Some of the most powerful Holocaust memoirs are firsthand accounts written by survivors themselves: Fanya Gottesfeld Heller's Love in a World of Sorrow, Michael Goldman-Gilead's postwar diary Who by Fire, Who by Water, and Wolf Holles's Witness to the Dark. For stories of resistance, look to We Dared to Live, the memoir of a Jewish partisan commander in Lithuania, and Tunnel of Hope, about a mass escape through a hand-dug tunnel from the Novogrudok labor camp. This guide groups the Holocaust memoirs and survival stories we carry so you can find the right one for yourself, a student, a book club or a Yom HaShoah program.
Many of these books describe hunger, fear and loss in direct, personal terms. Each is also a record of a life, a family or a community the author wanted the world to remember.
Quick picks
- A survivor's memoir to start with: Love in a World of Sorrow
- Jewish armed resistance: We Dared to Live
- Escape and the story of what came after: Tunnel of Hope
- Told from a young person's point of view: Witness to the Dark
- For a book club: When Eichmann Knocked on Our Door
- For a Yom HaShoah ceremony: Megillat Hashoah
Firsthand survivor memoirs and diaries
Love in a World of Sorrow
By Fanya Gottesfeld Heller
Fanya Gottesfeld Heller writes about the Holocaust as she lived it as an adolescent girl: the constant fear of death, the pain of hunger, and the relationships of a young woman growing up in the worst of times. Her family was hidden by a non-Jew whose love for Fanya moved him to save them, and she writes honestly about her parents' embarrassment and eventual acceptance of that situation. The edition includes an updated foreword and epilogue reflecting her years of bearing witness before audiences around the world. It has been on the reading list at Princeton University, the University of Connecticut and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and its moral questions make for deep discussion.
Who by Fire, Who by Water
By Michael Goldman-Gilead
The book opens with an entry written in a military hospital: the author has escaped a death march and is now a wounded soldier in the Red Army. He had kept a diary since his youth and scribbled notes in a labor camp in the Przemyśl ghetto, but he could not write in Auschwitz-Birkenau or on the death march, and his earlier writings were lost. This volume brings together what survives of his postwar diary along with letters written right after the war, following his illegal immigration to Palestine, his detention in Cyprus and his arrival in Israel.
Witness to the Dark
By Wolf Holles
As the war was ending, the Nazis tried to empty the camps before Allied troops arrived. Death marches are well known; less well known are the transports by train. In April 1945 three trains left Bergen-Belsen, and Wolf Holles was on the last of them, which never reached its destination. He was thirteen when he climbed aboard with his mother and two brothers, among about 2,500 Jewish men, women and children.
On Wings of Faith
By Rabbi Eli Fishman
Rabbi Eli Fishman began writing about his experiences soon after his liberation from Dachau, but felt he was too close to the events to make sense of them. More than half a century later, he returned to those memories to preserve a record of his hometown of Rachov, Poland, whose Jews were expelled in October 1942 and whose community was destroyed. It is also the story of his tenacity and faith through great suffering while still in his teens.
Hiding, rescue and resistance
We Dared to Live
By Abrashe Szabrinski, with Yeshaya Meytal, Chris Moore and Joseph Sabrin
Abrashe Szabrinski typed his story on a Yiddish typewriter his son Joe had given him, and only after his father's death did Joe learn the full extent of what he had done. An officer in the Polish army, Abrashe fled ghettos and forced labor camps, joined the resistance in Vilna, and became a commander of partisan units in the forests of Lithuania, fighting alongside figures such as Abba Kovner to blow up bridges, railroad tracks and munitions convoys. Historical notes help readers follow his journey. If you're looking for a memoir of Jewish armed resistance, start here.
Tunnel of Hope
By Betty Brodsky Cohen
In September 1943, around 240 Jewish prisoners at the Novogrudok forced labor camp, in present-day Belarus, escaped through a 200-meter tunnel they had dug by hand under the noses of their Nazi captors. Betty Brodsky Cohen identified most of the escapees, found that at least 133 survived, and, with the help of a genealogist, traced their descendants around the world to tell their life stories before and after the war. Historian Yehuda Bauer describes it as a story of resistance, "because organizing the escape and escaping is no less an act of resistance than fighting with arms in hand."
