WWII and Holocaust, European Sites and Books/DVDs
 

Instead of heading off to Spanish "camp" my 17-yr-old daughter has decided that what she'd really like to spend time this summer in Europe doing (perhaps her last for a while as we'll move back to the US next year) is immersing herself in WWII history. She is a history buff and has studied World History which touches on WWII but will not take US History until next year. She will not have time to start her own in-depth research until school lets out, since she's got a lot of schoolwork and the usual SATs etc going on right now. I need to have at least a few eggs in the basket before summer so I can make some reservations and help her put together a bit of a "plan"...and I have lots of time to work on this but was not a history student so I'm starting from scratch.

We live in Zurich, which is central to most of Europe, and so we'll probably take trains, drive, and split the trip up over the course of several months. Her 13-year-old sister will join us for some of it.

I have 2 questions:

1. What cities, monuments, memorials, battlefields, cemeteries, Jewish ghettoes, concentration camps have you visited in Europe that really helped you get a feeling and context for WWII? Did you visit with a teenager and what insight do you have on that?

2. What movies or books (fiction and non-fiction) have you seen/read that you felt dealt effectively with this war and this time period, and might be appropriate/interesting for a mature history student's "library"?

I hope my question isn't too vague. I know the topic is huge and I may need to have her choose a smaller theme...

Thank you for any help you can provide.

gruezi

First, high marks to you and your daughter for undertaking this task. It can be daunting and obviously can go much deeper and farther-reaching than anyone can manage in a lifetime, let alone a summer.

Rather than taking on the whole scope of the war I might suggest a few books and films that provide a personal, more intimate view of the war and the holocaust. That doesn't make them any less riveting (or shattering) but can help bring it down to human scale.

<i>The Diary of Anne Frank</i> is an obvious choice, as are <i>Night</i> by Elie Wiesel and <i>If This is a Man</i> by Primo Levi. For a riveting day-by-day account of the rise of the Third Reich, I think Bill Shirer's <i>Berlin Diary</i> is a must-read; his opus <i>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich</i> is a bit dated now, but still a pretty comprehensive and sweeping view of the war in Europe.

<i>Schindler's List</i> is an obvious movie choice; probably others can recommend other films that are less about shooting and more about people. One of my favorites is <i>Soldier of Orange,</i> Paul Verhoeven's masterpiece about the war in Holland.

For visits, well, Berlin is an obvious choice, as are Dachau (near Munich,) Auschwitz (near Krakow) and Terezin (not too far from Prague.)

However since you're in Europe, could I just throw out a suggestion for a trip to Jerusalem? Aside from its obvious historical attractions, the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial does a remarkable job of making sense of the senselessness of the era. Some places are transformational - I think Yad Vashem is one such, partly because of the somber and devastating subject matter, but also because when you leave Yad Vashem you're immersed in a vibrant, living city and country that shows just how completely Hitler lost the war and had his evil dreams come to naught.

Congratulations and best wishes to you and your daughter.

If your daughter reads French, I would recommend Jorge Semprun's <i>Quel beau dimanche!</i>, although it also includes stories about his life in the Communist underground after the war. He was in Buchenwald and as a literary person combines his experience with his knowledge of literature which had an ironic meaning in that the KZ was in the woods where Goethe used to take his walks and had L&eacute;on Blum as a special prisoner who wrote about Goethe.

For excellent fiction about the war by a woman who died in one of the camps, read Suite Fran&ccedil;aise.

I will get back to you later with a more detailed reply since we took a similar trip this summer and my 15YO has shelves and shelves of books on this, but first, would you mind telling us if she is interested in this from a Jewish perspective, or more strictly as a history buff? I don't want to give you too many titles that are more about the Jewish experience if this is not really the focus.

If you click on my name, you should find my trip report, &quot;Heritage, Heartache and Holiday ... (etc.)&quot;

actually, you can probably find my trip report more easily by clicking on &quot;Poland&quot; or &quot;Lithuania&quot; in the search box.

We spent some time in the Nazi Documentation Center in Berchtesgaden, Germany, and wished that we could've spent a few more hours there. It is a museum documenting the Nazis, Hitler, etc. with a vast collection of the propaganda materials, information on officers and other important figures, with the exhibit culminating in a display of the tragic results of Nazi control. A bunker system is part of the complex. Descriptions are in English, and English audio headsets are available. The entire experience was an overwhelming and valuable educational tool for us. In the area you can also visit Eagles Nest, as well as some hand-dug bunkers.

