Young Adult Books about the Holocaust and WWII
The following is a list of young-adult books relating to WWII, the Holocaust, or Japanese Internment. Most of them are historical fiction, but some are non-fiction. You are welcome to read a book from this list, or find your own. There are thousands of books related to WWII and the Holocaust; I could never fit them all on one list! Feel free to conduct your own search (Amazon’s Listmania is a helpful tool) to find a book that is right for you.
Please note that most of these books are intended for middle-school students, and may be at a low reading level for advanced readers. Please try to choose something in your level.
If you prefer to read a more challenging, adult book, you have my permission to do so. However, you must make sure that your parents approve of your reading selection. I only have a couple of adult titles on the list, so you will need to do your own research to find one. Use Google or Amazon and enter either a general search term (WWII novels, books about the Holocaust) or a more specific one that you are interested in. One popular WWII non-fiction author you could try is Stephen E. Ambrose. I can also help you find something individually if you would like.
Our school library has several of the books on this list. I also have several copies of the following books:
Hiroshima, Farewell to Manzanar, and Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
If you are interested in borrowing a book, please let me know as soon as possible as there are limited quantities available.
Holocaust Fiction:
Maus and Maus II: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegeman
These books are graphic novels but are not easy reads. Recommended for advanced readers or students who want a challenge. These books are allegories in which Jews are mice; the Germans are cats. The animals tell the story of Spiegelman's father, a concentration camp survivor.
The Devil's Arithmeticby Jane Yolen
The protagonist, Hannah, resents her family's preoccupation with the past and the Holocaust some of them survived. When selected to be the one to open the door for the prophet Elijah at the Seder, Hannah steps into the world of 1940s Poland.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
Bruno is a naive nine-year-old who moves with his family from Berlin to Poland. There, not 50 feet away from his home, a high wire fence surrounds a huge dirt area of low huts and large square buildings. From his bedroom window, Bruno can see hundreds (maybe thousands) of people wearing striped pajamas and caps, and something made him feel very cold and unsafe. Uncertain of what his father actually does for a living, the boy is eager to discover the secret of the people on the other side.
Daniel Half Human: And the Good Nazi by David Chotjowitz
In 1933, 13-year-old Daniel, the well-to-do son of a prominent lawyer, and his working-class best friend, Armin, are wildly enthusiastic about the Nazis' rise to power. Both boys are eager to join the Hitler Youth, despite their parents' opposition, until Daniel discovers something shocking about his family.
Summer of My German Soldierby Bette Green
Patty Bergen, a twelve-year-old, Jewish girl learns to open her heart to a German POW when her home in small-town Arkansas is used to house German prisoners during WWII. Sequel: Morning is a Long Time Coming
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
The setting is Nazi controlled Denmark and the exportation of Jews to the camps has begun. One family attempts to help one family escape. This is the story of ordinary people rising to heroic levels.
Tunes for Bears to Dance To by Robert Cormier
Mourning the death of his brother, Henry becomes friendly with a Holocaust survivor, Mr. Levine. Unfortunately for the new friends, Mr. Hairston, a man who holds the power over Henry, demands that a model village Mr. Levine has built to commemorate his past be destroyed.
Friedrich by Peter Hans Richter
Friedrich tells the story of a Jewish boy, Friedrich Schneider and his Christian friend, the unnamed narrator, from 1925 until 1942. The story follows them, as they grow up among the Nazis, who relentlessly restrict the rights of Jews.
Nightfather by Carl Friedman
The father is a camp survivor. To the world he presents himself as a productive and conventional member of society. To his family, he shows conflicting images: a loving father and husband, and conduit to memories and stories of horror.
The Endless Steppeby Esther Hautzig
Because they are Jews, Esther and her family are considered enemies of the people and exiled to Siberia. The father is separated from them and sent to a slave labor camp. When they finally are allowed to return to Poland, they are confronted with the tragic reality of the Nazi regime.
Alan and Naomiby Myron.Levoy
Alan Silverman worries that he's too different from the other boys. He studies, he's not the bravest boy in the neighborhood, and his only friend is Shaun Kelly. So, when his parents ask him to spend time with Naomi Kirshenbaum, a deeply disturbed girl who escaped from Nazis in France, he is horrified.
After the War by Carol Matas
This novel follows a fifteen-year-old girl, Ruth, after her release from the concentration camps. When she attempts to return to her home in Poland, she is chased away by its present inhabitants. Joining the underground, she helps children with forged documents to enter Palestine.
