The holocaust

[kaytee87]

Recently I've been reading a novel based on the holocaust from a polish Jewish family's perspective. It makes for difficult reading, I have to stop at certain points as the scenes described are so upsetting (and clearly based on real life experiences)
It got me wondering about the other, lesser known victims of the holocaust (Romas, JW, Homosexual, disabled people) as I haven't read as much about them.
I was also wondering what life was like for all of these communities after the war. I believe 90% of the Jewish polish community were murdered, how can a community go home after that?
Can anyone point me in the direction of some good reading material on the subject(s). Either fiction (based on historical events) or non fiction is fine.

Sorry it's not aibu, posting here for traffic.

I highly recommend "Voices from the Holocaust" edited by Jon E. Lewis. It gives first-hand accounts from people involved in the holocaust from all sides - victims, guards, senior Germans, everyday citizens, camp liberators - from Hitler's rise to power until after the war. It is a very readable, entertaining and informative book.

Also movies "Shoah" and "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey" are both excellent (the latter was canned after the war but completed by the BFI a couple of years ago).

The Holocaust memorial centre in Newark is worth seeing, you can meet with survivors and they host talks and very keen to keep their accounts alive whilst they can. They also have a garden you can pay respect by placing a stone, lovely cafe and two part museum, one section for more child appropriate.

I think Jodi Picoult’s general style is sensationalist/voyeuristic, so definitely won’t read a book by her on the holocaust

That's ok, I wasn't suggesting you should

Definitely Levi. Also if you're interested in the Japanese side of things then the Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang tells the story of what the Japanese did in Nanjing, China.

OP, get yourself over to YouTube and look up the Shoah Foundation, there are hundreds of testimonies from survivors.

Some share their experiences of being in the camps and the death marches, others about how they hid from the Nazis for years.

I think it started when Steven Speilberg started researching Schindler List and he realised many people had a their experiences to share.

You might try contacting the Holocaust Education Trust. We had a Holocaust survivor come to school to talk about his experience and it was incredible.

I personally would not want to read any fiction about the holocaust. It feels very wrong.

I have visted Auswitz and Bergen/Belsen as a teacher on the HET project. It was the most emotionally exhausting day I have ever experienced. The sheer scale of Bergen-Belsen unfathamble.

In the town of Oswiecim one Jewish man stayed there are the the holocaust to bear witness to the Jews. That must have been an incredible brave but lonely thing to do. Many Jewish people left Poland. There family and friends had died and their homes had been given away and new people lived there.

You may also want to look into the Yugoslav Wars as you may find it of interest.

I'd second many of the above recommendations, and add 2 more. Schindler's Ark is a fabulous, true, story. It;s harrowing, but really worth reading. It gives some (not a lot) insight into post-war from Schindler's point of view if no-one else's.

Try The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn too. It's the story of how he looked for 6 relatives out of the 6 million people who died, and because he is looking for them after the war, it necessarily talks about the aftermath for (some) survivors.

I'd also suggest, for an insight into what Germany was like, the book about a couple who protested by leaving postcards around: Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada. Or read the White Rose about Sophie Scholl

having recently recently returned from a trip to Lublin, Poland. Whilst there we visited Majdanek Concentration Camp. As the site of this camp is nearer to the Russian border, when invaded the Germans didn't have the opportunity to destroy it.

I am a great lover of history, but i have to say walking around that camp, seeing everything, walking through the huts that had the "showers" was just overwhelming, and very emotional. it really got to me, and my DH.

we stayed for hours reading about the history of the place, and it really does open your eyes. you look around and you can almost imagine the poor souls who were kept prisoner there.

more than anything what surprised me more than anything was the scale of the place, it was huge!
reading through PPs i may well have a look at some of the films and pick me up some new reading material
x

Agree with researching the Shoah testimonies.
You tube or The Holocaust museum on line.
Also for youngsters The Judith Kerr (Mog,Tiger Who Came to Tea etc) section at The Jewish Museum in London is a good start.

