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A Compendium of Online Resources for Holocaust Research

2021-04-16T10:00:00.002-07:00

A Compendium of Online Resources for Holocaust Research

The Hall of Names at Yad Vashem. (Public Domain)

Every writer has the responsibility of understanding what it is they are writing about. Biographers and memoirists are tasked with corroborating the personal narrative of their subjects with verified facts, documentation, and external perspectives. An author of historical must have a good sense of the time period their book inhabits: everything from global phenomena to the details of daily life has some bearing on who the novel’s characters are, how they behave (and why), what the world around them looks like. And if you’re telling the story of your own relatives, ancestors, or personal acquaintances, you’ve probably already discovered that memories and family lore will only get you so far.

As always, revisiting your articulated motives for writing about the Holocaust will help you assess what kind of research is needed and determine which resources will best assist your work. We’ll talk more about why historical research is critical to any writing project about the Holocaust, even (if not especially) for works of fiction. Here’s a list of online archives to get you started, with directions for how to use and access them:

Yad Vashem

Yad Vashem’s digital collections include a wealth of documentation concerning the Holocaust in multiple languages including a database of Holocaust victims’ names, photos, documents, and films. The individual collections can be accessed from the home page of the digital collections site. To search Yad Vashem’s archives by name and/or location, the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names provides basic biographical information (available in multiple languages) about the millions who perished.

National Library of Israel

The National Library of Israel’s Genealogy portal provides free research consultations “to help people who are not experts in the field of genealogy to conduct research into their family roots.” In addition, the Library provides a detailed list of resources for Jewish genealogy research and a basic guideline to conducting research.

KTIV: The International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts

A wealth of Jewish communal records from pre-Holocaust Europe are held by research and national libraries. Digitized manuscripts from the National Library of Israel and dozens of partner organizations are accessible online through KTIV, which can be searched by call numbers or keywords. For communal records, the Pinkas (פנקס) is one of the most common sources of information. Sources available through KTIV are primarily in Hebrew or Yiddish or in the regional vernacular of a document’s origin. To locate a manuscript, visit the KTIV search engine and enter your search term in English or in Hebrew. Documents will display as an image and can be viewed on the site, along with detailed information about the manuscript and a selected bibliography.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) has a wealth of online resources for historical research which are freely available. One important resource is the three-volume Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos which is available for any user to download for free from the USHMM website. The PDF files for all three volumes are fully indexed and searchable. You can also use the site’s submission form to request research assistance from the USHMM staff, as well as guides to navigating the Museum’s digital collections.

Digitized Yizkor Bicher

Yizkor Bicher, published in Hebrew and Yiddish after the Shoah, are a key source of information for Ashkenazi Jews seeking to learn more about their families’ origins. These memorial books provide detailed histories of individual Jewish towns and villages throughout Eastern Europe, as well as information about the Holocaust survivors and victims of each community. Many of these books have now been digitized and translated into English. An online collection of yizkor bicher are available in their original languages through the Yiddish Book Center and the New York Public Library; translated editions and further genealogical resources are available on JewishGen.org.

Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America

The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America preserves significant holdings of Jewish archival material and historical records in numerous languages, as well as manuscripts, research guides, and audio-visual content. Much of the collection is available online through the Library’s website and on KTIV. You might also want to check out the JTS Library’s guides to external resources for Holocaust research and Jewish Studies while you’re there.

Additional Resources:

Arolsen Archives

The largest single archive of materials related to the various groups persecuted by the Nazis in or before World War II, founded to help uncover the fate of all Holocaust victims.

Center for Jewish History Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at the Center for Jewish History aggregates archival and secondary sources for family history and has helpful guides for genealogical resources by country for Europe and parts of the Mediterranean.

Encyclopedia Judaica (1972, revised, 2006)

The Encyclopedia Judaica is the best encyclopedia for general knowledge and reference Jewish topics, providing extensive information on Jewish communities, texts and figures. It is accessible online through many research libraries and universities, and may well be accessible through your local public library.

International Jewish Cemetery Project

A project of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, IJCP documents Jewish cemeteries across the world, collecting information and images of extant Jewish graves.

Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)

Though dated, the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia is still a valuable source for information on pre-war Jewish communities and should be used alongside the updated EncyclopediaJudaica (see above). The Jewish Encyclopedia is freely accessible and searchable online, however the images and illustrations from the print edition are not included.

Leo Baeck Institute

The Leo Baeck Institute, one of the constituent institutions of the Center for Jewish History in New York, is devoted to the study of German Jewry. Much of LBI’s extensive archives—with materials from the fifteenth century to the present day—has been digitized and is freely accessible online.

Shoah Foundation

The Shoah Foundation hosts one of the largest collections of survivor testimony, recorded through audio and video interviews. These testimonies are publicly available through the Visual History Archive Online. Registration for the VHAO is free (and required for access).

YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

The YIVO Encyclopedia is most complete reference work on the history and cultures of Eastern European Jewry, with extensive references to additional sources. All entries are freely accessible online with a useful search function.

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The Benefits of Looking Beyond the Holocaust

2021-03-26T10:58:00.022-07:00

The Benefits (and Challenges) of Looking Beyond the Holocaust

Ansel Adams, "Mess Line, Noon, Manzanar Relocation Center, California."
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

I had a different post planned for last week, but in light of the last fortnight in America — and the rise in anti-Asian violence over the last year — I think it’s important that we acknowledge the ways in which literary and educational pedagogies of exceptionalism hinder social change relating to tolerance and human rights.

One of the reasons that the Holocaust has risen to such prominence in American popular culture is that, for all its horrors, the historical narrative is a relatively easy one for American audiences to swallow. The United States is the hero of that narrative. Not just the hero, the savior. We can read about the Holocaust with the assurance that we were the good guys, that our nation acted nobly, that our soldiers fought with honor.

The comfort that narrative brings allows us to confront the terrible and sinister truths of what happened in Germany, what happened in Poland, what happened in Austria and Vichy France and occupied Italy and all of Eastern Europe. But it also allows us to avoid confronting the terrible and sinister truths of what happened here at the same time, what happened at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, what happened later in Cambodia, in Vietnam, in Korea… The United States has a particular history of violence against Asians, both within our borders and abroad. That violence is fueled by racism, and it is fueled by hatred.

There are many ways in which the Holocaust was utterly incomparable to any other event in human history. It is undeniably important to keep that in perspective.

But there’s also an extent to which exceptionalist attitudes about the Shoah can be countereffective, or even harmful. It harms the people and communities whose experiences that attitude diminishes (or even denies). It harms Holocaust education initiatives, which depend on diverse and intersectional engagement to succeed. And it threatens the future of Holocaust literature — and your book’s prospects along with it. The further we set the Shoah apart from all other history, the less relevant it becomes.

So what does that mean for your writing?

Your book doesn’t have to be everything to everyone. Nor should it be. If the narrative you’re telling is about the Holocaust and the Holocaust alone, keep that focus. Your writing and your audience will be better served by a complete, compelling story of a single, specific historical event. If your writing project consists of parallel stories that depict the Shoah in context with a different world event or lived experience, allow yourself to invest fully in two or three select narratives, rather than getting distracted by everything you could (or want to) address. (Don’t forget to refer back to your articulated motives to remind yourself why you’re writing a story about the Shoah, and what that story is.)

But always keep an eye on how you’re positioning the Holocaust in relation to other atrocities, violence, and racist hatred. Be mindful that casting the Shoah as sacrosanct can be a way of diminishing, or even denying, other narratives and experiences. Language that insists, however gently, that the Holocaust was or is “worse” than all other instances of human suffering is a way of demanding that others similarly diminish or ignore those experiences. Acknowledging multiple narratives doesn’t mean you’re equating them; you don’t have to bend over backwards to draw comparisons where none are called for.

If it helps, remember that connecting your story to broader themes (and current events) will go a long way when it comes to selling your book, to publishers and readers alike. As you write and/or revise your manuscript, consider where there’s room to acknowledge world events — particularly the social and political realities we’re witnessing in real time today, and the systemic iniquities that led to them. If there isn’t space for that in the story you’re telling, bring it into the conversation in other ways. Use your platform as a writer — social media, your blog or website, speaking engagements, discussion groups — to address social exclusion in the present moment and throughout history: explain how they relate to the themes of your book (or book-in-progress). Drawing those connections for your audience and/or publisher is a great marketing tactic, and attaching your writing to important, even critical conversations about world history and modernity increases your ability to reach a wider readership with greater impact.

Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure

2021-03-10T17:00:00.006-08:00

Debut author Menachem Kaiser's PLUNDER: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021) is an incisive and engaging “3G” story of a young man returning to his family’s former home on the Polish-German border in search of a connection with a grandfather he never met—and the relatives he never knew he had.

Taking up his late grandfather’s efforts to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Menachem Kaiser finds himself in a Kafkaesque legal battle within Poland’s mercurial courts and changing government. Between trial appearances and consultations with his attorney—an octogenarian nicknamed “The Killer” with a penchant for cat posters and pink velour tracksuits—Menachem gets to know the residents of the building and ambles around Silesia, searching for hints of his family’s life before the Holocaust. Exploring the local World War II landmarks with a team of recreational treasure hunters, Menachem discovers a surprising connection to Project Riese, a mysterious, unfinished Nazi tunnel complex system dug by Jewish slave laborers in the Owl Mountains, detailed in the memoirs of a survivor who shares Menachem’s last name.

