Interested in WWII History?

   Many people are most familiar with the roles of Britain and the United States in WWII. Considerably fewer people are familiar with Eastern Europe's role in the war. Here I have listed five books that give an introduction to this side of the war. Each is an important work and many have caused controversy. I would absolutely recommend reading them all, but know that there has been controversy (especially in the cases of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland and Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland). Each author touches on the opposing views but to form your own opinion strongly it would be beneficial to do some extra research. I have listed the books in the order that I found easiest to read and in one case added a film that will aid in understanding the material. Enjoy the knowledge but be prepared for the horrors of war!


Title: Neighbors
Author: Jan T. Gross
Page Count: 153

Synopsis from Goodreads:

On a summer day in 1941 in Nazi-occupied Poland, half of the town of Jedwabne brutally murdered the other half: 1,600 men, women, and children-all but seven of the town's Jews. In this shocking and compelling study, historian Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts as well as physical evidence into a comprehensive reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but hidden to history. Revealing wider truths about Jewish-Polish relations, the Holocaust, and human responses to occupation and totalitarianism, Gross's investigation sheds light on how Jedwabne's Jews came to be murdered-not by faceless Nazis, but by people who knew them well.

Thoughts:

This was a controversial one because there are still people who deny that the massacre at Jedwabne ever occurred. I had not heard of this before reading Neighbors but it is a fascinating look into what people did and how they changed under WWII.

Title: Eyewitness Auschwitz
Author Filip Muller
Page Count: 171

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Filip Muller came to Auschwitz with one of the earliest transports from Slovakia in April 1942 and began working in the gassing installations and crematoria in May. He was still alive when the gassings ceased in November 1944. He saw millions come and disappear; by sheer luck he survived. Muller is neither a historian nor a psychologist; he is a source one of the few prisoners who saw the Jewish people die and lived to tell about it. Eyewitness Auschwitz is one of the key documents of the Holocaust. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "A shattering, centrally important testimony." from the Foreword by Yehuda Bauer. "A very detailed description of day-to-day life, if we can call it that, in Hell s inmost circle...Having read other books of this kind, I had expected to read this one straight through. But no, Eyewitness Auschwitz is jammed with infernal information too terrible to be taken all at once." Terrence Des Pres, New Republic. "Riveting...It is a tale of unprecedented, incomparable horror. Profoundly, intensely painful; but it is essential reading." Jewish Press Features."

Thoughts:

This one raises the question of what exactly someone would be willing to do to survive. I liked that this was not just an account of someone that went to the concentration camps but someone that had to work closely with Nazi soldiers and worked in the gas chambers and crematoriums. Like some of these other works, it raises the questions of "Are these men evil?" and "What would you do to survive?".

Title: The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak
Contributors: Kamil Turowski (translator), Alan Adelson (editor)
Page Count: 271

Synopsis from Goodreads:

"In the evening I had to prepare food and cook supper, which exhausted me totally. In politics there's absolutely nothing new. Again, out of impatience I feel myself beginning to fall into melancholy. There is really no way out of this for us." This is Dawid Sierakowiak's final diary entry. Soon after writing it, the young author died of tuberculosis, exhaustion, and starvation - the Holocaust syndrome known as "ghetto disease." After the liberation of the Lodz Ghetto, his notebooks were found stacked on a cookstove, ready to be burned for heat. Young Sierakowiak was one of more than 60,000 Jews who perished in that notorious urban slave camp, a man-made hell which was the longest surviving concentration of Jews in Nazi Europe. The diary comprises a remarkable legacy left to humanity by its teenage author. It is one of the most fastidiously detailed accounts ever rendered of modern life in human bondage. Off mountain climbing and studying in southern Poland during the summer of 1939, Dawid begins his diary with a heady enthusiasm to experience life, learn languages, and read great literature. He returns home under the quickly gathering clouds of war. Abruptly Lodz is occupied by the Nazis, and the Sierakowiak family is among the city's 200,000 Jews who are soon forced into a sealed ghetto, cut off from the outside world. The wonder of the diary is that every bit of hardship yields wisdom from Dawid's remarkable intellect. Reading it, you become a prisoner with him in the ghetto, and with disconcerting intimacy you begin to experience the incredible process by which the vast majority of the Jews of Europe were annihilated in World War II. Significantly, the youth has no doubt about theconsequence of deportation out of the ghetto: "Deportation into scrap metal, " he calls it. A committed communist and the unit leader of an underground organization, he crusades for more food for the ghetto's school children. But when invited to pledge his life to a suicide resista.

Thoughts:

If like many students you have read The Diary of Anne Frank then this work will have a similar feel and give you an inside look into what it meant to be a child in these terrifying times. It really grounds the situation by seeing this boy worrying about his own safety and his family because of the war but also to see his worries about things such as school.

Title: The Wannsee Conference and The Final Solution
Author: Mark Roseman
Page Count: 156

Synopsis from Goodreads:

On January 20, 1942, in a grand villa on the shore of Berlin’s Lake Wannsee, a conference of Nazi officers produced a paper known as the “Wannsee Protocol,” which laid the groundwork for a “final solution to the Jewish Question.” This Protocol has always mystified us. How should we understand this calm, business-like discussion of holocaust? And why was the meeting necessary? Hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been shot by squads in Russia or gassed in the camp at Chelmno. Mark Roseman seeks to unravel this double mystery and explain how it was that on a snowy day, fifteen well-educated young men met to talk murder.

Film to watch with this work:

Conspiracy (2001) directed by Frank Pierson and written by Loring Mandel. This TV movie cleared up a lot of the confusion I felt when reading the book and made the circumstances that I had read about easier to grasp. An added bonus to this movie is that you get to see a very brief glimpse of a very young Tom Hiddleston as the phone operator.

Title: Ordinary Men
Author: Christopher Browning
Page Count: 223

Synopsis from Goodreads:

The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.

Thoughts:

This definitely presents a much needed perspective on the mindset of a soldier. The look into what goes on in someone's mind so that they can commit murder in the name of nationalism and war is an important one. The question "Were these men evil?" is asked and I believe it is an important one. Many people have argued against Browning and research into these creates a wider picture of the issue.