Bibliography of the Holocaust explained

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 and further hypotheses.

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.[1] 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.[2]

Bibliography

Primary sources

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 2nd, 1942.[4] 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 27th, 1942.[5]

A New York Times article reports on the existence and use of the gas-chambers on November 24th, 1942.[6] 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. This brief mention broadcasts certain basic elements of the Racynski's note, which was not officially circulated as a brochure under the heading "The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland" until several weeks later.[7]

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).

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.[8] 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);[9] [10] 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 is 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 Black Book of Soviet Jewry did not circulate during the war, while the Vrba–Wetzler report (April 1944) saw a limited and circumscribed distribution (though it convinced the regent of Hungary to halt transports in June of 1944, which had until then been proceeding at a rate of 12,000 deportees per day). The Black Book of Polish Jewry and even earlier reports in the Allied press presented details, but these documents significantly understate the scale of the killings – due in part to limited information, and in part to a (retrospectively) misplaced sense of discretion and sensitivity to the prevailing attitude of antisemitism amongst all Western powers, whether Allied or Axis: there was a desire to make the reports speak to an audience unconcerned about the fate of Jews.[11]

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.

First Histories: Early Attempts at a Comprehensive Presentation

Early major attempts at systematic scholarship or overviews of the whole system and process of Nazi genocide include:

Historical studies

Selected accounts by survivors

Selected semi-autobiographical accounts by survivors

Other documents

Hypotheses and historiography

Selected filmography

External links

General sites

Sites in languages other than English

Memorials

Particular groups which were involved in The Holocaust

Holocaust education

Victim information and databases

Documentation and evidence

Other topics

Other

See also

Notes and References

  1. Book: Bloomberg, Marty . The Jewish Holocaust: an annotated guide to books in English . Barrett . Buckley Barry . 1995 . Borgo Press . 978-0-8095-0406-0 . 2nd ed., rev. and expanded . Studies in Judaica and the Holocaust . San Bernardino, Calif . 14.
  2. Book: Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust: A Department of Defense Guide for Commemorative Observance . Office of the Secretary of Defense . 1989 . 123.
  3. Book: Dr. Hans Ehlich & Dr. Konrad Meyer under supervision of Heinrich Himmler . Facsimile of Dossier for Generalplan Ost from the Bundesarchiv . June 1942 . 1942.
  4. Web site: BBC: 700,000 Jews killed in Poland . 2024-03-19 . www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
  5. News: TimesMachine: Saturday June 27, 1942 – NYTimes.com . 2024-03-19 . The New York Times . en.
  6. News: MacDonald . James . 24 November 1942 . Himmler Program Kills Jews . New York Times . 10.
  7. Web site: 10 December 1942 . Mass Extermination of Jews in Occupied Poland . Republic of Poland, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
  8. Bettelheim . Bruno . October 1943 . Individual and mass behavior in extreme situations. . The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology . en . 38 . 4 . 417–452 . 10.1037/h0061208 . 0096-851X.
  9. Book: Apenszlak Jacob . Black Book Of Polish Jewry . 1943.
  10. Book: Fleming, Michael . Auschwitz, the Allies and censorship of the Holocaust . 2014 . Cambridge University Press . 978-1-107-06279-5 . New York . 190–194.
  11. Book: Leff, Laurel . Buried by the Times: the Holocaust and America's most important newspaper . 2006 . Cambridge University Press . 978-0-521-60782-7 . Cambridge ; New York.
  12. Web site: Daring to Resist: Three Women Face the Holocaust - Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO). 12 May 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160303232445/http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/emro/emroDetail.asp?Number=734. 3 March 2016. dead.
  13. Web site: PBS - Daring To Resist. . 12 May 2016.
  14. Web site: Daring to Resist: Three Women Face the Holocaust. 12 May 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160611094617/http://pickmanmuseumshop.com/datorethwofa.html. 11 June 2016. dead. dmy-all.
  15. Web site: Liebe Perla: a complex friendship and lost disability history captured on film . 2011-06-26 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110928055412/http://www.disabilityworld.org/07-08_01/arts/perla.shtml . 2011-09-28 . dead .
  16. Web site: New International Film Explores Disability & the Holocaust . 2011-06-26 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110928055442/http://www.disabilityworld.org/03-04_01/arts/holocaustfilm.shtml . 2011-09-28 . dead .
  17. Web site: Book and Movie Reviews . . 2011-06-29 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120326092617/http://www2.tntech.edu/tnfacs-er/bkmov_reviews/pace.html . 2012-03-26 . dead .
  18. Web site: Paragraph 175. Imageout.org. 12 May 2016. 24 September 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150924033745/http://www.imageout.org/legacy/2000/prog15.htm. dead.
  19. Web site: Paragraph 175 . . 2011-06-26 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110623150321/http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/books/detail.php?content=2002-10-25 . 2011-06-23 . dead .
  20. Web site: Entry not found in index season NOT FOUND. 2011-06-28. 2012-01-12. https://web.archive.org/web/20120112142924/http://www.aptonline.org/catalog.nsf/vLinkTitle/SWIMMING+IN+AUSCHWITZ. dead.
  21. News: The PBS documentary "Swimming in Auschwitz" is a Thursday TV pick . The Seattle Times . April 23, 2009.
  22. Web site: Holocaust Survivors talk in 'Swimming in Auschwitz'. International Premiere at DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FILM FESTIVAL: London June 1st-7th . jewswire.com . 12 May 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110713105003/http://www.jewswire.com/Detailed/Holocaust_Survivors_talk_in_Swimming_in_Auschwitz_..._329.html . 13 July 2011 . dead .

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bibliography of the Holocaust".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2025, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.