Holocaust Books for Middle Schoolers
at the Elmhurst Public Library

FICTION

Bright Candles   by Nathaniel Benchley
A sixteen-year-old Dane bravely serves the underground as a courier by ferrying Jews to Sweden and as part of an execution squad.  256 p.  (J Fic Benchley)

For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy   by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Despite the horrors of World War II, a French teenager pursues her dream of becoming an opera singer, which takes her to places where she gains information about what the Nazis are doing – information that the French Resistance needs. 181 p.  (J Fic Bradley)

Tunes for Bears to Dance to   by Robert Cormier
Eleven-year-old Henry escapes his family’s problems by watching the woodcarving Mr. Levine, an elderly Holocaust survivor, but when Henry is manipulated into betraying his friend he comes to know true evil.  101 p.  (J Fic Cormier)

Escaping into the Night   by D. Dina Friedman
Thirteen-year-old Halina Rudowski narrowly escapes the Polish ghetto and flees to the forest, where she is taken in by an encampment of Jews trying to survive World War II.  199 p.  (J/Fic/Friedman)

Shadow of the Wall   by Christa Laird
Living with his mother and two sisters in the Warsaw Ghetto, Misha is befriended by the director of the orphanage, Dr. Janusz Korczak, and finds a purpose to his life when he joins a resistance organization.  144 p.  (J Fic Laird)

Room in the Heart   by Sonia Levitin
After German forces occupy Denmark during World War II, fifteen-year-old Julie Weinstein and fifteen-year-old Niels Nelson and their friends and families try to cope with their daily lives, finding various ways to resist the Nazis and, ultimately, to survive.  290 p.  (J Fic Levitin and YA)

Alan and Naomi   by Myron Levoy
In New York of the 1940’s, a boy tries to befriend a girl traumatized by Nazi brutality in France.  192 p.  (J Fic Levoy and PB)

Code Name Kris   by Carol Matas
After the Nazi occupation of Denmark forces his Jewish friends to flee the country, seventeen-year-old Jesper continues his work in the underground resistance movement.  152 p.  (J Fic Matas)

Daniel’s Story   by Carol Matas
Daniel, whose family suffers as the Nazis rise to power, describes ghetto and concentration camp experiences and his eventual liberation.  136 p.  (J Fic Matas and PB)

Greater Than Angels   by Carol Matas
Anna, a teenaged German refugee, relates how she and other Jewish children were cared for by the citizens of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, during the German occupation.  133 p.  (J Fic Matas and YA)

In My Enemy’s House   by 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.  167 p.  (J Fic Matas)

If I Should Die Before I Wake   by Han Nolan
As Hilary, a neo-Nazi initiate, lies in a coma, she is transported through time to World War II Poland into the life of a Jewish teenager.  225 p.  (JFic Nolan)

The Devil in Vienna   by Doris Orgel
A Gentile and a Jewish girl share a friendship in the Austrian capital that is affected by the Nazi rise to power.  246 p.  (J Fic Orgel and PB)

The Island on Bird Street   by Uri Orlev
During World War II, a Jewish boy is left on his own for months in a ruined house in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he must learn all the tricks of survival under constantly life-threatening conditions.  162 p.  (J Fic Orlev)

The Man from the Other Side   by Uri Orlev
Living on the outskirts of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, fourteen-year-old Marek shelters a Jewish man in the days before the Jewish uprising and travels into the Ghetto to help after learning of his own Jewish identity.  186 p.  (J Fic Orlev)

Run, Boy, Run   by Uri Orlev
Based on the true story of a nine-year-old boy who escapes the Warsaw Ghetto and must survive throughout the war in the Nazi-occupied Polish countryside.  186 p.  (J Fic Orlev)

Malka   by Mirjam Pressler
In the winter of 1943, a Polish physician and her older daughter make a dangerous trek to Hungary while seven-year-old Malka, whom they are forced to leave behind because she is ill, fends for herself in a ghetto.  280 p.  (J Fic Pressler and YA)

Friedrich   by Hans Peter Richter
A German boy recounts the fate of his best friend, a Jew, during the Nazi regime.  149 p.  (J Fic Richter)

Touch Wood   by Renee Roth-Hano
In this autobiographical novel set in Nazi-occupied France, Renee, a young Jewish girl, 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.  297 p. (J Fic Roth-Hano)

Lost in America   by Marilyn Sachs
Follows the experiences of Nicole, a teenaged French Jew, from 1943 to 1948, as she loses her parents and sister to the concentration camps and then leaves her native France to make a new life for herself in New York City.  160 p.  (J Fic Sachs)

Milkweed: A Novel   by Jerry Spinelli
This is the story of an orphan who doesn’t know who he is or what his name might be. He lives in the ghetto and survives by his wits.  208 p.  (J Fic Spinelli)

Uncle Misha’s Partisans   by Yuri Suhl
During World War II in the Ukraine, an orphaned Jewish boy joins a band of partisans who give him an important assignment against the Nazis.  211 p.  (J Fic Suhl)

A Coming Evil   by Vivian Vande Velde
During the German occupation of France in 1940, thirteen-year-old Lisette meets a ghost while living with her aunt who harbors Jewish and Gypsy children in the French countryside.  213 p.  (J Fic Vande Velde)

