Renee Mazin and Virginia Bynum
Abraham Verghese wrote, “Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.” But the truth about what? Human feelings, relationships, but not necessarily a historic event that is always molded into the service of a narrative. Elie Wiesel famously said about Holocaust fiction, “A novel about Treblinka is either not a novel or not about Treblinka.” Yet Wiesel also hewed a line between fiction and nonfiction in his books. Everyone is conflicted! Even the term Holocaust is often used now to describe all civilian deaths by German Nazi tactics, while Shoah, a Hebrew term, brings the focus back to Jewish deaths and genocide. Authors may write these novels because they provide a background for a story, they have a personal connection to the Holocaust, or they wish to explore an incomprehensible evil.
Quite a few of the Holocaust novels in the SaddleBrooke Libraries can be described in three categories: the effect of the Holocaust on the young, perilous rescues, and dual narratives. Books focusing on young people include The Book Thief, Cilka’s Journey, Forest of Vanishing Stars, The Little Liar, and The World We Knew. Rescue books that emphasize harrowing escapes include Code Name Sapphire, The Orphan’s Tale, Our Darkest Night, The Paris Architect, and The One Man. The most popular novels about the Holocaust have dual timelines. In these books, a person, years removed from the event, explores a link to the past that resolves a mystery. These include The Book of Lost Names, Eli’s Promise, Shadows of Berlin, Song of the Jade Lily, Three Sisters, The Lost Family, and The Accomplice.
The nonfiction collections in the SaddleBrooke Libraries contain a new Holocaust book (2024), The Holocaust: An Unfinished History, as well as an incredible account, Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World. Survivors’ stories are also represented in Mitka’s Secret: A True Story of Child Slavery and Surviving the Holocaust and One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World, a survivor’s account of the fate of the 1,700-member Jewish community on the island of Rhodes. In The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive, the author used as one of her sources the last surviving seamstress. The Windermere Children, a DVD, is based on the true story of the relocation of Holocaust orphans to the UK.
Extended bibliographies for both novels and nonfiction Holocaust books, DVDs, and audios held in the SaddleBrooke Community Libraries are available at the SaddleBrooke One and DesertView Libraries. Catalog searches can also yield these titles by doing a keyword search for terms such as Holocaust, Auschwitz, or World War Jews.
On Thursday, March 21, at 4 p.m. in the DesertView Theater, the Friends of SaddleBrooke Libraries (FSL) lecture will feature Laura Markowitz, project producer for the AZPM (Arizona Public Media) series Children of the Holocaust. Laura Markowitz will discuss her experience interviewing 20 child survivors of the Holocaust who now live in Southern Arizona. This lecture will be free for everyone. FSL provides the funding to purchase new books, DVDs, and audiobooks for the SaddleBrooke Community Libraries. To learn about FSL, visit their website www.sbfsl.org.