Apr 16, 2021

A Compendium of Online Resources for Holocaust Research

Photograph of the Hall of Names memorial at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel. — The Hall of Names at Yad Vashem. (Public Domain)

Every writer has the responsibility of understanding what it is they are writing about. Biographers and memoirists are tasked with corroborating the personal narrative of their subjects with verified facts, documentation, and external perspectives. An author of historical must have a good sense of the time period their book inhabits…

The Benefits (and Challenges) of Looking Beyond the Holocaust

Ansel Adams photograph of the mess hall lunch line at the Manzanar Relocation Center, California. — Ansel Adams, “Mess Line, Noon, Manzanar Relocation Center, California.”
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

I had a different post planned for last week, but in light of the last fortnight in America — and the rise in anti-Asian violence over the last year — I think it’s important that we acknowledge the ways in which literary and educational pedagogies of exceptionalism hinder social change…

Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure

Debut author Menachem Kaiser’s PLUNDER: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021) is an incisive and engaging “3G” story of a young man returning to his family’s former home on the Polish-German border in search of a connection with a grandfather he never met —…

Why Writing Children’s Literature About the Holocaust Is So Hard (and Why Selling It Is Even Harder)

Norbert Troller watercolor sketch of children in the Terezin Ghetto. — Norbert Troller, “Terezin, Children.” Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute.

I’m not here to discourage anyone who’s given serious thought to writing Holocaust literature for young readers. There are some truly wonderful children’s, middle grade, and YA books about the Holocaust out there — we’ll talk more about them later. They’re invaluable resources for young readers, families, and educators. But…

Want to Write About the Holocaust? Start Here.

Writing with a pencil in a leather-bound notebook with crumpled drafts on a wooden table.

Odds are, you’re here because you have a writing project about the Holocaust that you want to pursue.

You’re in good company.

Roughly 180 original works and new editions of Holocaust fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and scholarship are due for publication in the next quarter alone. That’s two books every day.