The stories of the Holocaust survivors are haunting. There is something about a firsthand account of someone who has gone through something so horrific and survived. The random luck that saves them and not the others and the guilt that comes from being one of the lucky ones.


Still Alive: A Holocaust Childhood Remembered by Ruth Kluger
"Instead of God I believe in ghosts"

This was a very different memoir than the others I've read. I think because the author is a writer and her story doesn't have the direct simplicity of someone just telling their story of survival. She is more abstract and more analytical. Her story has a sharper edge. That doesn't make it better or worse, but it gave me a different perspective.

Ruth Kluger grew up in Vienna and did not have an idyllic childhood. Her parents and relatives vacillated between petty and brutal behavior. The fact of their horrific deaths doesn't soften her memories of them.

Ruth's father escapes to Italy and the women are left alone. Ruth's mother has a chance to send her on a kindertransport and does not take it. They are sent to Terezin, Auschwitz, and Gross-Rosen. Her unflinching accounts of the hunger, brutality and banality of these camps allows you to sense the reality of that existence.


Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
"I knew I could not save the world. I knew I could not stop the war from starting. But I knew I could save one human life."

Between 1938 and 1939 thousands of children from Germany, Poland, Austria and Czechoslovakia were sent to Great Britain. This is the story of different survivors' experience on the kindertransport. The perspective of parents and rescuers are also included.

One of the most haunting accounts is of a girl whose father put her on the train and then as it was leaving, pulled her out of the window. In the end, he couldn't bear to let her go. This decision, which any parent could identify with, almost cost the girl her life. She did survive, but she was sent to a concentration camp and at the end of the war was near death and weighed only 60 pounds.

These are moving and troubling stories. To give up a child, to be given up, is traumatic. The homes the children went to were not always safe havens. But, the choices made helped these children survive.


Justice at Dachau: The Trials of an American Prosecutor by Joshua Greene

William Denson was an attorney who prosecuted the Nazis who committed crimes at Dachau, Mauthausen, Flossenburg, and Buchenwald concentration camps. He spent two years (1946-1948) at Dachau. This is the story of his struggle, highlights of the cases, and the aftermath in which several sentences were lightened.

I almost quit reading this one several times. This book was such a mental assault, I simply didn't know if I could digest it all, or if I wanted to. Up to this point, I had been reading single accounts and to suddenly have multiple stories thrown at me was difficult. These accounts were the worst of the worst, the ones that truly stood out among all the atrocities committed. Reading something that gave the larger picture, and looked at the individual Nazis' culpability was worthwhile in the end.


The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman
"I will never forgive myself that I was unable to do anything to save them..."

This is an incredibly moving account of a Polish man's survival in the Warsaw ghetto from 1939-1945. We see the random acts, the brief glimpses of humanity, that save him from the gas chamber and from starvation.

The most touching moment in the book is when he realizes that his sister is dead, and he never really knew her. Now, he will never have a chance.

The book and the movie are excellent. The movie is especially poignant when you realize the reality behind the story.


Edith's Story: The True Story of a Young Girl's Courage and Survival During World War II by Edith Velmans
"I never realized that there could be such suffering in the world, and that anyone could live through it."
- Excerpt from Edith's diary, July 1, 1945

This is the story of a carefree childhood interrupted by war. Edith grew up in Holland in a warm and loving family. She kept a diary during these years and the book alternates between diary entries, family letters and her own recollections as an adult. Having both her teenage perspective and her adult perspective gives us a truer picture of this time.

She is 14 when the Germans invade Holland and we see the slow disintegration of her life. At 16, Edith leaves her family, changes her identity and hides with a Christian family.

This is a moving story. Like all Holocaust memoirs, it is a story of loss and death. It is also a story of courage and humanity.


All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein
"Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the concentration camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend."

Gerda Weissman grew up in Poland and her childhood recollections mirror Edith Velmans' in many ways. She has a loving, close family. Again we see the disintegration of normal life as her family is torn apart.

Gerda is deported and sent to various work camps and concentration camps. In the midst of Nazi cruelty and brutal working conditions she forms close friendships. The fact that she is one of the lucky ones is staggering. These chance moments where she is picked to work instead of die seem incredible, but you realize that without incredible luck, a Polish Jew would die.

This book was devastating and absolutely riveting.


In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke
"There was a bird flushed up from the wheat fields, disappearing in a blur of wings against the sun, and then a gunshot and it fell to the earth. But it was not a bird. It was not a bird, and it was not in a wheat field, but you can't understand what it was yet."

When I understood what the bird was, it was one of the most chilling things that I have read.

This is the story of a Catholic girl in Poland. In 1939 when Poland is invaded, she is 16 years old and training to be a nurse. Like Poland itself, she is brutalized by Russians and Germans.

Despite her own hardships, she is not blind to what is happening to the Jews. She manages to escape the slow death of a work camp because of her pretty face and her ability to speak German. She is placed as a servant in a Nazi officers' club.

She sees the murder of Jews in the ghetto and decides to help. The most touching chapter in the book is when she fills a box with food (including potato peelings from the trash) and shoves it under a fence that leads to the ghetto. The next day the box is empty and she replaces it with a new box. It's just a drop in the ocean, but she feels she has to start somewhere. This is the beginning of a path that leads to hiding Jews and an incredible story of luck and courage.

Why did she risk her own life to help? When so many others refused, why she did she choose to see?

Reading these books reminds me that real people survived and real people died. These aren't good vs. evil narratives concocted by storytellers to give us convenient heros and devils. Real heros are imperfect people who are able to look beyond their own survival to help someone else. Real devils are imperfect people who allow themselves to be numb to the pain they inflict. This numbness led to the murder of six million people and it is beyond comprehension. But, we need to try.