Bibliography of the Holocaust

This is a selected bibliography and other resources for The Holocaust, including prominent primary sources, historical studies, notable survivor accounts and autobiographies, as well as other documentation that helps to establish the event horizon of the Nazi genocide.

The Holocaust literature is extensive: The Bibliography on Holocaust Literature (edited by Abraham Edelheit and Hershel Edelheit) in its 1993 update listed around 20,000 items, including books, journal articles, pamphlets, newspaper stories and dissertations. Documentation by organizations such as Yad Vashem (including précis of individual fates) enters into the millions.

Conversely, in a 1989 publication, Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) from 1987 to 2015, estimated that there were 200 books denying the Holocaust. The number of works devoted to the history of the Holocaust, and to the literature of denialism has grown since that time.

Bibliography

Primary sources

thumb|"[[The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland", a note issued by the Polish government-in-exile, 1942]]

thumb|upright=1.5 |Photos from [[The Black Book of Poland, published in 1942 by Polish government-in-exile in London and New York]]

Gemlich letter, 1919
Mein Kampf, 1925
Special Prosecution Book-Poland, 1937–1939
Ringelblum Archive, 1939–1943
Heydrich's Instructions to the Chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen, 21 September 1939
The Black Book, 1940
Commisar Order, 6 June 1941
Goring's Commission to Heydrich, July 31, 1941
Reichenau's Memo on the Conduct of the Troops, 10 October 1941
Theresienstadt Papers, 1941–44
Jäger Report, 1941
The Polish White Book, 1941
Einsatzgruppen reports, 1941–1942
An Account of a Forced Gravedigger, January 1942
Wannsee Conference, 1942
General Plan Ost, June 1942
Himmler's Order', 19 July 1942
Announcement of the Evacuation of the Warsaw Ghetto, 22 July 1942
Circular Memorandum of Himmler, 9 October 1942
Grojanowski Report, 1942
Wilhelm Cornides Report, 1942
Riegner Telegram, 1942
Protest!, 1942
Raczyński's Note, 1942
The Black Book of Poland, 1942
The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland, 1942
Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations, 1942
Stroop Report, 1943
Korherr Report, 1943
Katzmann Report, 1943
Höfle Telegram, 1943
Posen speeches, 1943
Witold's Report, 1943
Lodzer Yiskor Book (Memorial Testimony by the survivors of the shtetls in Łódź), 1943
The Black Book of Polish Jewry, 1943
Individual & Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations, 1943
Auschwitz Protocols, 1944
Vrba–Wetzler report, 1944
The Polish Major's Report, 1944
The Black Book of Soviet Jewry, 1944
Sonderkommando photographs (aka 180-183), August 1944
Höcker Album, 1944–45
Gerstein Report, 1945
Harrison Report, 1945
Auschwitz Report, written 1945, published 2006
Nuremberg Trial Transcripts, Documents & Exhibits, 1946–1948

Early Reports

Some of the information relayed in the Grojanowski Report (from the extermination center at Chelmno), including an estimate of 700 thousand murdered Jews, was broadcast by the BBC on June 2, 1942. Mention of several details from this broadcast were recycled and reported on page 5 of the New York Times near the end of that month on June 27, 1942.

A New York Times article reports on the existence and use of the gas-chambers on November 24, 1942. It significantly understates the scale of the mass-killing ongoing in the camps, though it does quote the number killed that year at 250,000 and suggests by implication that operations were continuous or otherwise had not concluded. The article appears on page 10 of that day's edition of the New York Times next to an ad for Seagram's Gin much larger than the article itself.

During the Second World War and in its immediate aftermath, many of the documents listed in the "Primary Documents" section above existed alongside a scattering of reports from individual camps such as Bettleheim's "Individual & Mass-Behavior in Extreme Situations" (1943) which appeared in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Early book-length works from survivors of the camps that became widely available immediately after the war include Kogon's Theory and Practice of Hell (1st published in 1946 as Der SS-Staat: Das System de Deutschen Konzentrationslager), and Rousset's Other Kingdom (1946). These come from Dachau. The Nuremberg Trials, with many and various testimonies, were ongoing as Rousset and Kogon were published. A second wave of early first person testimonies at book-length include those by Levi, Wiesel and Adler. These accounts speak of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Thereisenstadt.

The Bettleheim paper appearing in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology is a unique document, insofar as it was published while the concentration camps and extermination centers were still in operation and consisted of the testimony of a working psychiatric clinician in an attempt to report on the circumstances from the perspective of a survivor of the camps. However "Individual & Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations" (1943) also represents the limitations of the early reports: Dachau and Buchenwald (where Bettleheim was imprisoned) were not, technically speaking, extermination centers (the gas-chambers were not used for mass-executions in those camps) and thus does not reflect the experience of prisoners in the death-camps in Eastern Europe but speaks to how the system operated within Germany.

