Literature+of+the+Holocaust


 * __Background Information__** (Citation #1)[[image:hitler1.jpg width="409" height="245" align="right"]]

The Holocaust began in 1941 and ended in 1945. Before the start, in 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. During this first year, Hitler established Dachau, the first concentration cam. He also removed Jews from all civil services. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws prohibited Jews from voting or holding public offices. The laws also banned marriage between Jews and gentiles(non-Jewish people). In November of 1938, Nazis destroyed Jewish property and sent thirty thousand Jews to concentration camps on Kristallnacht, or "The Night of Broken Glass" through Germany and Austria. The Nazis then invaded Poland in 1939. This was the start of World War II. In 1940, Auschwitz was established. In 1941, gassing experiments began there. In Spring of 1942, the first Jews arrived at Auschwitz and many were murdered in the gas chambers. 1942 was also when the world learned of Hitler's Final Solution-to get rid of the Jews of Europe. By 1943, six thousand Jews were being killed everyday at one location alone. However, during 1943, the Germans were forced to surrender at Stalingrad. By this time, the Jewish death toll exceeded four million.(//Holocaust Literature//)


 * __Major Themes__** (Citation #2)[[image:butterfly.jpg width="266" height="164" align="right"]]

Although not a theme per say, the butterfly has become a major symbol of the Holocaust. It symbolizes the ephemeral lives of Holocaust children. Voice is a major theme during this time period. The absence could help keep a family safe. Or, the power could help speak out against the atrocities of the time.//(Holocaust Literature)//


 * __Minor Themes[[image:o4.jpg width="409" height="232" align="right"]]__**

Trains are a minor theme. They carried Jews from their old lives to their new ones. Some used trains to escape persecution while some were placed on trains to face death. World War II is also a minor theme. Although the Holocaust was a cause of World War II, not many Jewish authors wrote on the specific subject.(//Holocaust Literature)// (Citation #3)

Holocaust literature is literature influenced by or written about the Holocaust of World War II. Autobiographical stories, such as those of survival in concentration camps, escape and life after the war, as well as fictonal works and poetry are included in the definition.
 * __Major Authors__**


 * Saul Bellow[[image:saul-bellow-3.jpg width="95" height="150"]]**(Citation #4)

In a majority of his works, Jewish life and identity were major themes. Desepite this, he frowned upon being called a "Jewish author." Bellow's work also shows a great appreciation of America, and a fascination with the uniqueness and vibrancy of the American experience. Bellow's work abounds in references and quotes from the likes of Marcel Proust and Henry James, but he offsets these high-culture references with jokes. Bellow interspersed autobiographical elements into his fiction, and many of his principal characters were said to bear a resemblance to him.


 * Anne Frank[[image:Anne_Frank.jpg width="106" height="161"]]**(Citation #5)

Anne Frank wrote her diary not knowing that it would be such a major work. Her diary is such a major impact because it's so widely known. Also because it's from a first-person perspective. The power of her words are astonishing and shows how everyone should have hope for humanity, in even the darkest of times.


 * Jerzy Kosinski[[image:JerzyKosinski2.jpg width="165" height="195"]]**(Citation #6)

Although his works concerning the time period were not Non-Fiction, they still had a major impact on the genre. Specifically, his book//, The Painted Bird//, was about a boy of unknown religious and ethnic background who wanders around unidentified areas of Eastern Europe during World War II and taking refuge among a series of people, many of whom are brutally cruel and abusive, either to him or to others(Kosinski).


 * Czeslaw Milosz[[image:milosz.jpg]]**(Citation #7)

He wrote numerous amounts of poetry about the time period. In 1980, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for literature. He was highly regarded for his relationship with America.


 * Elie Wiesel[[image:wiesel.jpg]]**(Citation #8)

He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps. In 1986, he won the Nobel Peace Prize and was called a "messenger to mankind."


 * __Annotated Bibliography__**

Senesh, Hannah. //Her Life & Diary.// New York: Schocken Books, Inc., 1972 Hannah Senesh was a Hungarian Jew and one of thirty-seven Jews living in Palestine, now Israel, who were trained by the British army to parachute into Yugoslavia during World War II in order to help save the Jews of Hungary, who were about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz.She was arrested at the Hungarian border, imprisoned and tortured, but she refused to reveal details of her mission and was eventually tried and executed by firing squad. She is regarded as a national heroine in Israel, where several streets and a kibbutz are named after her, and her poetry is widely known.

Friedman, Ina R. //The Other Victims First-Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis// Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990. Friedman finds a commonality in the stories, and tries to uncover the humanity and the real story behind each of the groups profiled. These include Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic priests, those with disabilities, Africans, Czechs, communists, and other groups. Each chapter has an introductory passage that gives an overview of what happened to the group of people, the reasons the Nazis would persecute them, and what forms that persecution took.