We recently visited the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site and found the experience overwhelmingly haunting. The camp seemed to be out-of-place, nestled in the little village of Dachau. We had underestimated the vastness of the complex, and unfortunately didn't have enough time to visit many parts of the camp, including the crematorium area. They have an audio-guide that you can rent, which was very informative.

There is an excellent museum in the former maintenance building, which takes you from the rise of Hitler, through the liberation of the camp, and the aftermath of WWII. The bunker (camp prison), where torture and executions were conducted, was very moving - the aura of terror and death permeated our senses.

There are two reconstructed barracks, of the original 34, that you can walk through. They were built to house 200 prisoners, but by the end of the war each barrack was overcrowded with up to 2000 prisoners. The remaining 32 barracks were torn down, but their foundations remain, so you can envision the size of the camp (although small for 68,000 people!)

I would highly recommend a visit to this most powerful remembrance of man's inhumanity to man. Let us never forget.

The Memorial Site is easily accessible from Munich by public transportation. Take the S-2 to Dachau, then transfer to Bus 724. You can use the M&uuml;nchen XXL Day ticket.

As far as books, before I went to Germany I enjoyed reading <i>Stones From the River</i> by Ursula Hegi, a novel about a young woman who lived in a little village along the Rhine River, and grew up between WWI and WWII. It explores the relationships of the people in her village, and the impact that WWII had on them.

For a first hand account of life in a Nazi concentration camp, I can recommend <i>By Bread Alone</i> by Mel Mermelstein, who happens to be a friend of the family. It chronicles his life and experiences during the war. (Leonard Nimoy made a movie based on several chapters of his life).

I hope you and your daughters have a wonderful time exploring history in Europe. What an adventure for all of you!

Robyn :)&gt;-

I posted and it's not here,???
&quot;Rescuing the Childen&quot; a holocust memoir with a forward by Elie Wiesel,
written by Vivette Samual, who was social worker at the time in France to save these Jewish children.
&quot;I Never saw nother Butterfly.&quot;
children's drawings and poems from Terez&iacute;n Concentration Camp.
A visit in France to Oroudour-sur-Glan (sp?)

The Oppermanns: a novel by Lion Feuchtwanger - one of my favorite books.
Many of Lion Feuchtwanger's books have interesting details of Jewish life at deferent times and places http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Feuchtwanger

My son took the Holocaust class in collage. Here is the list of the books for the class:
• Between Dignity and Despair Jewish life in Nazi Germany by Marion A. Kaplan
• War &amp; Genocide A Concise History of the Holocaust by Doris L. Bergen
• Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
• The Holocaust (Problems in European Civilization Series) by Donald L. Niewyk
• Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung
• Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning

Movie Sunshine (1999) – shows history of Jewish family for three generations in Hungary

There are so many places, and each single one is important, so I'll just suggest some from my personal experience:

- Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar (http://www.buchenwald.de/index_en.html), such a cynical closeness to Goethe and Schiller

- 'Topography of Terror' in Berlin, the former site of the SS/Gestapo-headquarters (http://www.topographie.de/en/index.htm), though it doesn't look impressive on first sight

- House of the Wannsee Conference (http://www.ghwk.de/engl/kopfengl.htm), for its utter coldness

- German Resistance Memorial Site (http://www.gdw-berlin.de/ged/geschichte-e.php), too many are still unaware about this, at least until 'Valkyrie' hits the screens soon

- 'Ordensburg Vogelsang' near Aachen
(http://www.vogelsang-ip.de/), a place the future NS-elite was supposed to evolve from. Being one of the few actual remains of NS-architecture, it's IMO a tell-tale place how a mix of architecture and propaganda can be set up to influence and overcome young minds.
- in case you happen to go there, note that there are some remarkable sites nearby, e.g. the Huertgen-forest, where one of the cruellest battles in WWII was fought in winter '44-'45 (though it's 'just' a very peacful forest nowadays, which makes quite a contrast). Just across the border to Belgium, you can find the American cemetery of Henri-Chapelle (http://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries/cemeteries/hc.php), on your way there, you may spot remains of the 'Westwall' defence system, too (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westwall)

- D-Day beaches (in case you go there, you should pay a visit to nearby WWI sites, too)

- Lidice (near Prague), the town that was destroyed in an act of vengeance for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942


Two more pages I would recommend to you:

a)http://www.ns-gedenkstaetten.de/portal/index.php, - a nearly complete list of NS-related memorial sites in Germany
b) http://www.gedenkstaetten-uebersicht.de/ - a similar list for the whole of Europe (and beyond)

Alas, you'll have to be fairly fluent with German for these. What about the language skills of your kids? It might broaden the choice of books one could suggest.

