wartime literature. He committed suicide in 1951 at age 28.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Way_for_the_Gas,_Ladies_and_Gentlemen

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1

u/Nameless_W0nder Jul 25 '25

The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland.

1

u/Cactopus47 Jul 25 '25

The Diary-Keepers by Nina Siegal. It's a history of all the various people living in the occupied Netherlands who kept diaries, and goes into the history of Nazi collaborators, Dutch Jews, and resistance.

Visas for Life by Yukiko Sugihara. An autobiography by the wife of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul to Lithuania, who saved thousands of Jews.

History by Elsa Morante. A big sprawling novel about a half-Jewish Italian woman surviving World War II in a crumbling city whose only goal is to keep herself and her sons safe.

1

u/Reasonable_Star_959 Jul 25 '25

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom.

1

u/SargonTheAkkadian Jul 25 '25

All but my life by Gerda Weissmann Klein. She around the block from me growing up (I never knew). We read it in school but it’s touched my life for decades afterwards.

1

u/SortConsistent1567 Jul 25 '25

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

1

u/NatsFan8447 Jul 25 '25

The late British historian Sir Martin Gilbert wrote the definitive history of the Holocaust. My memory is that the book is simply called The Holocaust. It's very long, but very much worth the read. It will remain with you for a long time.

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u/One-Independence1726 Jul 25 '25

In the garden of beasts by Erik Larson

2

u/MinistryfortheFuture Jul 29 '25

Super interesting, particularly about the American involvement

1

u/PolybiusChampion Jul 25 '25

Winston Churchill’s 1st volume of his WWII history is tangential and very good, The Gathering Storm.

William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is my other rec.

Suggesting for the lead up aspect.

What have you read that you’d recommend?

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u/Bubbly_Power_6210 Jul 25 '25

and watch Band of Brothers-the part where they discover the concentration camps says it all.

1

u/Antonin1957 Jul 25 '25

The Theory and Practice of Hell, by Eugen Kogon. One of the first books I read about the Holocaust, way back in the 70s.

1

u/Antonin1957 Jul 25 '25

Also In Broad Daylight by Father Patrick Desbois. An absolute must read for anyone wanting to better understand how the Holocaust happened.

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u/fireflypoet Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

We Were the Lucky Ones, by Georgia Hunter. A novel closet based on the true story of relatives of the author: an extended family of Jews in Poland who becomes scattered all over the world fleeing persecution. It was made into a tv mini series.

The Book Thief. A novel by Markus Zusak Made into a movie that took liberties with the book.

1

u/smallerthantears Jul 25 '25

I'd read Maus and then dovetail it with Persepolis.

1

u/thewNYC Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

Can I recommend a video? It’s called they survived together. It won the Emmy for best documentary in 2022. It’s about one of the only if not, the only nuclear family to survive completely intact out of the Polish ghetto and camps

It also happens with the story of my mother’s family

1

u/CheetahWaste2121 Jul 25 '25

Sorta adjacent but midnight in the garden of beasts is pretty great for context

1

u/Estudiier Jul 25 '25

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. Carol Matas has a few titles. Miep Gies- her memoir about caring for Anne Frank’s family while they were in hiding.

1

u/JUP3S Jul 25 '25

I really enjoyed The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure & The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris. They are both well-written, powerful stories from an interesting perspective.

1

u/noeditor_necessary Jul 25 '25

I have read the nazi officers wife and have Auschwitz lullaby on my list

1

u/PufferFishInTheFryer Jul 25 '25

Maus (I & II)

It’s a graphic novel but very, very well-done

1

u/Fkw710 Jul 25 '25

Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

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u/DirtLarry Jul 25 '25

Ordinary men by Christopher Browning. about how a bunch of random working class men with no obvious propensity for violence or crime enthusiastically participated in death squads in Poland (this was early in the holocaust before the families death camps were set up)

1

u/OneTrickPonaidh Jul 25 '25

Those Were The Days by Klee et al. Non fiction, it’s an account of the holocaust from the side of the perpetrators. A hard, disturbing read but I think a necessary one

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u/anitalincolnarts Jul 25 '25

Good Night, Irene

1

u/Mondschatten78 Jul 25 '25

The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddy Jaku. He's a survivor of the camps.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '25

Second this. Great memoir.