Lisa's Warby CarolMatas
Like Number the Stars, this novel is set in occupied Denmark and it also demonstrates the behavior or ordinary people in extraordinary times. When many Jews leave Denmark in advance of the coming roundup, Lisa joins the underground with her brother.
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
Jane Yolen, author of The Devil's Arithmetic, re-explores the Holocaust, this time through the experiences of a young woman's grandmother in a Polish concentration camp. The story is interwoven with the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty.
Stones in Water by Donna Napoli
Roberto makes friends with Samele, a Jewish boy. The two boys are taken prisoner by the Germans and sent to a labor camp. Both boys plot their escape, but only Roberto does so. He becomes part of the partisan effort to sabotage the German/Italian war effort.
The Island on Bird Street byUri Orlev
Alex's mother has disappeared. His father was taken away by the Nazis. Alex must survive on his own in the Warsaw ghetto.
The Shadow Children by Steven Schnur
This book is a combination ghost story and historical novel. Spending summers on his grandfather's farm in rural France, Etienne learns that thousands of Jewish children were hidden in the village during World War II. When the Nazis came, the villagers, including his grandfather, gave up the children. Now Etienne sees their ghosts.
Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli
Our hero in World War II Warsaw has many names: Stopthief, Jew, Filthy Son of Abraham. His real name is Misha. He might be a Jew, or is he a Gypsy? His new friend Uri gives him a story to tell about a Gypsy background in an attempt to help Misha survive. This is a powerful story of survival.
Anna Is Still Here by Ida Vos
The war is over. Anna has come out from the attic where she hid alone for three years. Now she is trying to adjust to a life that includes parents and friends. One of those friends is Mrs. Neumann who waits in vain for her daughter to return.
Behind the Bedroom Wall by Laura Williams
Korinna is a loyal German citizen. She adores the Fuhrer and listens raptly to his radio addresses. Her parents encourage her participation in the Jungmadel, the Nazi youth organization. Then Korinna discovers that the sounds she has been hearing in her bedroom wall are not caused by mice, but by a Jewish woman and her five-year-old daughter. Korinna's duty is to turn them and her parents in to the Nazis.
Holocaust Nonfiction:
Nightby Elie Wiesel (advanced, mature readers)
In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? This is an Oprah’s Book Club choice and the first in the Night trilogy, including Dawn and The Accident. Other books by Elie Wiesel include Day, The Forgotten, and After the Darkness: Reflections on the Holocaust.
Hilde and Eli: Children of the Holocaust by David Adler
There is no happy ending here. The two children do not live through what we are about to witness. Hilde's oldest brother escaped before the Nazis came, but Hilde and her mother went to the camps. Eli's oldest sister also escaped but he and his father did not.
I Am a Star: Child of the HolocaustbyInge Auerbacher
This brief biography tells of the author's survival at the death camp Terezin. She was one of thirteen children who survived out of the twelve hundred who were sent there.
The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival by Sara BernsteinI
Growing up in rural Romania, Sara accepts a scholarship to a school in Bucharest in spite of her father's wishes. When she rebels and is expelled from the school, she finds work as a seamstress where her blond hair and blue eyes keep her temporarily free from the increasing burdens placed on the Jews.
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
A beloved classic since its initial publication in 1947, this vivid, insightful journal is a fitting memorial to the gifted Jewish teenager who died at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, in 1945. Her marvelously detailed, engagingly personal entries chronicle 25 trying months of claustrophobic, quarrelsome intimacy with her parents, sister, a second family, and a middle-aged dentist who has little tolerance for Anne's vivacity. Also of interest:
Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary: A Photographic Remembrance by Ruud Van Der Rol.
Yellow Starby Jennifer Roy
In thoughtful, vividly descriptive, almost poetic prose, Roy retells the true story of her Aunt Syvia's experiences in the Lodz Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland. The slightly fictionalized story, re-created from her aunt's taped narrative, is related by Syvia herself as a series of titled vignettes that cover the period from fall, 1939, when she is four years old, until January 1945–each one recounting a particular detail-filled memory in the child's life.
Other Victims: First Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis by Ina Friedman
Friedman tells us that, in addition to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, five million other people were systematically rounded up and killed by the Nazis. She gives us eleven personal accounts from some of those who survived. Here are the stories of some gypsies, homosexuals, Christian clergy, artists, political dissidents, the Czechs, Poles, Dutch and French.
