Books about the Holocaust

Auschwitz 1940-1945. Central issues in the history of the camp This extensive publication is a collection illustrating the origins and functions of the concentration camp and the death camp in various aspects. LANGUAGE: EN, DE, FR, PL. Learn More

Rudolph Hoess was Commandant of Auschwitz during the war. He was taken prisoner by the British. Between his trial and his execution he was ordered to write his autobiography. This is it. Learn More

This is a unique, eye-witness account of everyday life right at the heart of the Nazi extermination machine. Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a ‘Sonderkommando', without realising what this entailed. He soon found himself a member of the ‘special unit' responsible for removing the corpses from the gas chambers and burning their bodies. Learn More

This book is an interview with Sonderkommando member Henryk Mandelbaum. He tells of his terrible experiences in the camp. This interview conducted a Polish journalist Jan Południak. Learn More

Memoirs of a Hungarian Jew, a prisoner of Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen and Buchenwald. Was brought to the camp as a 17 year old boy. He lost his mother in Auschwitz, two sisters, father and brother. After the war he moved to the United States and settled in California. Learn More

Stanisław Taubnenschlag, (Stanley Townsend) was born on January 30, 1920, in Cracow, into a Jewish family possessing numerous contacts with Polish intellectual circles, and with many Polish friends and acquaintances. He was arrested in June 1942 and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, from where, one year later, he was transferred to the Buchenwald camp Learn More

FORGOTTEN VOICES OF THE HOLOCAUST In association with the Imperial War Museum and based on work recording the experiences of Holocaust survivors for the sound archive - one of the most important archives of its kind in the world. The intertwined moving and revealing interviews reveal the sheer complexity and horror of the Holocaust. The great majority of survivors suffered considerable physical and psychological wounds, yet the overall story is far from being just gloom and doom. There are many poignant vignettes describing acts of charity, reciprocity and kindness in the face of the most extreme form of barbarism. Learn More

I Survived Auschwitz was written by Krystyna Zywulska. Zywulska born in 1914 as Sonia Landau. During the German occupation of Poland, she was displaced with her Jewish family to the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941. She escaped from the Ghetto and became active in the Polish resistance movement. Under her new name, Zywulska, she was captured by the Nazis in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. Learn More

The Sketchbook from Auschwitz, a unique work preserved in the collections of the Auschwitz Memorial has been published by the Museum in its entirety for the first time. It is the only set of drawings made in the camp depicting the extermination of Jews deported by German Nazis to Auschwitz. The unknown author documented in his drawings also murdering of prisoners who were sick or had been worked to exhaustion. Learn More