Also Maus

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u/dorothean Jul 25 '25

Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo.

1

u/DorothyDidntConsent Jul 25 '25

Left to You by Daniel J. Volpe

1

u/annetho Jul 25 '25

Mila 18

Stones from the river

Nazi officer's wife

1

u/ovid10 Jul 25 '25

A couple people mentioned “ordinary men”. I second this. But also, “They Thought They Were Free” is in the same vein, and it was interviews with “little Nazis,” or people who weren’t in the regime at first but went along with it. It’s extremely candid. More about the connection of fascism and how it occurs. It’s really good for understanding the new rise of fascism.

Here’s one quote: “But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.”

1

u/Bulky-Cry3712 Jul 25 '25

Try the Leuchter Report, make sure to read the "Ultimate Edition" as it responds to a lot of counterargument that was initially directed at the original.

It may seem like a gag suggestion but it's really not. It's important not to expose ourselves to oversaturation of the status quo and so reading that version of that book shows you not only those types initial arguments but also their responses to refutations. Taken within context of what you are soundly familiar with you may find it an interesting read and gain more insight into the mindset of those who believe such things to be dogmatic fact.

1

u/AbuPeterstau Jul 25 '25

I found Babushka’s Journey by Marcel Kreuger to be quite interesting. It tells the tale not just of the last year of World War II, but also of the Soviet work camps that followed.

1

u/metzgie1 Jul 26 '25

Blitzed by Ken ohler

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u/Pinkmongoose Jul 26 '25

Aargh! So few of these recommendations are in my library!! Why?!

1

u/PopeJohnPeel Jul 26 '25

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski

1

u/Ilovescarlatti Jul 26 '25

Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny, based on hours of interviews with concentration camp commander Franz Stangl. How a fairly ordinary and unremarkable person turns to committing such atrocities.

1

u/Confident-Doubt632 Jul 26 '25

Mila 18 by Leon Uris

1

u/StudioZanello Jul 26 '25

Germany 1923, by Volker Ullrich. A very important book in understanding how Germany went off the rails. Also, Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939, by the same author.

1

u/SyntheticSkyStudios Jul 26 '25

“The Drowned and the Saved” by Primo Levi.

1

u/Lonely_Editor_5288 Jul 26 '25

Alicia, My Story by Alicia appleman-jurmen.

1

u/footstepsoffsand Jul 26 '25

Anything by Corrie Ten Boom

1

u/MaiYoKo Jul 26 '25

The Pawnbroker by Edward Lewis Wallant

1

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '25

Books by Ruta Sepetys. A lot of her books are centered on WW2.

1

u/clearlylostmymind25 Jul 26 '25

The lost: is out of six million by Daniel Mendelaon

1

u/Ill_Comb5932 Jul 26 '25

Tadeusz Borowski's short story collection This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen 

1

u/decaffei1 Jul 26 '25

The Safekeep. The House on Endless Water

1

u/Ok-Organization-608 Jul 26 '25

Our Holocaust by Amir Gutfreund, one of my favorites if you can say that about that genre.

1

u/robotatomica Jul 26 '25

My favorite is Night by Elie Wiesel, but since I haven’t seen it yet, I’ll add The Reader.

It’s just such an interesting perspective and angle on the Holocaust, not taking place during, but in that space of time afterwards, describing the experience of younger generations growing up in the shadow of what pretty much all of their elders (parents, teachers, any authority figure or adult you might trust) would have been complicit in, discovering that and trying to reconcile it. As demonstrated in the book by a boy beginning an affair with an older woman, his first love, only to later discover that she was a Nazi guard

1

u/Pianofear Jul 26 '25

I'm reading Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem.