I do hope she'll get a chance to consider history as more than a collection of variously terrible and heroic events and individuals. I'd suggest she looks at the relevant chapters of Norman Davies's &quot;Europe&quot;, to get some sense of how these things didn't just happen out of the blue.

What about the Anne Frank huis in Amsterdam?
Not Holocaust related but still important in WW2 is the Arnhem area for Operation Market Garden (A bridge too far)? you can see the John Frost bridge, and visit the museum at Oosterbeek. Also in Holland is a fascinating museum in Overloon called Liberty Park http://tinyurl.com/26nsdd, and the US War cemetry in Margraten.

Knowledge of the past is important. More important is knowledge of the present and intimations of what may come. A study of what Europe is today as opposed to 1945 could help make forecasts of Europe tomorrow. Some of Europe has not changed since 1940-1945. Learn about the effects of immigration on any European country. Today, the UK is a different area...first came the Africans and the Asians, and now the Central Europeans. A study about the effects of 2,000,000 Polish immigrants on the UK life style should keep any student busy.
Re: Cinema: View, Katy&ntilde;. Books: Try, The Painted Bird.

Along with Patrick_London, I think it is important to work against seeing WWII as more than just a list of atrocities; this makes it too much about the perpetrator, and not enough about the people in the camps.
Inside the camps, people were not just passive objects, they retained their individuality and continued to develop inside the camps, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

Top of the reading list has to be Victor Frankl's &quot;Man's Search for Meaning.&quot; Dr. Frankl retained his belief in hope and life despite an almost unimaginably cruel life inside of Auschwitz, and despite losing much of his family to the Holocaust.

James Clavell's &quot;King Rat&quot; is a novel set in a Japanese POW camp and introduces one to how power and morality figures amongst the prisoners themselves, not just between themselves and their captors.

Then there's J G Ballard's &quot;Empire of the Sun&quot;, a novel based on his own experiences as a child in a Japanese civilian internment camp. (It was later made into a film directed by Stephen Spielberg. ) It's the most fascinating study I've yet seen of someone doing what he must to survive, and yet nonetheless recognizing that without duty to someone else, life is meaningless. There is also a profound message of faith in humanity: the young boy finds an unexpected friend amongst the 'enemy', who is revealed to be just as trapped by the war as are the inmates of the camp. That said, the movie in particular makes it plain just how scarring was the experience of life inside war, not just camps, especially for children.

I visited Dachau as a 16 year old in 1989. I found it a very somber, but moving experience. I agree with the comments written by artstuff.

http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/englisch/content/

Hi G,

Quite a task.

For a beginner, I suggest:

BOOKS

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich William Shirer

Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives by Alan Bullock

Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert

Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox 1882-1940 by James MacGregor Burns
and
Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom: 1940-1945 by James MacGregor Burns

LIFE: World War II: History's Greatest Conflict in Pictures
by Richard B. Stolley

MOVIES

Triumph Of The Will by Leni Riefenstahl

Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg

Shoah by Lanzmann (Get the much less expensive Korean version)

&quot;Casablanca&quot;

&quot;Victory at Sea&quot;

MAGAZINES:

The New Yorker from 1933 to 1945

PLACES TO VISIT:

Dachau and/or Auschwitz
Terezin

The Jewish quarter of Prague
The Ghetto in Venice
The Jewish quarter of Paris (rue des rosiers)

Hope this helps

((I))

So much stuff and where to begin!
You are so lucky to have received such fantastic suggestions, many of which I too will use!!

My personal interest has always been Normandy, there is so much to see regarding the invasion etc, also information is quite easy to find.
My more recent interest and something I am currently looking at is Reinhard Heydrich as Nautiker mentioned.

I have some good books to begin with, lets start with just 2.
The life and Times of Reinhard Heydrich and the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. These 2 books paint a good picture of this animal.

When I was in Prague I followed the route where the assasination attempt took place, then visited the Church of St Cyril where the assasins hid out, then followed the story to Lidice where reprisals took place and capped it off with a visit to Terezine camp in Cz.

This kind of encapsulates a large part of the Heydrich history in Prague and doesn't take up too much time.

