This section contains a limited but broad range of books (biography, fiction and non-fiction) that I have found important to my understanding of the Shoah and the Nazi genocide. If you’re looking for a generalist history, my go-to is Peter Longerich’s Holocaustbut Timothy Snyder’s Black Earth is also very accessible. I do recommend you read more than one general history to expose yourself to the wide variety of interpretations. I also recommend finding a more focused history to augment your understanding. Browning’s Ordinary Men is excellent and likewise very accessible to a general audience. Lastly, do not neglect survivor testimony. The best books incorporate widely survivor testimonies but you should spend time reading entire texts. Primo Levi is my recommendation if you pick only one.  

Arad, Yitzhak. 1987. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Indiana University Press.

Aly, Götz. 2020. Europe Against the Jews, 1880-1945. Metropolitan Books.

Arendt, Hannah. 1965. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Viking Adult.

Bartov, Omer. 2018. Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz. Simon and Schuster.

Beorn, Waitman Wade. 2014. Marching Into Darkness. Harvard University Press.

Beorn, Waitman Wade. 2018. The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Böhler, Jochen, and Robert Gerwarth. 2017. The Waffen-SS: A European History. Oxford University Press.

Borowski, Tadeusz. 1976. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Penguin Group.

Browning, Christopher R. 2013. Ordinary Men. Harper Collins.

Desbois, Father Patrick. 2009. The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews. St. Martin’s Griffin.

Dougherty, Nancy. 2022. The Hangman and His Wife: The Life and Death of Reinhard Heydrich. Knopf.

Friedlander, Henry. 1997. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Univ of North Carolina Press.

Friedländer, Saul. 2009. The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945. Harper Collins.

Gerlach, Christian. 2016. The Extermination of the European Jews. Cambridge University Press.

Hayes, Peter. 2018. Why?: Explaining the Holocaust. National Geographic Books.

Horn, Dara. 2022. People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. National Geographic Books.

Ingrao, Christian. 2013. The SS Dirlewanger Brigade: The History of the Black Hunters. Simon and Schuster.

Kershaw, Ian. 2008. Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. Yale University Press.

Kershaw, Ian. 2014. Hitler. Routledge.

Kershaw, Ian. 2015. The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Kuznetsov, Anatoly. 1970. Babi Yar. Macmillan.

Levi, Primo. 2015. The Complete Works of Primo Levi. W. W. Norton & Company.

Lipstadt, Deborah E. 2012. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. Simon and Schuster.

Longerich, Peter. 2010. Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. OUP Oxford.

Longerich, Peter. 2012. Heinrich Himmler: A Life. Oxford University Press, USA.

Longerich, Peter. 2015. Goebbels. Random House.

Longerich, Peter. 2019. Hitler: A Life. Oxford University Press, USA.

Longerich, Peter. Wannsee: The Road to the Final Solution. Oxford University Press.

Petropoulos, Jonathan, and John K. Roth. 2005. Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath. Berghahn Books.

Sereny, Gitta. 2013. Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder. Random House.

Snyder, Timothy. 2012. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books.

Snyder, Timothy. 2015. Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. Crown.

Spiegelman, Art. 2011. The Complete MAUS. Viking.

Stone, D. 2004. The Historiography of the Holocaust. Springer.

Ullrich, Volker. 2016. Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939. Random House.

Ullrich, Volker. 2020. Hitler: Downfall, 1939-1945. Knopf.

Van Tonder, Gerry. 2018. SS Einsatzgruppen: Nazi Death Squads, 1939–1945. Pen and Sword.

Wachsmann, Nikolaus. 2024. KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps. Macmillan + ORM.

Winstone, Martin. 2024. The Holocaust Sites of Europe: An Historical Guide. Bloomsbury Publishing.

While preparing for my 2025 trip to Poland, I read widely on the ethics of visiting historical sites of importance as a tourist. I learned about a field of study focusing on what I now understand to be called Dark Tourism. The term makes me cringe a bit, but it’s honest. I am a tourist, and these are dark sites. I’m planning a post reflecting on this, and I will link it here when I am done. 

Manning, J.R., 2010. “The Palimpsest of Memory: Auschwitz and Oświęcim.” Holocaust Studies, 16(1–2), pp.229–256. 

Beckstead, Z., 2010. “Commentary: Liminality in Acculturation and Pilgrimage: When 

Movement Becomes Meaningful.” Culture & Psychology, 16(3), pp.383-393. 

Biran, A., Poria, Y. and Oren, G., 2011. “Sought experiences at (Dark) heritage sites.” Annals of Tourism Research. 38(3), pp.820–841. 

Downey, D., Kinane, I. and Parker, E., (Eds) 2016. Landscapes of Liminality: Between Space and Place. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. 

Keats, P. A., 2005 “Vicarious witnessing in European Concentration Camps: Imagining the trauma of another.” Traumatology, 11(3), pp. 172–183. 

Pollock, G., 2003. “Holocaust Tourism: Being There, Looking Back and the Ethics of Spatial Memory.” In: N. Lubbren and D. Crouch, (Eds) Visual Culture and Tourism, English edition. Oxford: Berg, pp.175–190. 

Reynolds, D., 2018. Postcards from Auschwitz – Holocaust Tourism and the Meaning of Remembrance. New York: New York University Press. 

Rickly-Boyd, J.M., 2013. “Existential Authenticity: Place Matters.” Tourism Geographies, 15(4), pp.680-686. ​​​​​​​​​

In 2025, I bought a camera and I’ll be learning for a while. I’ll grow this section as I do – I find the meaning of photography to be a fascinating subject. 

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1st American ed.). New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. 

Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. 

Wiley, Chris. “When Lee Miller Took a Bath in Hitler’s Tub.” The New Yorker, January 9, 2024.t