Holocaust Memorial Day

Holocaust Memorial Day book list

Holocaust Memorial Day is marked every year on 27 January.

All the books are available to read for free online and in libraries. E-books and E-audio.

Tell us what you think of the books on this list and suggest great books you would like to share: contact us libraries247@coventry.gov.uk

Book cover Book title and author Book introduction Websites for more information
The book thief by markus zusak
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Here is a small fact - you are going to die.
1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier.
Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.
Some important information - this novel is narrated by death.
It's a small story, about:
a girl
an accordionist
some fanatical Germans
a Jewish fist fighter
and quite a lot of thievery.

Another thing you should know - death will visit the book thief three times.

 

 

The boy who followed his father into auschwitz by jeremy dronfield

The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz by Jeremy Dronfield

Where there is family, there is hope . . . 
Vienna, 1939
Nazi police seize Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer and his son, Fritz, and send the pair to Buchenwald in Germany. There began an unimaginable ordeal that saw the pair beaten, starved and forced to build the very concentration camp they were held in.
When Gustav was set to be transferred to Auschwitz, a certain death sentence, his son refused to leave his side. Throughout the horrors they witnessed and the suffering they endured, there was one constant that kept them alive: the love between father and son.
Based on Gustav's secret diary and meticulous archive research, this book tells their incredible story for the first time - a story of courage and survival unparalleled in the history of the Holocaust.
The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz is a reminder of both the best and the worst of humanity, the strength of family ties, and the power of the human spirit.

Renia s diary by renia spiegel
Renia’s Diary by Renia Spiegel

A Young Girl’s Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust

Renia is a young girl who dreams of becoming a poet. But Renia is Jewish, she lives in Poland and the year is 1939.

House of glass the story and secrets of a twentieth century jewish family by hadley freeman
House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family by Hadley Freeman

Hadley Freeman knew her grandmother Sara lived in France just as Hitler started to gain power, but rarely did anyone in her family talk about it. Long after her grandmother’s death, she found a shoebox tucked in the closet containing photographs of her grandmother with a mysterious stranger, a cryptic telegram from the Red Cross, and a drawing signed by Picasso.

This discovery sent Freeman on a decade-long quest to uncover the significance of these keepsakes, taking her from Picasso’s archives in Paris to a secret room in a farmhouse in Auvergne to Long Island to Auschwitz. Freeman pieces together the puzzle of her family’s past, discovering more about the lives of her grandmother and her three brothers, Jacques, Henri, and Alex. Their stories sometimes typical, sometimes astonishing—reveal the broad range of experiences of Eastern European Jews during Holocaust.

This thrilling family saga is filled with extraordinary twists, vivid characters, and famous cameos, illuminating the Jewish and immigrant experience in the World War II era. Addressing themes of assimilation, identity, and home, this powerful story about the past echoes issues that remain relevant today

Searching for schindler by tom keneally
Searching for Schindler by Tom Keneally

In 1980, Tom Keneally walked into a store in Beverly Hills owned by Polish Jew Leopold Pfefferberg Page to buy a new briefcase. For the next few years, Tom's life was taken over by this charismatic and driven man, known as Poldek, and the story he wanted shared. The resulting book was Schindler's Ark, which went on to win the Booker Prize and ultimately became the Oscar-award-winning film Schindler's List. Tom and Poldek travelled across the US, Germany, Israel, Austria and Poland, interviewing survivors and discovering their extraordinary stories. Searching For Schindler is very much Tom's journey; he reflects on his early days as a successful but less than confident writer, and how this book, the film it became and the people he met, changed his and his family's lives forever.

Cilka s journey by heather morris
Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris

The sequel to the International Number One Bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz, based on a true story of love and resilience.

In 1942 Cilka Klein is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, notices her long beautiful hair, and forces her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly given, equals survival.

After liberation, Cilka is charged as a collaborator by the Russians and sent to a desolate, brutal prison camp in Siberia known as Vorkuta, inside the Arctic Circle.

Innocent, imprisoned once again, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar, each day a battle for survival. Cilka befriends a woman doctor, and learns to nurse the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under unimaginable conditions. And when she tends to a man called Alexandr, Cilka finds that despite everything, there is room in her heart for love.

Cilka's Journey is a powerful testament to the triumph of the human will. It will move you to tears, but it will also leave you astonished and uplifted by one woman's fierce determination to survive, against all odds.

When the world was ours by liz kessler

 

When the World Was Ours by Liz Kessler

Three friends. Two sides. One memory.

Vienna. 1936.

Three young friends – Leo, Elsa and Max – spend a perfect day together, unaware that around them Europe is descending into a growing darkness, and that events soon mean that they will be cruelly ripped apart from each other. With their lives taking them across Europe – to Germany, England, Prague and Poland – will they ever find their way back to each other? Will they want to? 

Inspired by a true story, WHEN THE WORLD WAS OURS is an extraordinary novel that is as powerful as it is heartbreaking, and shows how the bonds of love, family and friendship allow glimmers of hope to flourish, even in the most hopeless of times.

 

 

Once by morris gleitzman Once by Morris Gleitzman

A story of friendship, belonging and survival from the bestselling author of Girl Underground and Worm Story.

Felix lives in a convent orphanage in Poland. He is convinced his parents are still alive and that they will one day come back to get him. When Nazi soldiers come to the orphanage Felix decides to escape and make his way home. The journey to find his parents is a long and difficult one, as Poland is occupied by the Nazis and a dangerous place for a Jewish boy. Felix manages to live and look after himself and another orphan, Zelda, with the help of a kind dentist, Barney, who is hiding and looking after a number of Jewish children. When the Nazis discover them, Barney makes the ultimate sacrifice for the children - electing to go with them on the train to the death camps, rather than taking the option of freedom offered by a Nazi soldier, one of his grateful patients.

See our full Holocaust Memorial Day booklist.

Find out more on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s website: www.hmd.org.uk

BookTrusts poignant booklist that should hopefully help explain and inform younger readers about the events surrounding the Holocaust.