📖 Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Read The Diary of Anne Frank, whose family eluded the Gestapo for two years by hiding in the Secret Annex of an Amsterdam office building. "Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period." Classic. – Middle • High

📖 The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . On Schindler's List by Leon Leyson. This heartbreaking memoir from one of the youngest children on Oskar Schindler's list should absolutely be incorporated into your study of the Holocaust. As his wife writes, Leyson's story "of his loved ones, of his hero Oskar Schindler, and of the times of unspeakable evil and stunning courage will live on for generations." – Middle • High

📖 I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems from the Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944 edited by Hana Volavkova. Here is a collection of children’s art and poems from the Terezin Concentration Camp. The forward gives historical context and an appendix tells what is known about the lives and deaths of the authors and illustrators. Heart wrenching. – Middle • High

📖 Night by Elie Wiesel. Required reading on many high school book lists: "Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps . . . Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be." – High

🔗 Content Connection: World War II. Learn more about the second World War.

📖 Hidden: A Child's Story of the Holocaust by Loïc Dauvillier.
In this graphic novel, a grandmother recollects to her granddaughter the story of her family's experiences during the Holocaust. Because this nested tale is told to a child, and through the eyes of a child, Hidden is one of the few accounts of the Holocaust that might be gentle enough for a somewhat younger audience. Highly recommended. – Elementary • Middle

📖 Star of Fear, Star of Hope by Jo Hoestlandt. This poignant picture book, set in Nazi-occupied France, is told from the viewpoint of young Helen, whose Jewish best friend, Lydia, disappears one day. – Elementary

📖 The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen. Yolen’s classic novel was the winner of the National Jewish Book Award:“Hannah, a present-day Jewish girl, is bored with stories about the past and not looking forward to the Passover Seder. But the past takes on a whole new meaning when Hannah symbolically opens the door for the prophet Elijah and is transported back in time to 1942 Poland, where she, along with other villagers, is sent to a Nazi concentration camp.” –Elementary • Middle

📖 When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr. This novel is based on the author’s own life story: “Anna is not sure who Hitler is, but she sees his face on posters all over Berlin. Then one morning, Anna and her brother awake to find her father gone! Her mother explains that their father has had to leave and soon they will secretly join him. Anna just doesn’t understand. Why do their parents keep insisting that Germany is no longer safe for Jews like them?” – Elementary • Middle

📖 The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. This parable of WWII has emerged as a modern classic. Best for older students; sensitive kids may find the story quite distressing. "Berlin, 1942: When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move to a new house far, far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people in the distance." ​– Middle • High