cean County LibraryTeen Zone > Teen Reads > Lest We Forget


Holocaust fiction and nonfiction for teens

After the War ~Carol Matas
After being released from Buchenwald at the end of World War II, fifteen-year-old Ruth risks her life to lead a group of children across Europe to Palestine.

Alicia: My Story ~Alicia Appleman-Jurman
After losing her entire family to the Nazis at age 13, Alicia went on to save the lives of thousands of Jews, offering them her own courage and hope in a time of upheaval and tragedy. (YA B Appl)

Bearing Witness: Stories of the Holocaust ~Hazel Rochman and Darlene Z. McCampbell 
Offering a multifaceted view of the Holocaust, these selections range from a child's bewilderment at having to wear a star and later go into hiding to the agony of the camps themselves. (YA 940.5318 Bear)

The Boys from St. Petri ~Bjarne Reuter
In 1942, a group of young men begin a series of increasingly dangerous protests against the German invaders of their Danish homeland.

Briar Rose ~Jane Yolen
In a powerful retelling of Sleeping Beauty, young Becca is haunted by the tales of the Holocaust and begins a search for her grandmother's World War II past.

Children of Bach ~Eilis Dillon
A Hungarian Jewish family of talented musicians escapes Nazi persecution during World War II.

Daniel's Story ~Carol Matas
Daniel, whose family suffers as the Nazis rise to power in Germany, describes his imprisonment in a concentration camp and his eventual liberation.

David and Jonathan ~Cynthia Voigt
The relationship between two close friends, Henry and Jonathan, changes when Jonathan's cousin David, a victim of the Holocaust, comes to live with David's family.

Eleanor's Story: An American Girl in Hitler's Germany ~Eleanor Ramrath Garner
While in Germany for seven years Eleanor tries to fit into her new world while at the same time attempting to maintain her American identity, but the realities and horrors of war soon press upon her and her family. (YA B Garn)

Escape: Teens Who Escaped from the Holocaust to Freedom ~Sandra Giddens
Tells the stories of four teenagers who survived the horrors that the Nazis perpetrated on Jews during World War II. (YA 940.5318 Gidd)

Gentlehands ~M. E. Kerr
Buddy falls in love with rich girl Skye and gets to know his estranged grandfather in one heartbreaking summer which climaxes in a shattering search for Nazi war criminals.

Good Night, Maman ~Norma Fox Mazer
After spending years fleeing from the Nazis in war-torn Europe, Karin Levi and her older brother Marc find a new home in a refugee camp in Oswego, New York.

Hide and Seek ~Ida Vos
A young Jewish girl living in Holland tells of her experiences during the Nazi occupation, her years in hiding, and the after shock when the war finally ends.

I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust ~Livia Bitton-Jackson
The author describes her experiences during World War II when she and her family were sent to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. (YA 940.5318 Jack)

If I Should Die Before I Wake ~Han Nolan
As Hilary, a Neo-Nazi initiate, lies in a coma, she is transported back to Poland at the onset of World War II into the life of a Jewish teenager.

In My Enemy's House ~Carol Matas
When German soldiers arrive in Zloczow during World War II, a young Jewish girl must decide whether or not to conceal her identity and work for a Nazi in Germany in order to survive.

In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer ~Irene Gut Opdyke
Recounts the experiences of the author who, as a young Polish teenager, hid and saved Jews during the Holocaust. (YA B Opdy)

In the Ghettos: Teens Who Survived the Ghettos of the Holocaust ~Eleanor H. Ayer
Chronicles the deportation of Jews into ghettos during Hitler's Third Reich and presents the narratives of three individuals whom, as teenagers, lived in the ghettos of Lodz, Theresienstadt and Warsaw and survived physical deprivations, abuse and deportation to the death camps. (YA 940.5318 Ayer)

The Last Mission ~Harry Mazer
In 1944 a 15-year-old Jewish boy tells his family he will travel in the West but instead, enlists in the United States Air Corps and is subsequently taken prisoner by the Germans.

The Man from the Other Side ~Uri Orlev
Living on the outskirts of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, Marek and his grandparents shelter a Jewish man in the days before the Jewish uprising.

Maus I-A Survivor’ Tale: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II-A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began ~Art Spiegelman
Maus I, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and Maus II is the story of Spiegelman’s father’s survival of the Holocaust, told in comic book format. (YA 940.5315 Spie)

My Bridges of Hope: Searching for Life and Love after Auschwitz ~Livia Bitton-Jackson
In 1945, after surviving a harrowing year in Auschwitz, Elli returns, along with her mother and brother, to the family home, now part of Slovakia, where they try to find a way to rebuild their shattered lives. Sequel to I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust. (YA 940.5318 Jack)

No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War ~Anita Lobel
A moving account of the author’s childhood in Nazi-occupied Poland, her imprisonment in a series of concentration camps and her life after the war as a displaced person in Sweden. (YA B Lobe)

Touch Wood: A Girlhood in Occupied France ~Renee Roth-Hano
In this autobiographical novel set in Nazi-occupied France, Renee and her family flee their home in Alsace and live a precarious existence in Paris until Renee and her sister escape to the shelter of a convent in Normandy.

Tunes for Bears to Dance To ~Robert Cormier
Henry escapes his family's problems by watching the woodcarving of Mr. Levine, an elderly Holocaust survivor, but when Henry is manipulated into betraying his friend he comes to know true evil.

Two Suns in the Sky ~Miriam Bat-Ami
Chris is a bored teenager living in Oswego, NY in 1944. When she meets Adam, a Yugoslavian Jewish refugee, the two fall passionately in love in spite of their differences of language and religion--and the angry resistance of Chris's father to anything "foreign."

The Upstairs Room ~Johanna Reiss
A Dutch Jewish girl describes the two-and-one-half years she spent in hiding in the upstairs bedroom of a farmer's house during World War II. (YA B Reis)

We are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers who Died in the Holocaust ~Jacob Boas
Jewish teenagers David, Yitzhak, Moshe, Eva, and Anne all kept diaries and were all killed in Hitler's death camps. These are their stories, in their own words. (YA 940.5318 We)

Compiled by L. Baldwin, Librarian
Brick & Upper Shores
April 2001

Copyright © 1996-2002 Disclaimer. All rights reserved. Credits. 04.02.07


Click Here!