Even reports that record massacres, camps and extermination centers in the East during the war such as Raczyński's Note; the Black Book of Polish Jewry (which confines its sample to Poland, and understates, for a variety of reasons, the full scope of ongoing mass-murder); the Black Book of Soviet Jewry (which was compiled and presented for publication during the war but not circulated until after the war); and the Vrba–Wetzler report (which contains the testimony of two prisoners escaped from Auschwitz-Birkenau, published alongside the testimony of the Jerzy Tabeau, the Polish Major in Auschwitz Protocols) speak only to limited areas within the system of extermination, do not present a full picture of the killing, and were scarcely made available to the larger public due to an editorial policy that questioned the statistics at the time.

The Lodz Yizkhor Buch was first published in 1943, but remained primarily in Yiddish until a translated edition was published after the war. Many Yizkhor, or community chronicles by survivors, were to follow.

Articles such as the report on atrocities in the May 7th, 1945 issue of Life Magazine (7 May 1945, 31–37) began the process of substantively documenting and revealing aspects of what had happened to the global public whereas before knowledge of the mass-killings and the gas-chambers – though alluded to, for example, in speeches by Churchill (24 August 1941 broadcast, re: 'Appeal to Roosevelt') – and reported by rumor or anecdote, remained hazy and fragmentary in public consciousness. Many of the earliest accounts came from individual camps and the documents listed above – most substantially the Nuremberg Trial documentsbut these remained obscure apart from high-level (or generally vague) quotation in journalism. Major exemplars of Holocaust denialism include productions by Robert Faurisson, David Irving, Wolfgang Hanel, ZFI (Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle Ingolstadt), and various other pseudo-historians and pseudo-historical societies of a decidedly Neo-Nazi character. For a sketch of these activities and vandalisms of the historical record, see for example the case of David Irving v. Penguin Limited & Deborah Lipstadt.

A work by Jacques Derrida – The Differend (1983) – examines the structural and metaphysical fallacies and double-binds exploited by authors of Holocaust denialism in their negationist arguments.

Selected filmography

Documentaries

America and the Holocaust The American Experience. 1994, 2005 WGBH Educational Foundation,
Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution, BBC. 2005.
Daring to Resist: Three Women Face the Holocaust is a 57-minute documentary from 1999 which tells the stories of three Jewish teenagers who resisted the Nazis: Faye Schulman, a photographer and partisan fighter in the forests of Poland (now Belarus); Barbara Rodbell, a ballerina in Amsterdam who delivered underground newspapers and secured food and transportation for Jews in hiding; and Shulamit Lack, who acquired false papers and a safe house for Jews attempting to escape from Hungary. The movie was produced and directed by Barbara Attie and Martha Goell Lubell, and narrated by Janeane Garofalo.
Memory of the Camps, as shown by PBS Frontline
Night and Fog, 1955, directed by Alain Resnais, narrated by Michel Bouquet.
One Survivor Remembers is a 1995 Oscar-winning documentary (40 minutes) in which Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein describes her six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty.
Paper clips
Paragraph 175 is an 81-minute documentary directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman that discusses the plight of gays and lesbians during the Nazi regime using interviews with all of the known gay and lesbian survivors of this era, five gay men and one lesbian.
Shoah is a nine-hour documentary completed by Claude Lanzmann in 1985. The film, unlike most historical documentaries, does not feature reenactments or historical photos; instead it consists of interviews with people who were involved in various ways in the Holocaust, and visits to different places they discuss.
The Sorrow and the Pity, 1972, directed by Marcel Ophüls.
Swimming in Auschwitz is a 2007 documentary which interweaves the stories of six Jewish women who were imprisoned inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during the Holocaust. The women all survived and tell their stories in person in the documentary; at the time of its filming they were all living in Los Angeles.

Cinema

Schindler's List (1993)
Come and See (1985)
Conspiracy (2001)
Zone of Interest (2023)

External links

General sites

(First released in June 2009).
H-HOLOCAUST, H-Net discussion list for scholars and advanced students
Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: "Forget You Not" a Holocaust primer.
Owned and run by the Aegis Trust, an independent international organisation dedicated to eliminating genocide
. The Jewish History Resource Center, Project of the Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Includes the extensive Holocaust Encyclopedia and large collections of maps and photos, one of the most comprehensive sites.
Yad Vashem- Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. Extensive archives with searchable databases of victims, photos, extremely comprehensive
Searchable online archives on the Holocaust and Jewish resistance
The Holocaust, Crimes, Heroes And Villains.
Never Again! an online memorial
The Holocaust "children's voices from beyond"
The Holocaust Chronicle . The full 800 page book online, with photos and search features.
The Holocaust Chronology (PBS)
, General site with large Q&A section, as well as works by Jean-Claude Pressac
World Holocaust Forum "Let My People Live!"
The Journey, by surgeon E. T. Rulison, Jr., M.D., F.A.C.S., first-hand account and photographs of the 51st Evacuation Hospital during World War II
"The Case of Archbishop Stepinac: How the Catholic Clergy Helped Run Ustashe (i.e., Nazi) Croatia"; Published by the Yugoslav Embassy, Washington, DC, 1947; reprinted at http://emperors-clothes.com/croatia/stepinac1.htm
(neutral site with the new Gorbatchev documents included)
Documents on the Holocaust at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
A study of the kindertransport and testimonies from the children who took part in it.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center An international Jewish human rights organization
Holocaust Survivors Oral History Project at the University of South Florida
at the University of South Florida
Holocaust Centre of New Zealand

