On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia. Filled with a sense of adventure and national pride, they left their parents' homes wearing their best clothes and confidently waving good-bye. Believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months, they were eager to report for government service. Instead, the young women--many of them teenagers--were sent to Auschwitz. Their government paid 500 Reich Marks (about $200) apiece for the Nazis to take them as slave labor. Of those 999 innocent deportees, only a few would survive.
Published on Monroe County Public Library, Indiana - mcpl.info (https://mcpl.info)
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Transport to Auschwitz
Adult Nonfiction - 940.5318 Mac
All But My Life
Available from eLibrary resources
All But My Life is the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein's six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty. From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops--including the man who was to become her husband--in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey.
A Bag of Marbles
Graphic Novels - GN Joffo Bag Of Marbles
In 1941, ten-year-old Joseph Joffo and his older brother, Maurice, must hide their Jewish heritage and undertake a long and dangerous journey from Nazi-occupied Paris to reach their other brothers in the free zone.
Branded by the Pink Triangle
Adult Nonfiction - 940.5318086 Set
Before the rise of the Nazi party, Germany, especially Berlin, was one of the most tolerant places for homosexuals in the world. But that all changed when the Nazis came to power. The pink triangle sewn onto prison uniforms became the symbol of the persecution of homosexuals, a persecution that would continue for many years after the war.
Chasing Portraits
Available from eLibrary resources
The memoir of one woman's emotional quest to find the art of her Polish-Jewish great-grandfather, lost during World War II. Moshe Rynecki's body of work reached close to eight hundred paintings and sculptures before his life came to a tragic end. It was his great-granddaughter Elizabeth who sought to rediscover his legacy, setting upon a journey to seek out what had been lost but never forgotten"-- Provided by publisher.
Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor's True Story of Auschwitz
Available from eLibrary resources
Olga Lengyel tells, frankly and without compromise, one of the most horrifying stories of all time. This true, documented chronicle is the intimate, day-to-day record of a beautiful woman who survived the nightmare of Auschwitz and Birchenau. This book is a necessary reminder of one of the ugliest chapters in the history of human civilization.
Hitler's Furies
Adult Nonfiction - 940.5318 Low
In a surprising account that powerfully revises history, Wendy Lower uncovers the role of German women on the Nazi eastern front—not only as plunderers and direct witnesses, but as actual killers. Lower, drawing on twenty years of archival research and fieldwork, presents startling evidence that these women were more than “desk murderers” or comforters of murderous German men: they went on “shopping sprees” and romantic outings to the Jewish ghettos; they were present at killing-field picnics, not only providing refreshment but also shooting Jews. And Lower uncovers the stories of SS wives with children of their own whose brutality is as chilling as any in history.
Ida
Adult Audiovisual - Ida
A moving and intimate drama about a young novitiate nun in 1960s Poland who, on the verge of taking her vows, discovers a dark family secret dating from the terrible years of the Nazi occupation.
Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Graphic Novels - GN 940.5318 Spi
Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits.
Night
Adult Nonfiction - 800.92 Wiesel Wie
Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.
Paragraph 175
Adult Audiovisual - 940.5472 Par
The Nazi persecution of homosexuals may be the last untold story of the Third Reich. Directed by Oscar winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, PARAGRAPH 175 fills a crucial gap in the historical record, and reveals the lasting consequences of this hidden chapter of 20th century history. These are stories of survivors - sometimes bitter, but just as often filled with irony and humor; tortured by their memories, yet infused with a powerful will to endure. Their moving testimonies, rendered with evocative images of their lives and times, tell a haunting, compelling story of human resistance. Intimate in its portrayals, sweeping in its implications, PARAGRAPH 175 raises provocative questions about memory, history and identity.
Playing for the Commandant
Available from eLibrary resources
A young Jewish pianist at Auschwitz, desperate to save her family, is chosen to play at the camp commandant's house. How could she know she would fall in love with the wrong boy?
Prisoner B-3087
Young Adult - Y Gratz
Based on the life of Jack Gruener, this book relates his story of survival from the Nazi occupation of Krakow, when he was eleven, through a succession of concentration camps, to the final liberation of Dachau.
Underground in Berlin
Adult Fiction - 940.5318 SIM
Follows the true story of a young Jewish woman who vanished into the city and lived under an assumed identity, relying on safe houses, foreign workers, and communists in order to survive in World War II Berlin.
An Underground Life
Adult Nonfiction - 921 Beck Bec
That a jew living in nazi Berlin survived the Holocaust at all is surprising. That he was a homosexual, and also a leader in the resistance, and survived is amazing. But that he endured the ongoing horror with an open heart, with love and humor and without vitriol, and has now written about it so beautifully is truly miraculous.