The Key Is Lost   by Ida Vos
When the Germans occupy Holland in 1940 and begin to persecute the Jews there, twelve-year-old Eva and her family assume false names and move from one hiding place to another.  271 p.  (J Fic Vos)

The Devil’s Arithmetic   by Jane Yolen
The device of time travel transports a modern day teenage girl to Nazi-occupied Poland and into a concentration camp where she comes to understand her Jewish heritage.  170 p.  (J Fic Yolen)

NON-FICTION

We Remember the Holocaust   by David Adler
Events of the Holocaust are discussed including personal accounts from survivors of their experiences of persecution and the death camps.  147 p.  (J 940.5318 Adl)

In Kindling Flame   by Linda Atkinson
A biography of Hannah Senesh, whose resistance work during World War II made her a martyr and an inspiration to those with whom she worked.  214 p.  (J 921 Senesh)

Parallel Journeys   by Eleanor H. Ayer
Alternating chapters reveal the true experiences of a German boy and a Jewish girl during the years of World War II and how, as adults, they came to grips with the past to achieve peace and understanding with each other.  244 p.  (J 943.086 Aye)

Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow   by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Recounts the adventures of a nine-year-old Jewish girl and her family in the early 1930's as they travel from Germany to England.  176 p.  (J 943.086 Bar)

We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust   by Jacob Boas
Interwoven with historical information, diary excerpts from Anne Frank and four other Jewish teenagers reveal the anguish of a generation sentenced to death by Hitler.  196 p.  (J 940.5318 We and YA)

A Nightmare in History   by Miriam Chaikin
This story traces the history of anti-Semitism from biblical times through the twelve years of the Nazi era, 1933-1945, and describes Hitler’s plans to annihilate European Jews by focusing on the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps.  150 p.  (J 940.5315 Cha)

The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition   by Anne Frank
Here are the hopes, dreams and fears of Anne Frank who became possibly the Holocaust’s most well-known victim.  340 p.  (J PB Frank)

The Hidden Children   by Howard Greenfeld
This story describes the experiences of those Jewish children who were forced to go into hiding during the Holocaust and survived to tell about it.  118 p.  (J 940.5318 Gre)

Mischling, Second Degree   by Ilse Koehn
Here are the memoirs of a German girl who became a leader among the Hitler Youth while her Social Democratic family kept from her the secret of her partial Jewish heritage.  240 p.  (J 943.086 Koe)

Darkness over Denmark   by Ellen Levine
An account of people in Denmark who risked their lives to protect and rescue their Jewish neighbors from the Nazis.  164 p.  (J 940.5318 Lev and YA)  

The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank   by Willy Lindwer
Through reminiscences of women who knew Anne Frank, the author reconstructs what became of the famous diarist when her hiding place was discovered.  204 p.  (J 940.5318 Lin and 921 Frank)

Never to Forget   by Milton Meltzer
This story includes the chronology of the Holocaust and the persecutions suffered by the Jews.  217 p.  (J 940.53 M496)

Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story   by Lila Perl
One family’s experiences in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, their efforts to go to America , their survival in the concentration camps and their eventual liberation.  130 p.  (J 940.5318 Per)

Fireflies in the Dark   by Susan Goldman Rubin
Friedl Dicker, a Jewish woman from Czechoslovakia, taught art to children at the Terezin Concentration Camp. This book includes art created by her students, excerpts from diaries, and interviews with camp survivors.  47 p.  (J 940.5318092 Dicker)

Smoke and Ashes   by Barbara Rogasky
Here is an examination of the causes, events and legacies of the Holocaust which resulted in the extermination of six million Jews.  187 p.  (J 940.5315 Rog)

The Cage   by Ruth Minsky Sender
A teenage girl recounts the suffering and persecution of her family under the Nazis, in the ghetto of Lodz, Poland, during deportation and in a concentration camp.  245 p.  (J 940.5315 Sen)

To Life   by Ruth Minsky Sender
Sequel to The Cage. The author tells about her liberation from a Nazi concentration camp, her search for surviving family members and the long and difficult ordeal of trying to immigrate with her husband and two children to America.  229 p.  (J 940.5315 Sen)

Upon the Head of a Goat   by Aranka Siegal
The author describes her wartime experiences in Hungary at the age of fourteen when she and her family were transported to Auschwitz.  213 p.  (J 947.718 Sie)

Behind the Secret Window   by Nelly S. Toll
The author recalls her experiences when she and her mother were hidden from the Nazis by a Gentile couple in Lvov, Poland during World War II.  161 p.  (J 940.5318 Tol)

Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps   by Andrea Warren
Caught up in Hitler’s Final Solution to annihilate Europe’s Jews, fifteen-year-old Jack is taken from his family and thrown into the nightmarish world of the concentration camps.  146 p.  (J 940.5318092 Mandelbaum)

In the Mouth of the Wolf   by Rose Zar
The author tells about her life in wartime Poland and how she survived the Holocaust by passing herself off as an Aryan.  225 p.  (J 940.5315 Zar)

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