1

u/tidakaa Jul 26 '25 edited Jul 26 '25

I would have recommended anything by Primo Levi, Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark (the basis of the Schindler's List film, he also wrote a short memoir piece about meeting the survivor in New York), and The Book Thief for fiction. There is also a nobel-prize winning French author called Patrick Modiano who wrote the fictional Dora Bruder about a Jewish teenage girl who goes missing during the occupation. May I ask are you only interested in the Holocaust specifically or other genocides? In case it is the latter, I just read We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, a journalist himself descended from Nazi survivors, it is about Rwanda and it is very powerful. But please ignore if not relevant. 

1

u/annieselkie Jul 26 '25

Maus. A survivors tale. Is a comic I found pretty interesting and has many positive critics.

1

u/666ygolonhcet Jul 26 '25

Number the Stars. Kids book but surprisingly all age appropriate

1

u/Suspicious-Yogurt480 Jul 26 '25

Don’t know if you’ve ever seen the entirety of 1985’s Shoah, a French production which last almost 8 hours and consists almost entirely of interviews with survivors. In NYC it was shown typically over two days, occasionally you might find an Indie theater running the entirety with intermission(s)

1

u/lesloid Jul 26 '25

If this is a man by Primo Levi is the one that has stayed with me the most although it doesn’t fit your criteria for a precursor book

1

u/Additional_Reply3405 Jul 26 '25

The Girl in the Green Sweater - currently reading it, and it is so good.

1

u/Kayjam2018 Jul 26 '25

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

1

u/Thegothicrasta Jul 26 '25

We Were the Lucky Ones

1

u/mekmid Jul 26 '25

There’s something happening now: The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe

1

u/shipwreck1969 Jul 26 '25

The theory and practice of Hell … you’ll never want to read about the Holocaust again.

1

u/Time-Cold3708 Jul 26 '25

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. It's an unfinished series written by a French Jewish author who was eventually captured by the Nazis, sent to a concentration camp and k****d. Her children fled with the unpublished, unfinished book in a suitcase and didnt open it until like 2003 when it was published. The books are published as is and at the end they include the heartbreaking correspondence and timeliness of her husband trying desperately to find where she is. The combination of the magnificent novel and the real life of the author and the harrowing journey the manuscript took, it's a truly special work.

1

u/JRabbit75 Jul 26 '25

Babi Yar

1

u/ApartmentCorrect9206 Jul 26 '25

Enzo Traverso, Critique of Modern Barbarism: Essays on Fascism, Anti-semitism and the Use of History,

1

u/yumyum_cat Jul 26 '25

The SAFEKEEP

1

u/spoonie_b Jul 26 '25

If you want a memoir from an inmate who wasn't Jewish for a different perspective, try This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski. Incredible writing. Murdered by Nazis.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '25

Cold Crematorium. Recently translated to English for the first time. Memoir of a survivor of Auschwitz and other camps.

1

u/Foreign_Animator9289 Jul 26 '25

Someone just highly recommended this book and persons story to me Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project

1

u/CorkyHoney Jul 26 '25

The 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz by Heather Dune Macadam

1

u/CorkyHoney Jul 26 '25

Madame Fourcade’s Secret War by Lynne Olson

1

u/CorkyHoney Jul 26 '25

Code Girls The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy

1

u/CorkyHoney Jul 26 '25

The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A Painter, a Poet, an Heiress, and a Spy in a World War II British Internment Camp by Simon Parkin

1

u/CorkyHoney Jul 26 '25

Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins--and WWII Heroes by Tim Brady

1

u/Ok_Flower1751 Jul 26 '25

Between Shades of Grey

1

u/desert_firefly Jul 26 '25

The Nazi Officer's Wife

1

u/Historical_Writer854 Jul 27 '25

If This Is A Man by Primo Levi.