I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust byLivia Jackson
Elli Friedman's descent into hell begins when the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944. She and her mother save each other from the gas chamber, but they then have to deal with starvation and slave labor. Moved first to Auschwitz and then to Dachau, the two are moved yet again as the Allies approach.
Mischling: Second Degree by Ilse Koehn
The title comes from the designation Ilse would have had during World War II Germany: her father's mother was Jewish and this fact classifies Ilse as a Jew. Knowing nothing of this, she is active in the Hitler Youth Movement, shouting her loyalty to the man who would have directed her death, had he known.
No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War byAnita Lobel
This is the story of well-known book-illustrator Anita Lobel. Barely five when the war begins, she survives due in part to the care of her non-Jewish governess with whom she has a love/hate relationship. After being sent with her brother to Ravensbruck, they are brought to Sweden to recover.
Smoke and Ashes: The Story of the Holocaust by Barbara Rogasky
This photo essay begins with information about the history of anti-Semitism from the 1600s onward. Through photos we witness the deportations, forced labor, the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz, and the discovery of the bodies by the liberators.
Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Campsby AndreaWarren
Jack Mandelbaum lives a comfortable life in Poland before the Holocaust begins. After hiding for a while, his family is separated and Jack is sent to Blechhammer. This is his story of survival there.
Other WWII topics:
Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac
In the measured tones of a Native American storyteller, Bruchac assumes the persona of a Navajo grandfather telling his grandchildren about his World War II experiences. Protagonist Ned Begay starts with his early schooling at an Anglo boarding school, where the Navajo language is forbidden, and continues through his Marine career as a "code talker," explaining his long silence until "de-classified" in 1969. Begay's lifelong journey honors the Navajos and other Native Americans in the military, and fosters respect for their culture.
Heroes Don’t Run by Harry Mazer
In the final part of Adam Pelko's story, which began with A Boy at Warand continued in A Boy No More, Adam, now 17, lies about his age so that he can join the marines in 1944. Mazer did the same thing (though he served in Europe), and much of the power of this novel lies in the factual details, first of rough boot-camp training and then of battle.
Soldier X by Don Wulffson
In this gritty novel of World War II, 16-year-old Erik Brandt is forced to fight for the emaciated German army, and because of his knowledge of the Russian language, he is sent to the Russian front. The train trip that Erik and the other young men take is symbolic of their transition from child to man.
Soldier Boys by Dean Hughes
Parallel stories follow teenagers Spence Morgan, a farm boy from Utah, and Dieter Hedrick, a farm boy from Bavaria. Stirred by complex feelings of patriotism and adolescent insecurities, both young men find themselves fighting for their respective countries in World War II.
WWII Non-Fiction:
Flags of Our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima by James Bradley (there is a young-adult version of this book available)
This book focuses on one of the most famous of war photographs: the image of six marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima. Bradley, son of one of those marines, investigates the lives (and deaths) of the six, closely examining their experiences to detail the brutal battle on the island, the contrast between the sense of victory projected by the photograph and the more ambiguous circumstances behind it, and the bond-raising value of the photo (and of its surviving subjects) to the Treasury Department.
Navajo Code Talkers by Nathan Aaseng
A fascinating account that sheds light on a little-known contribution of the Navajos during World War II. A civil engineer who spent his childhood among them suggested that their language be used as a perfect unbreakable code. The result was one of the most secret and important aspects of U. S. intelligence work against the Japanese--Navajo code talking.
Hiroshimaby John Hersey
When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, few could have anticipated its potential for devastation. Pulitzer prize-winning author John Hersey recorded the stories of Hiroshima residents shortly after the explosion and, in 1946, Hiroshima was published, giving the world first-hand accounts from people who had survived it.
WWII Japanese Internment:
Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata
This is the story of 12-year-old Sumiko and her family. It's a foretaste of the prejudice that spreads like weeds in a garden after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The family is soon removed from their California flower farm and interred on a desert reservation in Arizona, where the Indians resent the intruders. Kimberly Farr relates this dark chapter of American history with authority, allowing listeners to walk in Sumiko's shoes.
Kira-kira by Cynthia Kadohata
In Cynthia Kadohata's lively, lovely, funny and sad novel -- winner of the 2005 Newbery Medal -- the Japanese-American Takeshima family moves from Iowa to Georgia in the 1950s. The story focuses on family bonds, especially between two sisters, and on racial injustice and post WWII prejudice.