"The Pink Triangle" is a book about homosexuals who were murdered during the Holocaust.

Primo Levi's books are definitely worth reading, If This Is A Man and The Drowned And The Saved are two I've read. I also got given a copy of quite a new book, came out a few years ago after Denis Avey, a British soldier, finally put his words down after all these years, it's called The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, he was near/in various concentration camps. My understanding is they were not only death camps, but also work camps, Auschwitz was a huge complex involving many satellite camps. Some were only death camps, everyone was murdered as soon as they arrive, Sobibor, Treblinka and others. What you're learning is important - we must bear witness and never forget.

Thanks everyone, will need to go down the thread and make a list then get onto amazon once ds is in bed!

The latest book on the holocaust i've just read is "Here There Is No Why" by Rachel Roth. It's a true account of the writers ordeal as a teenager who survived 3 nazi death camps. That she (and her aunt) survived the war was a miracle. What she went through was horrendous. She talks of the brutality, near starvation and the daily fear of the "selections" to the gas chambers, and finally liberation day when the British tanks rolled in, (the happiest day of her life).. Basically it's a tale of survival, and faith, which amazingly she never lost.

I downloaded it from Amazon, there's loads on there Op, mainly non fiction, but all very harrowing.

@123Buckle did you ever see the Freddie Knoller documentary? One of the most strangely uplifting things I've ever seen.

I'd second the Sarah Helm recommendation

If you can get it in English then try reading Farewell Sidonia by Erich Hackl. It is about a Roma girl who is fostered by a non Roma family in Austria in the 1930s. The family become increasingly desperate to keep her with them as the German army invade and the Nazi restrictions of the Roma people come in to force. It is based on a true story and is incredibly moving. It is hard to find in English but i get a copy on Amazon a few years ago.

Another book written from a different prospective is A Quaker Couple in Nazi Germany.
Written by the daughter who was sent to England on Kindertransporten (not sure if spelling). They protested about Nazism and paid the price.

I learned a great deal reading Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands. What an amazing historian of 30s Eastern Europe. This book enumerates deaths caused by both hitler and Stalin in Eastern Europe from 1933 to the end of the war. It is profoundly shocking. He has also written a well regarded book 'black earth' specifically on the history of the holocaust but I haven't read this.

I went to a museum just outside Toulon a few years ago, which showed all the stars used on death camp uniforms, and illustrated that Jewish people were not the only victims of the Holocaust, even though the largest single group.

Why don't we just stop having separate topics on Mumsnet?

@ChristmasTablecloth ?

My partner's father was a holocaust survivor, who was born in Poland. He lost his parents and two sisters and was the only survivor from his immediate family. He survived a number of camps and was liberated from Belsen at the end of the war. He went back to his home town, just as anyone might do - but couldn't stay as he encountered anti-semitism.

One of the stories that he told was about his time in Auschwitz, where he worked as a slave labourer. At the time, there were a number of UK prisoners of war also held captive, but obviously under much better conditions. They received a Red Cross parcels and used to hide chocolate where the Jewish prisoners would find it. I once read a newspaper article containing interviews with some of these soldiers. When they returned to the UK, they couldn't talk about the horror of this experience, as no one understood or was interested in discussing it.

I would recommend Children of the Flames, it’s about the experiments that Joseph Mengele did on twins at Auschwitz.

I’ve been to Auschwitz-Birkenau (the main gas chambers were at Birkenau) and the sheer size of the place is unbelievable. I’ve also been to Belsen, Dachau and Mauthausen.

I took my 10yo son to Auschwitz and at the end of the tour our guide told me she’d left some facts out in case it was too upsetting, given my son’s age. Having seen and heard what I did, I cannot conceive what those facts were. Go if you can.

@kaytee87 Jodi Picoult's book - that's incredibly moving. I had to keep stopping for a 😭