Background Reading (and Movie) List

FICTION

…about Jews in Poland and/or the Holocaust

  • H.G. Adler, The Wall
  • Martin Amis, The Zone of Interest
  • Aharon Appelfeld, For Every Sin
  • V.R. Barkowski, A Twist of Hate
  • James Carroll, The Cloister
  • Michael Chabon, Moonglow
  • Natalie Danford, Inheritance: A Novel
  • Tatiana de Rosnay, Sarah’s Key
  • Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
  • Dasa Drndic, Trieste
  • Gwen Edelman, The Train to Warsaw
  • Linda Grant, The Clothes on their Backs
  • Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale
  • Georgia Hunter, We Were the Lucky Ones
  • Binnie Kirshenbaum, Hester among the Ruins
  • Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller
  • Charles Powers, In the Memory of the Forest
  • Saskia Sarginson, The Other Me
  • Rachel Seiffert, A Boy in Winter
  • Rachel Seiffert, The Dark Room
  • Helen Maryles Shankman, In the Land of Armadillos: Stories
  • B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist
  • Jim Shepard, The Book of Aron
  • Isaac Bashevis Singer, Scum
  • Isaac Bashevis Singer, Shosha: A Novel
  • Mark Slouka, The Visible World
  • Daniel Torday, The Last Flight of Poxl West

…about Polish (non-Jewish) culture and history

  • Jennifer Haigh, Baker Towers: A Novel
  • Keith Maillard, The Clarinet Polka
  • Eva Mekler, The Polish Woman
  • Bathsheba Monk, Now You See It: Stories from Cokesville, PA

NONFICTION

  • Masha Gessen, Ester and Ruzya
  • Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland
  • Yisrael Gutman and Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of Poland between Two World Wars
  • Eva Hoffman, Shtetl
  • Jonathan Kaufman, A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe
  • R.D. Rosen, Such Good Girls: The Journey of the Holocaust’s Hidden Child Survivors
  • Mary Fulbrook, A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust
  • Theo Richmond, Konin: A Quest
  • Louise Steinman, The Crooked Mirror
  • Christine Zamoyska-Panek, Have You Forgotten? A Memoir of Poland, 1939-1945

AND SOME MOVIES…

  • Aftermath (2012), director Wladyslaw Pasikowski
  • Disobedience: The Sousa Mendes Story (2009). Joel Santoni
  • Ida (2013), director Pawel Pawlikowski
  • The Pianist (2002), director Roman Polanski
  • Schindler’s List (1993), director Steven Spielberg