Menachem Kaiser’s insightful memoir is a testament to the complexities of honoring those who survived alongside those who perished, negotiating between family legacy and historical truths, and coming to terms with a world that wants to move on when we remain tied to the past. It’s a spellbinding, stranger-than-fiction tale filled with intrigue and ambiguity, told by a writer capable of suspending fantasy for the reality of what’s before him. As Kaiser reflects in the final chapter:

I do not trust the genre I am writing in, that of the grandchild trekking back to the alte heim on his fraught memory-mission—it’s too certain, too sure-footed, meaning is too quickly and too definitively established; there is no acknowledgement of the abyss, the void, the unknowable space between your story and your grandparents’ story[…] I get why we write these stories this way, why we frame our memory-descents as missions—it’s what’s expected, it’s what works, it’s what’s most suspenseful and most accessible and most marketable, and also when you’re in it it does feel like a mission; there are places to go, obstacles to surmount, clues to discover—but it’s a lie, or at least not the truest truth, because “mission” suggests the possibility of completion, redemption, catharsis, but there can be no completion, redemption, catharsis, because our stories are not extensions of our grandparents’ stories, are not sequels. We do not continue their stories; we act upon them. We consecrate, and we plunder.

Brace yourselves for a satisfyingly unsatisfying ending to Kaiser’s story—and a spectacular epilogue. PLUNDER: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure hits the shelves March 16, 2021. Order a copy from your local bookstore or purchase the book through IndieBound or Bookshop.org to support independent booksellers. Trust me, people are going to be talking about this one.

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Why Writing Children’s Literature About the Holocaust Is So Hard (and Why Selling It Is Even Harder)

2021-03-05T10:05:00.007-08:00

Why Writing Children’s Literature About the Holocaust Is So Hard (and Why Selling It Is Even Harder)

Norbert Troller, "Terezin, Children." Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute.

I’m not here to discourage anyone who’s given serious thought to writing Holocaust literature for young readers. There are some truly wonderful children’s, middle grade, and YA books about the Holocaust out there—we’ll talk more about them later. They're invaluable resources for young readers, families, and educators. But there are some distinct challenges to this kind of writing project that are worth discussing, which I hope you’ll weigh in on in the comments. Let’s start with the most obvious one:

The subject is frightening.

Young readers are often much more resilient than adults realize. Kids even like being scared or saddened—up to a point—by what they read, much in the same way as adults enjoy thrillers and tragicomedies. Reading stories that explore dark or sad themes plays a critical role in how children learn to process complex emotions and understand the world around them.

But there’s a limit to what each child can handle.

At a very young age, my sister became obsessed with hiding. She was unbeatable at Sardines and Hide-and-Seek. She knew every hiding spot in the house, wherever she was. We would find her testing out new hiding places when we weren’t even playing: climbing into laundry hampers, slipping behind the jackets hanging in the coat closet, clambering around the dusty, frigid crawl spaces in the attic. It took her years to articulate what this fascination with hiding was about, and where it came from: she had read or a heard a story she no longer even remembered about a family that hid from the Nazis in World War II, and instinctively started collecting a mental inventory of all the places her own family could hide if someone were to come after us. Her behavior was a manifestation of terror—a feeling she was too young to identify or understand, let alone communicate—in response to a frightening story she simply wasn’t old enough to safely absorb.

In confronting the bare facts of the Holocaust, young readers might encounter what Maurice Sendak characterized as experiences beyond their emotional capabilities. Feelings they have no language for, fears they don’t know how to cope with or express.

Your book has to translate history into a narrative that protects young readers from those experiences. At the same time, it must still testify to the strange and horrible truth of what happened. The challenge isn’t so much writing a child-friendly story about the Holocaust, but rather how to do so without trivializing, ignoring, or distorting the very real horrors its based on.

You’re writing for two different audiences at the same time.

‘Twas ever thus when it comes to children’s literature. Most young readers don’t buy or select the books they read. They depend on the adults in their lives—parents, educators, librarians, relatives and family friends—to make those purchases on their behalf.

I don’t think anyone casually buys or borrows a book about the Holocaust for a child. They’re not going to add it to their order or hand it to the cashier on a whim. Anyone considering your book either entered the bookstore looking specifically for children’s literature on the Holocaust, or they’re going to take a thorough perusal of the contents to assess the book’s suitability if they came across it by chance. Either way, sales of your book are almost entirely subject to the interests, preferences, and assumptions of adult gatekeepers, rather than the young readers you’re writing for.

Children’s literature on lighter subjects is an easier sell. Adults will trust reviews, recommendations, and bestseller lists a little more blindly when it’s a cute story about coloring utensils staging a civil protest or a celebrity-authored book of nonsense. That doesn’t mean there’s no market for children’s books on somber or difficult topics; they just have a greater task when it comes to convincing adult audiences before your intended readers are within reach—and then you’ve got to win them over, too.