These places take us to within the real story, from the bullet scarred church in Prage to the memorial for all the children in Lidice and on to the firing squad wall and gallows at Terezine.

Good Luck to your Daughter, please let us know what she decides to do !! And she must come and tell us all about it.

Muck

Here are 2 recent films, both available on DVD, about the period:

DOWNFALL
BLACK BOOK

I recommend both.

Easy reading for a 17-year-old and excellent is the book:

Eva's Cousin by S. Knauss

My personal recommendation is to include cities where thriving Jewish communities existed before the WW II. You can get very good Jewish tours of Jewish neighbourhoods in Budapest, Prague, Krakow, to name a few. Many of these cities have good Jewish museums where you can put things into historical perspectives, not just focusing on horrors of Holocaust. Amsterdam also has an excellent museum inside the synagogue. Walk around, see what it must have been like to be in the 1930s and 40s. You can put a human face to a historical event.

Aside from many books, there are some excellent movies. Aside from the obvious Schindler's List (my sister-in-law's stepfather was among the survivors on the list), I recommend Life is Beautiful, Au Revoir les Enfants.

Well, I am overwhelmed by the response to my thread. Thank you everyone for these very thoughtful and reflective suggestions. I just had a second to log on and quickly read through, but will spend time over the next few days reading more specifically and looking at the many websites that have been shared here.

I am definitely concerned, as some of you wisely pointed out, that this not be just a checklist of atrocities and that we focus not just on the perpetrators but also on the heroic stories that emerged later.

What a wonderful selection of books and movies to explore. Some I've heard of and others are new to me. I look forward to reading and viewing many of them. I had forgotten about one of my all-time favorite books - Stones from the River - funny, it's 2 feet from where I'm typing this. I also had Suite Francaise on the reading list. She has read Diary of Anne Frank and Night but I think it would be good to read them again.

She is a musician and was really blown away by &quot;The Pianist&quot;... I plan to watch &quot;Schindler's List&quot; with her as I think she is just about at the point where she could process this movie. I remember seeing a very inspiring movie once about a group of women who formed a choir while interred in a prison camp... I don't remember if it was during the Holocaust or not - does anyone else recall this movie?

Cigalechanta - I will try to get your 2 suggestions as I think they may be appropriate for my younger daughter as well.

Definitely would like to take her to the Anne Frank Huis, Dachau, Berlin, Krakow and Prague, DDay sites and there are so many other good suggestions here for me to research now. I also think a trip to Jerusalem would be a good idea, if a bit farther afield, and have had so many friends say how meaningful the holocaust memorial there was to them.

skatedancer - thank you and I will definitely read your report and look forward to any further advice you have. To answer your question (I think) my daughter is not Jewish, but I think is very interested in the Jewish experience in relation to both ancient and present history and as a study of inhumanity, human struggle and endurance, and racism. I'm sure a good portion of our travels will relate very directly to the Jewish experience.

Well, I could write 2 more pages thanking each and every one of you for your help and detailed advice and recommendations and I will later. We will keep you posted on our plans. Please add anything you may have forgotten - your replies are so very much appreciated.

gruezi

I'd recommend 3 books in particular:

&quot;Holocaust Journey&quot; by Martin Gilbert

Best known as a biographer of Churchill, Gilbert
took a modern day journey to many places relating
to the holocaust.

&quot;I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945: A Diary of the Nazi Years&quot;
by Victor Klemperer

The author was a cousin of the famous conductor Otto and I believe
of the actor Werner. As a Canadian atheist I was never able to
understand why so many sat and waited until it was too late.
This book helped me understand.

Finally, a fascinating read is
&quot;Destined to Witness... Growing Up
Black in Nazi Germany&quot; by Hans J.
Massaquoi.

It can be hard for us to understand at this distance in time
but reading how a black youth actually wanted to join the
Hitler Youth helps understand the extent of the mind control
the Nazis used.

Rob

I went to the Anne Frank house on a night tour in Amsterdam last year. . would be great for a 17 year old. . but not so sure that Amsterdam would be great as a whole.

I married a Jewish man and we both found concentration camps and we the concentration camps to be too much to handle. . .great for historical purposes, but be prepared for an emotional and trying experience.

For a very different perspective, there is the experience of the Jewish people in Italy. Both Trieste and Venice had thriving Jewish communities before the war. Their traces may still be found, in very different manifestations, in those two cities. I can heartily recommend the Jewish Museum in Cannareggio in Venice. We were also very deeply touched by the utter simplicity of the remnants of the little known concentration camp in Trieste. Read Jan Morris on the subject: &quot;Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere.'

