Today is National Holocaust Remembrance Day. This entire week, April 23-30, are Days of Remembrance. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website is an excellent resource on this topic. If you ever have a chance to visit the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, I highly recommend it. While it is a sobering experience to visit the museum, I think it is important that people not forget exactly what humankind is capable of--both good and bad. I have had a sort of fascination or interest in reading about this period in history for a long time, and I have accumulated a number of good books on the subject (many read, some waiting to be read). Here are a few titles from my library (in no particular order):
- Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition, Anne Frank
- In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Resuer, Irene Gut Opdyke
- Hitler's Willing Executioners, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
- Nazi Officer's Wife, Edith H. Beer
- Etty Hillesum: : An Interrupted Life, the Diaries 1941-1943, and Letters from Westerbork, Etty Hillesum and Eva Hoffman
- Summer of My German Soldier, Bette Greene
- Rena's Promise, Rena Kornreich Gelissen
- The Seamstress, Sara Tuvel Bernstein
- Alicia: My Story, Alicia Appleman-Jurman
- Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, Philip P. Hallie
- German Boy: A Child in War, Wolfgang W.E. Samuel
- Code Name Mary, Muriel Gardner
- White Rose: Munich, 1942-1943, Inge Scholl
- A Time to Speak, Helen Lewis
- Sophie's Choice, William Styron
As always, I am happy to get more reading suggestions. If you have read a particularly good book about the Holocaust (fiction or nonfiction), please share it.