Bibliography of the Holocaust

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 that helps to establish the event horizon of the Nazi genocide.

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. Documentation by organizations such as Yad Vashem (including précis of individual fates) enters into the millions.Main site: https://www.yadvashem.org/ Digital collections: https://www.yadvashem.org/collections.html

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. The number of works devoted to the history of the Holocaust, and to the literature of denialism has grown since that time.

Bibliography Primary sources

Gemlich letter, 1919 Mein Kampf, 1925 Special Prosecution Book-Poland, 1937–1939 Ringelblum Archive, 1939–1943 Heydrich's Instructions to the Chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen, 21 September 1939 The Black Book, 1940 Commisar Order, 6 June 1941 Goring's Commission to Heydrich, July 31, 1941 Reichenau's Memo on the Conduct of the Troops, 10 October 1941 Theresienstadt Papers, 1941–44 Jäger Report, 1941 The Polish White Book, 1941 Einsatzgruppen reports, 1941–1942 An Account of a Forced Gravedigger, January 1942 Wannsee Conference, 1942 General Plan Ost, June 1942 Himmler's Order', 19 July 1942 Announcement of the Evacuation of the Warsaw Ghetto, 22 July 1942 Circular Memorandum of Himmler, 9 October 1942 Grojanowski Report, 1942 Wilhelm Cornides Report, 1942 Riegner Telegram, 1942 Protest!, 1942 Raczyński's Note, 1942 The Black Book of Poland, 1942 The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland, 1942 Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations, 1942 Stroop Report, 1943 Korherr Report, 1943 Katzmann Report, 1943 Höfle Telegram, 1943 Posen speeches, 1943 Witold's Report, 1943 Lodzer Yiskor Book (Memorial Testimony by the survivors of the shtetls in Łódź), 1943 The Black Book of Polish Jewry, 1943 Individual & Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations, 1943 Auschwitz Protocols, 1944 Vrba–Wetzler report, 1944 The Polish Major's Report, 1944 The Black Book of Soviet Jewry, 1944 Sonderkommando photographs (aka 180-183), August 1944 Höcker Album, 1944–45 Gerstein Report, 1945 Harrison Report, 1945 Auschwitz Report, written 1945, published 2006 Nuremberg Trial Transcripts, Documents & Exhibits, 1946–1948

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 2, 1942. 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 27, 1942.

A New York Times article reports on the existence and use of the gas-chambers on November 24, 1942. 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.

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). These come from Dachau. The Nuremberg Trials, with many and various testimonies, were ongoing as Rousset and Kogon were published. A second wave of early first person testimonies at book-length include those by Levi, Wiesel and Adler. These accounts speak of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Thereisenstadt.

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. 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); 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 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 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.

The Lodz Yizkhor Buch was first published in 1943, but remained primarily in Yiddish until a translated edition was published after the war. Many Yizkhor, or community chronicles by survivors, were to follow.

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.

After the Nuremberg Trials, the first attempt to comprehensively treat the full-sweep of the genocidal program is Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). This is followed by Reitlinger's Final Solution (1953), and the work that was to become the first major historical standard, Raul Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jewry (1961).

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:

Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by Hannah Arendt The Final Solution (1953) by Gerald Reitlinger The Destruction of the European Jews (1961) by Raul Hilberg Though devoted to an exhaustive history of only one camp, H.G. Adler's book, Theresienstadt 1941–1945. Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft (1955) re: Thereisenstadt: The Face of a Coerced Community also belongs in this collection. This volume thoroughly documents transports to Treblinka and Auschwitz, thus covering activities beyond the perimeter of his camp. As a scrupulously extensive institutional history written by a survivor, it is the only work of its kind.

Historical studies

Brossat, Alain & Klingberg, Sylvia. Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism (1983). trans. David Fernbach. NYC: Verso, 2016.

Kaufman, Max. Khurbn Letland or The Destruction of Jews in Latvia (1947) Hartung Gorre-Verlag

Snyder, Timothy (2015). Black Earth: The Holocaust as History & Warning. Crown (Reprint), 2015.

Wachsman, Nikolaus (2015). KL: A History of the Concentration Camps.

Selected accounts by survivors

Adler, H.G. Theresienstadt 1941–1945. Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft (1955)

Bettelheim, Bruno (1943) "Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations", Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38: 417–452

Gradowski, Zalman (1943). From the Heart of Hell: A Diary of Auschwitz. Zalman was murdered in Auschwitz, but his diary survived buried next to a cresmstorium.

Also published as: Factory of Death; Escape from Auschwitz: I Cannot Forgive; 44070: The Conspiracy of the Twentieth Century; I Escaped from Auschwitz

Selected semi-autobiographical accounts by survivors Berger, Zdena (1961). Tell Me Another Morning. Harper & Brothers.

Volume 1: My Father Bleeds History; Volume 2: Here My Troubles Began.

Bibliography of the Holocaust

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