You can't miss London. Go to the Imperial War Museum and Churchill's war bunker for starters.

Gruezi, I am not in any way critical of your daughter's interest. I applaud her curiosity and desire for investigation so she can form her own opinions. However, as you reside in Switzerland, she may be interested in investigating the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and how many Jews who were left destitute, homeless, and stateless tried to retrieve art treasures, money, etc. from Swiss banks and were unsuccessful. You have a unique opportunity from a geographic perspective to investigate this.

I have been to Jewish musuems in both Paris and London and found them both interesting. There are also aspects of homosexual and Gypsy extermination during the Holocaust which have not received as much attention and might be worthwhile investigating. Good Luck!

<i>I remember seeing a very inspiring movie once about a group of women who formed a choir while interred in a prison camp... I don't remember if it was during the Holocaust or not - does anyone else recall this movie? </i>

The movie is &quot;Paradise Road,&quot; starring Glenn Close, Frances McDormand, Cate Blanchett, and Julianna Marguilies.

It's fictional, but based on a true story about women who form a choral group at a Japanese prison camp during WWII.

Hi
Since she is a history buff, a backfround to WW2 would be helpful.. May I suggest she read Berlin Diary by William Shirer. It's his person diary from 1934 until 1941, when he went home after leaving Germany Dec. 5 1941. Going to Spain, then Porugal eventually going home. He was a radio correspondent on CBS. He knew many details of the inner workings that he could not broadcast due to censorship by the Nazis. He also worked with many of the other correspondents such as Edward R. Murrow. I found it fascinating as I used it to get background for my trip to Berlin, Dresden and Potsdam 3 yrs. ago.

Hi sorry but I seem to have gotten caught up on books. We've visited most of the sights revolving about the Holocaust. I would recommend a visit to Terezin in Chech Rep. outside of Prague. It is a ghetto where the Jews stayed until they were sent away. Budapest, as they still have a vibrant Jewish community despite the holocaust. Berlin now has an excellent Jewish Museum as well as many other sights.
Malthausen bought my wife to tears as she had family there during the war. It is a different type of camp. It's a work camp, where you were worked to death. There are just too many sites to name. If you are able to visit warsaw you should. Part of the old Jewish neighborhood still exists, there is a yiddish theatre there and a walking tour of the ghetto uprising sites. Though the Poles still have a hard time recognizing what happened and refer to the Jews as Poles that is improving and a Jewish museum is being built. Warsaw was still moving as was Krakow.

I'd suggest that you look at Antony Beevor's bibliography and resources such as www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwtwo/ if only to remind people that WW2 in Europe wasn't just the Holocaust

In Amsterdam there is a Museum of Resistance (I think that is its name) that gives a perspective of the war from the Dutch point of view. I found it interesting and moving.

Having visited many of these cities and sites, I concur with much that has been written. It is important to visit areas where Jewish communities once thrived. Most of these citites commemorate, memorialize and celebrate the past with an emphasis on hope for the future. It is important to understand what life was like before WWII and the Holocaust in orde to understand the magnitiude of what was lost.

Here are a few suggestions/ideas. I will post back as I think of more.

Prague: Tour the Jewish quarter and related cemetery, synagogues and museums, Terezin and Lidice, if possible.

Prague tours:
Sylvia Wittman Tours:
http://www.wittmann-tours.com/

Precious Legacy Tours:
http://www.legacytours.net/

London:
Imperial War Museum and Cabinet War Rooms.

Berlin:
New Jewish Museum, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Topography of Terror; Sachsenhausen and Ravensbruck camps are nearby as is the Wannsee House. I highly recommend the film Conspiracy as the dialogue follows the actual meeting and related documents verbatim. Kenneth Branaugh stars as Reinhard Heydrich.

Film-The Lost Children of Berlin

Search the internet and/or ask folks here about Berlin city tours with WWII emphasis.

Budapest:
Dahony St. Synagogue and related Wallenberg Memorial. House of Terror Museum for WWII, Holocaust and Cold War interests.

Someone else suggested the movie Sunshine, and I highly recommend it, too. It covers pre-WWI through the Cold War. The Music Box is another.

Krakow:
Watch Schindler's List. (Rent the one with bonus features as survivor testimony is included.) Tour the Jewish District. A couple of memorials have been built at Plaschow. I think there are even some Schindler tours.