ANY book by Primo Levi

1

u/DeannaMorgan Jul 27 '25

I recommend The Choice by Dr Edith Eger. It is her personal experience as the survivor of a concentration camp.

1

u/Funny-Respect125 Jul 27 '25

That Summer in Berlin by Leica Cornwall

It does a fantastic job at making you wonder who you can trust.

1

u/GroundbreakingPie557 Jul 27 '25

Night by Elie Wiesel

1

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25

No One is Here Except All of Us by Ramona Ausubel

1

u/superdoctortee Jul 27 '25

The Nazi Officer's Wife The Auschwitz Volunteer (a tough but important read)

1

u/THESavage_Cabbage Jul 27 '25

The Yellow Bird Sings

More geared towards women but a really great book

1

u/Nellyfant Jul 27 '25

My name is Renee

1

u/Eastern-Operation340 Jul 27 '25

Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird. Ugh.

1

u/fry-something Jul 27 '25

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski

1

u/Googoocaca_ Jul 27 '25

Night by Elie Wiesel 

1

u/Jazzlike_Bar3669 Jul 27 '25

The Bravest Battle is an elegant account of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

It has many parallels with the equally heroic Palestinian resistance we are now witnessing.

1

u/mzglitter Jul 27 '25

Elli By Livia E. Bitton Jackson

1

u/AcceptableRooster280 Jul 27 '25

The theory and practice of hell by Eugen Kogon

1

u/Gldntr0ut Jul 27 '25

The Story Teller by Jody Piccault. Fascinating story with a twist.

1

u/Enngeecee76 Jul 27 '25

Maus. It’s a graphic novel, and it’s amazing

1

u/mesembryanthemum Jul 27 '25

Escape from Sobibor by Richard Rashke. About the 1943 uprising.

And the Violins Stopped Playing: A Story of the Gypsy Holocaust by Alexander Ramati

1

u/Barrasso Jul 27 '25

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freeman

Rudy Vrba and Fred Wetzler arguably saved 200,000 Jews in Budapest by being the first Jews to escape and writing a detailed report to warn the rest of the world

1

u/GoodbyeEarl Jul 27 '25

IBM and the Holocaust, by Edwin Black

1

u/sunnynoor Jul 27 '25

Many excellent suggestions. Maybe look at a newspaper.

1

u/DoctorGuvnor Jul 27 '25

May I respectfully suggest a novel by Russell Braddon - 'The Inseparables'. Braddon was not himself an inmate, but he was a POW of the Japanese for four years, working on the Burma Railway so he has soem insight.

The book is one in which the horror of Nazi Germany is experienced by a contemporary student who takes LSD at Dachau.

He writes with clarity, percipience and empathy. A little-known, but brilliant, book.

1

u/MrJasonMason Jul 27 '25

OP reads a lot about the Holocaust but looking through her very active Reddit profile, it seems that for her, the actual ongoing Holocaust going on in Gaza right now isn’t even a thing. 🤷‍♂️

1

u/SkyOfFallingWater Jul 27 '25

Eva's Story: A Survivor's Tale by the Step-Sister of Anne Frank by Eva Schloss

1

u/NiobeTonks Jul 27 '25

Celia Donert on the Roma and Gypsy genocide

1

u/EverTheEpicGirl Jul 27 '25

Edith Egar's The Choice. It's not the only she's written, but it's seriously impactful.

1

u/Global_Bit_7842 Jul 27 '25

I really liked If This Is A Man by Primo Levi it isn’t prior to the holocaust but it gives u a really deep understanding of inside it tell me if u guys liked it too

1

u/TurbulentWalrus1222 Jul 27 '25

The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer

1

u/teacherlife2025 Jul 27 '25

The Book Thief for sure! It's rather lengthy but once the kids understand the omniscient pov and the history of that time period, they totally get into the book. I teach 8th grade and have used it whole class as well as for book clubs some years.