Ginz, Petr/Pressburger, Chava. //The Diary of Petr Ginz 1941-1942//. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007. Petr Ginz was 14 when he was transported to the Thereisenstadt concentration camp from his home in Prague and 16 when he was killed in Auschwitz. In 2003 a Prague resident came forward with Petr Ginz’s diary and exercise books that contained fiction and drawings which had been hidden and forgotten. Petr’s sister, Chana Pressburger, a resident of Israel who had also been interned at Thereisenstadt, authenticated the two notebooks and the handwriting and then served as the editor for the first Czech edition and subsequent translations of the diary.

Adler, David A. //We Remember The Holocaust//. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989. With the stories of Ernest Honig and Esther Klein to Judy Schonfield and Schabes and Ivan Gluck, many aspects of the Holocaust are discussed. First, the Jews were hated by the Germans. They were killed purposely to complete genocide. Read about German financial difficulties. Also, after much hatred, the trapped Jews in camps were killed. The survivors were later liberated by the Allies.

Auerbacher, Inge. //I Am A Star Child of the Holocaust//. New York: Puffin Books, 1993. Inga Auerbacher's childhood was as happy and peaceful as any other German child's--until 1942. By then, the Nazis were in power, and she and her parents were rounded up and sent to a concentration camp. The Auerbachers defied death for three years until they were freed.

Kor, Eva M./Buccieri, Lisa R. //Surviving the Angel of Death the Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz.// Terre Haute: Tanglewood, 2009. Eva Mozes Kor was 10 years old when she arrived in Auschwitz. While her parents and two older sisters were taken to the gas chambers, she and her twin, Miriam, were herded into the care of the man known as the Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele. Mengele's twins were granted the "privileges" of keeping their own clothes and hair, but they were also subjected to sadistic medical experiments and forced to fight daily for their own survival, as most of the twins died as a result of the experiements or from the disease and hunger pervasive in the camp. In a narrative told with emotion and restraint, readers will learn of a child's endurance and survival in the face of truly extraordinary evil.

//...I Never Saw Another Butterfly....// New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. This book includes childrens'' drawings and poems from Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in the years between 1942 and 1944,. The perspective of the children of this horrible place are eye opening. They look at things in a totally different light than the adult accounts of the same thing.

Finkelstein, Norman H. //Remember Not to Forget: A Memory of the Holocaust.// New York: F. Watts, 1985. This is a straight-up children's book. It gives an introduction to the Holocaust and presents the origin and history of Anti-Semitism. The book is presented in a factual,but undertoned manner. The reason behind this is more than likely to not fear the age group it was written for.

Kor, Eva M./Wright, Mary. //Echoes from Auschwitz : Dr. Mengele’s twins : the story of Eva and Miriam Mozes.// Terre Haute: CANDLES, Inc., 1995 Eva and her identical twin, Miriam survived the deadly genetic experiments conducted by The Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, in the deathcamp Auschwitz during 1944-1945. Their parents, grandparents, two older sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins were killed Mengele did a number of medical experiments of unspeakable horror at Auschwitz, using twins. These twins as young as five and six years of age were usually murdered after the experiment was over and their bodies dissected. A smiling "uncle Mengele" injected chemicals into the eyes of children in an attempt to change their eye color. He made experimental surgeries performed without anesthesia, transfusions of blood from one twin to another, isolation endurance, reaction to various stimuli. He made injections with lethal germs, sex change operations, the removal of organs and limbs.Approximately three thousand twins passed through Auschwitz during WWII until its liberation at the end of the war. Only a few of these twins survived the experiments which they were subjected to at the hands of Mengele. Among them were Eva and Miriam Mozes.

Wiesel, Elie. //Night//. New York: Avon Books, 1969 This book provides a short and moving account of Wiesel's experience in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. It shows an in depth view on the conditions of the concentration camps. It also shows how horribly the Nazis treated the Jewish people.

Lindwer, Willy. //The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank.// New York: Pantheon Books, 1991. This book relates the stories of six women who knew Anne Frank during the last seven months of her life. The story gives a first-hand account of life in the concentration camps.

Sender, Ruth M./Coon, Jim. //The Cage.// New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. This book recounts in the first-person narrative Riva Minka’s tales of suffering first under the Nazi regime in Poland and later in the concentration camps. It is the tale of a young girl with the soul of a poet who shows strength, courage, and determination in the face of death.

> Citation #1: []
 * __Works Cited__**
 * "Holocaust Literature." //Gale Student Resources in Context.// Detroit: Gale, 2011. //Gale Student Resources In Context.// Web. 12 Dec. 2011
 * "Kosinski, Jerzy N.." Current Biography. Biography Reference Bank. Web. 16 Dec. 2011.
 * __Picture Cited__**

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