Complete books by survivors and moreWhat this page contains: 27 Holocaust survivor books collected and preserved on Remember.org since 1995. Six are complete books available to read in full here, free of charge. Nineteen more feature substantial text — 1,500 words, some with 50 pages or more — with images. Actual photos from Polish partisans for example. Three feature shorter excerpts.
Who these books are by: Survivors writing in their own voices. Daughters who wrote their fathers’ stories. Grandsons who compiled their grandmothers’ memories conversation by conversation. A Polish partisan. A Hungarian child. A woman from a town that is now dead without its Jews. A survivor who wrote for her granddaughter because she wanted her to know.
Countries represented: Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Germany, France, Netherlands, Romania, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Latvia, Australia.
A note on what “complete book” means here: These are full texts, requested to be hosted on Remember.org with the knowledge and the direct participation of the authors, their families, or their estates. This is not a booklist pointing elsewhere. These words are here.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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COMPLETE BOOKS — READ IN FULL
These six books are hosted in their entirety on Remember.org. No purchase required. No registration. The complete text is here.
Compiled by Martin Winkler, her grandson
Location: Rheine, Germany → Riga, Latvia
Leonard Lerer, written by his daughter Gertie Lerer
Location: Hrubieszow, Poland From 1940 until July 1942,
Sidney Iwens | Lithuania
Recipient of the Derleth Non-Fiction Book Award. Chronicles 1,400 days under Nazi terror in Lithuania as a unique journal. Parts 1, 2, and the Allach Liberation conclusion.
Susanne Ruth Raweh — child survivor, Ukraine
Location: Ukraine (concentration camps)Written in Hebrew and published in Israel in 2004. Used in schools in Piedmont, Italy since 2004. One illustration was the logo for International Memory Day 2007. Recommended in Israeli scholarship on grandparenthood. A survivor who wrote for children — so they would know what she carried, and carry it forward themselves. Recommended for younger readers.
SIGNIFICANT EXCERPTS — SUBSTANTIAL TEXT AND IMAGES
These books are represented on Remember.org with extensive text — typically 1,500 words or more — accompanied by photographs, maps, or illustrations. They are reading destinations, not summaries.
Alice Muller | Czechoslovakia
A first-person memoir of the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia. Holocaust Study Guide also available on Amazon.
Auschwitz — testimony of survival inside the camp’s most documented horror; twins testing. Find out how these twins find each other over 50 years later!
Harold Gordon | Poland → Lodz Ghetto → Auschwitz → Dachau
Remember.org’s first book online. Harold Gordon survived Poland, the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Dachau and published his own story. One of the site’s most important contributors.
Abram Korn, edited by Joseph Korn | Lipno, Poland → Auschwitz → Buchenwald
Holocaust memoir with interactive map of Abe’s journey and lesson plans for classroom use. Published by Longstreet Press.
Keep YellingMaurie Hoffman | Lubaczow, Poland (partisan)
Survivor testimony from Australia. Includes actual photos of the partisan fighters and Lubaczow survivors. Born in Galicia, Hoffman fought his way to freedom as a partisan.
Rywka Rybak | Miedzyrec, Poland → Majdanek → Auschwitz
Written in Yiddish in 1946. Manuscript lost until 1983. Published 1993 by Prologue Publications. Covers November 1942 to May 1946. ISBN: 0963850709.
Pearls and Lace: Poetry by Magdalena KleinMagdalena Klein (1920–1946) | Romania
The poetic journal kept by the youngest child of a Jewish family in northwestern Romania — an eyewitness to the rise of fascism in Europe.
Alexander Kimel and Martin Kimel | Poland
Father and son — survivor and second generation — in conversation across the memoir form.
Florence Grende | Poland (forests, partisan family)
Florence Grende’s Jewish family survived Hitler’s Europe in the forests of Poland. Her father’s partisan activities thread through the memoir.
The true memoir of an eleven-year-old French Holocaust survivor rounded up in Paris by the French police. Extensive excerpts with images.
Joseph Weismann | France
The same story adapted as a graphic novel — a separate work from the memoir, published separately. Extensive text and images.
Philipp Sonntag | Germany
German child survivors in action before 1945 and beyond — a perspective on survival rarely documented in English.