How can you explain the unexplainable?

Think of all the adjectives most commonly attached to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Unspeakable. Unfathomable. Indescribable. Unimaginable. Incomprehensible.

Adults come across these words with some knowledge of what they encapsulate. They’re part of an elaborate system of established symbols and oblique references, a kind of shorthand we use to talk about the Holocaust without saying what happened.

That doesn’t work with kids.

For some young readers, your book is their introduction to the subject at hand. They don’t have the background knowledge to fill in the blanks left by the vague, poetic allusions we rely on in adult discourse, media, and literature on the Holocaust.

There’s room for symbolism, and there’s room for subtlety. Just be mindful that even your most knowledgeable readers don’t come pre-programmed with the coded language and visual cues older audiences have learned to recognize and interpret.

Not every family is ready to talk about the Holocaust.

This has become more of an obstacle in the new millennium, for essentially one reason: the PJ Library.

For those unfamiliar with the program, PJ Library is a Jewish philanthropic initiative of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation that sends free children’s books to Jewish and Jewish-interfaith families all over the world. Every child enrolled in the program receives a new book in the mail once a month, every month,up until their 10th birthday. In the United States and Canada alone, that adds up to over 230,000 books distributed each month through PJ Library.

This means that PJ Library acquires thousands of copies of each book selected to the program. And publishing houses have caught on. Send any kidlit publisher a manuscript that fits the PJ Library criteria, and you stand a much greater chance of seeing your book published—why would they pass up on assured sales in those numbers?

Here’s why that’s a problem for the future of Holocaust literature for young readers: PJ Library does not send out or accept manuscripts or books that focus on the Holocaust. And with good reason: families and children who are not prepared to learn or talk about the Holocaust should not be confronted with the subject by a book they didn’t choose to receive.

It’s not that publishers won’t consider manuscripts for children’s books that don’t qualify for PJ Library (or similar programs). But they know it’s taking a bigger risk. Once again, your book has to work that much harder to convince a publisher to accept your manuscript over a PJ Library shoo-in. What’ll win them over? Follow Kletsker on Twitter, like the page on Facebook, or sign up for email updates to keep up with publishing insights, writing resources, and research pointers for authors of all ages and backgrounds interested in writing new Holocaust narratives for future generations.

Getting Started

2021-02-04T17:30:00.036-08:00

Want to Write About the Holocaust? Start Here.

Odds are, you’re here because you have a writing project about the Holocaust that you want to pursue.

You're in good company.

Roughly 180 original works and new editions of Holocaust fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and scholarship are due for publication in the next quarter alone. That’s two books every day.

Do all of those books sell? No, but many of them do—and in high volume. There’s a huge market for books about the Holocaust, which plenty of writers and publishers find reason enough to produce them.

Others are motivated out of personal connections to this moment in history, or an interest in a particular narrative. Some decide that the Holocaust provides the heightened stakes their characters need to push the story along. Some are inspired by a favorite book on the subject. Some feel a desire to share their own experiences, or a responsibility to voice the experiences of others. Some discover a peculiar detail, a little-known event, an unknown person that expands in their imagination or under research.

What's motivating YOU?

Whether you have a vague idea for a story in your head or a full manuscript stuffed in a desk drawer, take a moment to think about what’s driving you toward the specifically complex genre of Holocaust literature. Here are some questions to help get you started:

Is your book project based on family history, or inspired by someone you know?
Do you feel a responsibility to tell the story you’re writing? If so, why?
How does a book about the Holocaust fit into your writing career and/or aspirations?
Are you looking to build or expand your author platform? How does writing about the Holocaust help you in that regard?
Are you interested in writing about the Holocaust as a creative exercise?
Does this subject present an opportunity to reach or connect with readers who share a common interest?
Are you inspired by a particular book or movie about the Holocaust? What ideas, themes, or characters from that work are you interested in continuing in this project?
Do you see this writing project as a work of activism or an act of resistance?
Are you writing to memorialize a person, community, or event—or to immortalize them?
Is there an aspect of the Holocaust that you feel deserves more attention than it’s heretofore received?
Are you presenting a narrative or perspective that offers something new? What makes that novelty worthwhile?

Exploring and understanding WHY you want to write about the Holocaust is a crucial first step to your project. Even if the impetus seems obvious to you, do yourself the service of defining exactly what that motivation is, and WRITE IT DOWN. Keep this definition somewhere easily accessible wherever you write (or edit, or draft query letters). Feel free to submit what you come up with in the comments below—it may help other writers, as well!

As you proceed with your book project, and continue to refer to your articulated motives. It will help you assess your writing, identify your target audience, pitch your manuscript, and market your book. You may discover that your motivations change as you go along, and that’s ok! Rewrite them as you go along, and keep comparing your progress against what you want this project to be.

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