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To mark the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, here are ten books about the Nazis’ most notorious death camp.
1] Survival in Auschwitz – Primo Levi
“At dawn the barbed wire was full of children's washing hung out in the wind to dry. Nor did they forget the diapers, the toys, the cushions and the hundred other small things which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the same? If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him something to eat today?” So writes Primo Levi in this legendary account of his ten months in the greatest man-made hell, arguably, in history.
Levi’s book, first published in 1947, could be described as the must-read “classic” account of Auschwitz. Having trained as a chemist, Levi managed to survive by working in a newly-opened laboratory. He did not have to labor outside, and stole equipment and sold it for food. Even so, by the time the Red Army liberated the camp on 27 January 1945, he did not even have the energy, he remembered, to kill himself.
This is a searing indictment of humanity and yet an inspiring tale of how one man managed to endure the unimaginable. Should be required reading in every school and college around the world.
2] Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
Regarded by many as one of the greatest books about the Holocaust, and arguably the most impactful, Frankl’s account of his time in four concentration camps, including Auschwitz, is a perennial best-seller. More than any other account of surviving Nazi genocide, Frankl’s book, written in just nine days, has universal utility, especially in today’s increasingly digital, depersonalized world. A brilliant psychiatrist, he posits, convincingly, that Freud was wrong: man’s primary drive is not for pleasure but for meaning. In times of indescribable darkness and evil, it is possible to find purpose, the key to survival for many in Auschwitz, and a valuable lesson to all of us trying to make sense of life.
3] The Search: The Birkenau Boys – Gerhard Durlacher
Durlacher survived Auschwitz and for many years thought he was the only one from a group of 89 boys who had done so. He sets out to meet with some of those who had lived – the result is a powerful meditation on how humans, who have suffered the same profound trauma, cope with it for the rest of their days. Some were in regular contact with other survivors, sharing experiences, and others tried to bury the pain and horror. Remarkably, Durlacher encountered optimists who refused to be spiritually defeated. Others were permanently embittered. Perhaps the most moving description in the book is of him looking up and seeing American planes flying above Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. The planes looked like a boy’s toys, silver, streaking across an impossibly beautiful, blue sky.
4] The Escape Artist – Jonathan Freedland
This New York Times best-seller by British journalist, Freedland, won the National Jewish Book Award and earned widespread, high acclaim. It’s a painstakingly researched, fluidly written account of Rudolf Vrba’s escape from Auschwitz. Vrba himself wrote his own memoir, also on this list. Freedland is to be commended for bringing Vrba’s original tale back to life, with careful fact-checking and an objective approach. It’s all the same an infuriating story of how one man risked his life to tell the truth of Auschwitz, perhaps saving 200,000 lives, but who believed to the end of his life that so many more could have survived had the Allies done far more.
5] Cold Crematorium - Josef Debreczeni
Described as a “lost classic of Holocaust literature”, this book is unsparing in its description of the full evil of Nazism. The author survived Auschwitz yet his book would not be translated into English until 2023, becoming a New York Times Notable Book of 2024. In our current climate of increasing ahistoricism and misinformation, this book reminds us that history matters a great deal. Debreczeni describes how forgetting atrocity, willfully, began soon after Auschwitz was liberated. Few of us want to be reminded of our most base instincts, but we should be – constantly. This is as good as any place to start.
6] Auschwitz: A New History – Laurence Rees
This 2006 book by the prolific British documentary maker is based on superb research and interviews with over a hundred survivors and perpetrators. Rees gives an utterly absorbing if at times nauseating account of the workings of the camp, even devoting space to the on-camp brothel. Scene of the largest mass murder in history, Auschwitz serves as the starkest reminder from the 20th Century of how man can plumb incredible depths once racism becomes state-sanctioned.
7] I Escaped From Auschwitz – Rudolf Vrba and Alan Bestic
I read this book over a decade ago while researching my account of five Hungarian survivors of the Holocaust, The Envoy. I couldn’t put it down. Vrba’s autobiography centers on an important date – 7 April, 1944, when he escaped along with a fellow Slovak from the death camp. Vrba then fled more than a hundred miles and recounted his experiences – the basis for the first, detailed description of the death factory to reach Western authorities and Allied leaders such as Churchill and Roosevelt. How the Allies responded to the information remains the subject of intense, emotional debate to this day.
8] Auschwitz and After – Charlotte Delbo
Delbo was a superb writer and gutsy resistance fighter who witnessed the murder of her husband before she was sent to Auschwitz with 230 women, who supposedly entered the camp singing the Marseillaise. Just 49 women from the transport survived. Of all the books I’ve read about Auschwitz, this one comes closest to describing what the experience felt like physically – Delbo’s writing about going thirsty, risking one’s life for a droplet of water, is unforgettable. Many survivors navigated a complete break in their lives, trying to reconcile who they were before Auschwitz and who they became afterward. Delbo explores this fissure and, significantly, how not being Jewish impacted her life immediately after her return to France. She came home as a heroine of the resistance while so many Jewish survivors had lost their homes, families and sense of belonging in the countries from which they had been deported.
9] The Volunteer – Jack Fairweather
Fairweather’s utterly gripping narrative became a deserved international best-seller – the incredible, true story of Polish resistance fighter Witold Pilecki. Determined to find out what was going on at Auschwitz, Pilecki decided he would – deliberately – get himself sent to the camp. He succeeded, but then the true challenge began – how to survive. He not only managed to do so but also tried to organize an uprising, and then did what appeared impossible – he escaped in order to warn the world of the Nazis’ plan to murder Europe’s Jews. Tragically, his warnings went unheeded.
10] 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First, Official Transport to Auschwitz – Heather Dune Macadam
This 2019 book astonished me. I’ve read my fair share of books about the Holocaust but this brilliant history truly opened my eyes to the unfathomable deceit of the Nazis and those who aided and then profited from genocide. Almost a thousand unwed, young women got onto a train in March 1942 in Slovakia, in many cases excited to be reporting for “government service”. They had been lied to and turned up in their best clothes only to be delivered to Auschwitz as the first official transport. Their own government paid 500 Reich Marks for each to be removed from Slovakia. Very few lived. Macadam brings this unknown tragedy to life – a valuable addition to Holocaust literature that shatters the heart.
