Books by Elie Wiesel
“Probably the best known memoir that has been written about the experience of the death camps…he has the craft; he is a novelist and, unlike many memoirs (which are all important and all have information and all shed light), this has a literary kind of quality. He is able to bring to the focus of the reader a deep emotional power, and something also of the mysteriousness of what happened in the camps. There was something here that really reached the limits of human experience.” Read more...
The best books on The Holocaust
Steven Katz, Historian
Interviews where books by Elie Wiesel were recommended
The best books on The Holocaust, recommended by Steven Katz
In the years immediately after World War II, the Holocaust was little studied. That all changed with the publication of Raul Hilberg’s book, The Destruction of the European Jews. Steven Katz, professor of Jewish Holocaust Studies at Boston University and former Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, introduces the best Holocaust books.
Books About Suicide, recommended by Johanna Reiss
As a young Dutch Jewish girl, Johanna Reiss survived World War II hidden in the attic of a farmer called Johan Oosterveld. Her memoir of that time, The Upstairs Room, is still read in schools today. But while she was researching that book in 1969, her American husband, Jim, killed himself. In this interview, she recommends books on the painful subject of suicide, as well as the music that helped heal the pain.