Sites in languages other than English

Yad Vashem in Hebrew, German, Farsi, Arabic, Spanish and Russian
Project Aladdin (Site with extensive resources in Arabic, Persian, French and Turkish)
Holocaust na terenie regionu bialskopodlaskiego w czasie II wojny światowe (Polish)

Memorials

Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service
Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Newark, England
European Holocaust Memorial
Florida Holocaust Museum
German Government's Memorial To Jews Murdered During Holocaust
Holocaust Awareness Museum & Educational Center of Philadelphia; America's First Holocaust Museum
Holocaust Museum Houston
Montreal Holocaust Museum
The New England Holocaust Memorial is a memorial in Boston, Massachusetts, dedicated to the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.
The Oregon Holocaust Memorial is an outdoor memorial in Oregon dedicated to all those killed in the Holocaust.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Virginia Holocaust Museum
Yad Vashem – The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
"Tkuma" Ukrainiane Institute for Holocaust Studies

Particular groups which were involved in The Holocaust

. Section from Rewriting The Footnotes — Berlin and the African Diaspora, by Paulette Reed-Anderson.
SS-Brigadeführer Franz Walter Stahlecker's "coffin map" Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus.
The Experiences of Jewish Women in the Holocaust
(see also Lesbians under the Nazi regime)

Holocaust education

An artistic portrayal of the Holocaust and its significance (Artist: Stan Lebovic) The artwork, developed for Black is a Color, is meant to depict the heroic posture humanity has assumed in this post-Holocaust world, and present it to both humanity and God. For humanity it should serve as a reminder of the worth of their actions, and for God a testament to the worth of God's creations.
. The Holocaust Education Development Programme (HEDP) is run by the Institute of Education (IOE), University of London and jointly funded by the Pears Foundation and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) with support from the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET). Its overarching aim is to help teachers teach about the Holocaust in effective and thought-provoking ways.
"Remember Our Faces"--Teaching about the Holocaust.
Belief in God After the Holocaust
Rut Matthijsen Excerpt: A Holocaust Rescuer Discusses How the Holocaust Might Best Be Taught

Victim information and databases

The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names – Yad Vashem
Links to sites listing victims and survivors from specific German communities and concentration camps
Info on archive of 128,000 victim records (currently under construction)
Info on archive of 56,000 victim records from Berlin
Links to several online searchable victim databases
Link to searchable online victim database from Bingen
Lists of people from Gerau region noted by the Nazis for being insufficiently Aryan; Nazi murder victims listed at the bottom
Lists of Jews sent from Hattingen
Names of 173 Jewish victims from Kaiserslautern
Death Lists from concentration camps near Muehldorf am Inn
Searchable list of 2300 victims from Nuremberg

Documentation and evidence

C-SPAN BookTV: Interview with Geoffrey Megargee editor of Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945
Detailed answers to Holocaust denial from the Nizkor Project
Documentary Resources on the Nazi Genocide and its Denial
Memorial to those who suffered at the eleven Kaufering concentration camps, located in the general area of Landsberg and Kaufering, Germany.
[https://isurvived.org/] photos of victims, camps, liberation

Other

, a documentary film and website.
Album Reveals Behind-Scenes Activities at Auschwitz
Auschwitz through the lens of the SS: Photos of Nazi leadership at the camp
'You Have a Mother' (Jan. 2015), describing Holocaust survivor Lola Mozes' experiences as a child in Nazi camps. By Chris Hedges in Truthdig. The Ghetto (June 2016), Hedges interviews Lola Mozes as she recounts her experience living in Nazi-occupied Poland, three-part video interview, The Real News
Writing as Resistance (July 2015), describing the writings of inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto who buried their accounts of the ghetto (in the hope it would be unearthed later) as German forces were liquidating the Jewish population of the ghetto. By Chris Hedges in Truthdig
A Liberator, But Never Free (May 2015). "A US Army doctor helped free the Dachau concentration camp in 1945, meticulously documenting his experiences in letters home to his wife. Hidden for the remainder of his life, the letters have resurfaced, and with them, questions about the G.I.'s we know only as heroes." The New Republic
Máximo, João Carlos (2015), "Não Há Aves em Sobibor", Chiado Editora. .
Dispossession: Plundering German Jewry, 1933-1953, Jonathan Zatlin and Christoph Kreutzmüller, University of Michigan Press, ISBN 978-0472132034