Kidnapped and DeportedJoseph Wardzala
Location: Poland (forced labor camps)More than one million Poles were deported to forced labor camps in Nazi Germany. There are almost no books documenting their experience. Joseph Wardzala’s account is one of the few — a complete testimony from the Polish Holocaust that history has largely left aside.
Branded on My Arm and in My Soul: A Holocaust Memoir ~ by The following year, an SS man burst into Abe’s home, grabbed him and threw him into the back of a truck bound for a labor camp in Inowroclaw. The sight of his mother chasing the truck and falling beneath the spray of machine-gun fire would be his final image of her or of anyone in his immediate family.
FOR STUDENTS AND YOUNGER READERS
Several books in this collection are particularly suited to classroom use and younger readers. All are available in full or with substantial excerpts.
The documented life of Anne Frank beyond the diary — the family, the context, the fate.
The Story of Granny Girl — Susanne Ruth Raweh. Complete book. Written in Hebrew, used in schools across Italy and Israel. The only children’s book in this collection written by a survivor. Ages 8 and up.
Abe’s Story — Abram Korn. Includes an interactive map of Abe’s journey and lesson plans for classroom use. Substantial excerpts. Ages 14 and up.
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FEATURED BOOKS — SHORTER EXCERPTS
Read A Tale of TerezinEsther Vivien Levy | Terezin/Theresienstadt
A preface to Legacies, Lies and Lullabies — The World of a Second Generation Holocaust Survivor. A second-generation account of what the camps left behind in the next generation.
Holocaust survivors went through hell–lost family, friends, and entire communities, and still, after the war, they found strength to rebuild their life — remarry, have children, and choose to see the good in people. We have a lot to learn from their stories.
A Jew fights from the forests of Poland.
→ A father bribes a farmer to hide his daughter and wife for the duration of the war.
→ A Jewish-American soldier liberates Dachau.
→ A rabbi secretly transports Jews to the U.S. and Israel.
The strength these survivors show will inspire, enlighten, and empower us.
“It’s almost like you’ve lived on borrowed time, a time that really wasn’t yours. In one sense, your life could have ended, but it didn’t.” –John Rauch
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COUNTRIES AND LOCATIONS REPRESENTED
The Soapmaker (Hrubieszow), The Last Sunrise (Gordon), Abe’s Story (Korn), Keep Yelling (Lubaczow), Rywka Rybak (Miedzyrec), Someone Is Watching Over Me (Czortkow), The Butcher’s Daughter, Kidnapped and Deported, The Pessimist’s Son (Kimel), Jan Karski, Voices of Shoah (Lodz, Alexandrow, Krosno)
Oh, My Chosen People (Berner, Transylvania), Childhood In Times of War (Salamon, Budapest), Voices of Shoah (Szombathely, Bekescsaba)
How Dark the Heavens (Iwens, 1,400 days), Voices of Shoah (Kovno)
Flying Against the Wind (Ina Friedman), Forever Alert (Sonntag), Selma Metzger Winkler (deported from Rheine)Latvia
Selma Metzger Winkler (Riga)
After the Roundup (Weismann, Paris roundup)
Escape From the List (Hearst), Selma van de Perre (resistance fighter)
Pearls and Lace (Magdalena Klein, northwestern Romania)
Granny Girl (Raweh), Someone Is Watching Over Me (Czortkow, now Ukraine)
My Name Is Alice (Muller), A Tale of Terezin (Levy), Voices of Shoah (Prague, Klatovy, Bohemia)
Forget Adam Weinberger
Escape or Die (10 countries), The Other Victims (multiple), Official Secrets, The Last Witness
SOURCE INFORMATION
Collection maintained by: Michael Declan Dunn, founder, Remember.org
Active since: 1995
Complete books hosted with: Author permission, family permission, or estate permission in each case
Excerpts hosted with: Publisher or author permission where applicable
Copyright: Individual works copyright their respective authors, estates, or publishers. Collection and presentation copyright 1995–2026 Remember.org / DunnSimply.
Contact: peace@remember.org
RELATED PAGES ON REMEMBER.ORG
Holocaust Survivor Stories and Testimonies
Stories and Witness Accounts
Jan Karski Resources
Abe’s Story — Complete Excerpts with Map and Lesson Plans
Holocaust Historian Interviews
Virtual Tour of Auschwitz
Holocaust Education Resources
Return to Witnesses of the Holocaust