Open Doors & Open Hearts
By Petra van der Zande
This is the story of Zvi Eyal, born Harry Klafter in Utrecht, who as a teenager was imprisoned in the Westerbork transit camp and finished high school in defiance of the ongoing destruction of Dutch Jewry. On the eve of his transport to Auschwitz he escaped, and he survived the war with the courageous help of three Dutch families. The book follows him onward to his illegal aliyah, the War of Independence, his family and his career in surgery. It's a fitting read for anyone who wants to honor the ordinary people who opened their homes to Jews in hiding.
In the Ruins of Warsaw Streets
By Severin Gabriel
Based on the author's own diary, this is the true story of two young Jewish men who lived under Aryan identities in Warsaw. Severin Gabriel survived in hiding with the help of his brother, "Lady Wanda" and other Polish friends, and he gives special attention to the Warsaw uprising of autumn 1944, the deportation of the city's Polish residents that October, and the return to the ruined city, a period little has been written about. The book won first prize in an international competition for the documentation of World War II experiences held by the Polish-Canadian Publishing Fund, and it is written to move readers of all ages.
Remembering, teaching and commemorating
Where is Shimmele?
By Leah Fried, translated by Aviva Rappaport
Not a memoir but a story for younger readers about what came after. Seven-year-old Shimmele, an orphaned survivor, and his grandmother make the secret Aliya Bet journey on a crowded immigrant ship, end up in a British detention camp in Cyprus, and then face Jewish Agency representatives who try to take the boy away from his grandmother and his faith. It is written in a simple style and catalogued as juvenile literature, but its serious subject makes it worthwhile for teens and adults too.
When Eichmann Knocked on Our Door
By Tami Hausner-Raveh and Amos Hausner
The authors are the children of Gideon Hausner, Israel's chief prosecutor in the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and they describe how the historic proceedings entered their home and shaped their lives. Blending family memories with historical and legal insight, the book covers the preparation for the trial, the testimony of Holocaust survivors, Hausner's legal and ethical challenges, and the trial's lasting impact on Israel and on Holocaust remembrance. A personal way into a defining moment in Jewish history, with plenty for a book club to discuss.
The Lonka Project
A photographic tribute to Holocaust survivors
The Lonka Project is a photographic tribute to the last Holocaust survivors around the world. Since 2019, hundreds of professional photographers have volunteered to photograph survivors who opened their homes to them, to serve as memory keepers for generations who will never meet a survivor. It is named for Dr. Lonka Nass, who survived the Krakow Ghetto, Plaszów, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Terezin with her mother, and later rebuilt her life in Israel with her husband Yanek, himself a survivor.
Megillat Hashoah
A project of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies and the Rabbinical Assembly
Megillat Hashoah is a liturgical text created to be read on Yom HaShoah. It has six chapters in memory of the Six Million, and some are designed to be chanted using the cantillation of Eikhah, the Book of Lamentations. Synagogues, schools and communities planning a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony will find it a ready, dignified centerpiece.
And Every Single One Was Someone
By Phil Chernofsky
Phil Chernofsky, a math and Jewish studies teacher at a Jewish day school, wanted his students to relate to the Holocaust in a new way, and asked: what would a book of six million Jews look like? The result is a book that contains a single word, JEW, printed six million times. It is meant for presentations in libraries, schools, synagogues and memorial centers, as an attempt to give some small sense of the overwhelming number.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good Holocaust memoir for teenagers?
Witness to the Dark is Wolf Holles's account of the train journey he took at age thirteen, and In the Ruins of Warsaw Streets is a diary-based story of two young Jewish men in hiding that we describe as a book to move readers of all ages. Love in a World of Sorrow follows an adolescent girl, but it is very frank, so parents and teachers may want to read it first. For younger readers, Where is Shimmele? tells the story of a seven-year-old survivor in simple language.
What are the best books about Jewish resistance during the Holocaust?
We Dared to Live is a partisan commander's own account of fighting the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania. Tunnel of Hope tells the story of the mass escape from the Novogrudok camp, which historian Yehuda Bauer calls an act of resistance in its own right.
What should we read for Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day)?
Megillat Hashoah was created to be read on Yom HaShoah. And Every Single One Was Someone and The Lonka Project work well for programs in schools, synagogues and memorial centers.
Are there books about the Eichmann trial written from a personal perspective?
Yes. When Eichmann Knocked on Our Door was written by the children of chief prosecutor Gideon Hausner, and it shows how the trial shaped their family alongside its legal and historical significance.
You'll find more firsthand accounts and histories in our Holocaust and Resistance collection.