I would tour Auschwitz with a guide. Of course, others may disagree; I'm speaking from my own experience. I've visited Auschwitz and Birkenau twice. Many, many film and book recommendations for Auschwitz. A couple of films that that come to mind immediately are The Grey Zone and Out of the Ashes.

Other DVDs:
Spielberg's Survivors of the Holocaust

Jacob the Liar (there are two; I've seem the one with Robin Williams;)

Another vote for Downfall.

You and your daughter may also want to view Band of Brothers. It's fairly comprehensive (from an American Army point of view.)

May I suggest you get a Netflix account if you don't have one already. :)

Books:
The most comprehensive and easy to read book is Michael Berenbaum's The World Must Remember. (I've used this book in a Holocaust survey course for high school juniors and seniors.) In fact, I recommend that your daughter read a book like this as a starting point for Holocaust studies. She'll get bogged down trying to read something like The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

I'm sure I'll think of more.

I applaud your daughter's intellectual curiosity and your efforts to foster it. :)

I did not mean to use that winking emoticon! I was trying to close the parenthesis. Sorry!

Having visited many of these cities and sites, I concur with much that has been written. It is important to visit areas where Jewish communities once thrived. Most of these citites commemorate, memorialize and celebrate the past with an emphasis on hope for the future. It is important to understand what life was like before WWII and the Holocaust in orde to understand the magnitiude of what was lost.

Here are a few suggestions/ideas. I will post back as I think of more.

Prague: Tour the Jewish quarter and related cemetery, synagogues and museums, Terezin and Lidice, if possible.

Prague tours:
Sylvia Wittman Tours:
http://www.wittmann-tours.com/

Precious Legacy Tours:
http://www.legacytours.net/

London:
Imperial War Museum and Cabinet War Rooms.

Berlin:
New Jewish Museum, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Topography of Terror; Sachsenhausen and Ravensbruck camps are nearby as is the Wannsee House. I highly recommend the film Conspiracy as the dialogue follows the actual meeting and related documents verbatim. Kenneth Branaugh stars as Reinhard Heydrich.

Film-The Lost Children of Berlin

Search the internet and/or ask folks here about Berlin city tours with WWII emphasis.

Budapest:
Dahony St. Synagogue and related Wallenberg Memorial. House of Terror Museum for WWII, Holocaust and Cold War interests.

Someone else suggested the movie Sunshine, and I highly recommend it, too. It covers pre-WWI through the Cold War. The Music Box is another.

Krakow:
Watch Schindler's List. (Rent the one with bonus features as survivor testimony is included.) Tour the Jewish District. A couple of memorials have been built at Plaschow. I think there are even some Schindler tours.

I would tour Auschwitz with a guide. Of course, others may disagree; I'm speaking from my own experience. I've visited Auschwitz and Birkenau twice. Many, many film and book recommendations for Auschwitz. A couple of films that that come to mind immediately are The Grey Zone and Out of the Ashes.

Other DVDs:
Spielberg's Survivors of the Holocaust

Jacob the Liar (there are two; I've seem the one with Robin Williams;)

Another vote for Downfall.

You and your daughter may also want to view Band of Brothers. It's fairly comprehensive (from an American Army point of view.)

May I suggest you get a Netflix account if you don't have one already. :)

Books:
The most comprehensive and easy to read book is Michael Berenbaum's The World Must Know. (I've used this book in a Holocaust survey course for high school juniors and seniors.) In fact, I recommend that your daughter read a book like this as a starting point for Holocaust studies. She'll get bogged down trying to read something like The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

I'm sure I'll think of more.

I applaud your daughter's intellectual curiosity and your efforts to foster it. :)

SO sorry everyone. I was trying to edit the book title The World Must Know, not The World Must Remember. I tried to use Robespierre's method, but obviously I did not understand his instructions. Please forgive me for double posting! I'm sorry!

This is on at least one other list but I wanted to highlight it:
Shoah: An Oral history of the Holocaust. available on DVD

Book suggestion not already mentioned: The Wall by John Hersey (novel about the Warsaw ghetto)

For a WWII battles focus, not a holocaust focus, you might look at this website.

http://web.mac.com/davedepickere/Wor...zed!/Home.html

Also you might research some of the paratrooper unit websites. My wife's father was in the 517th PIR (Parachute infantry regiment) and they have lots of info on their website.

&quot;Is Paris Burning?&quot; tells the story of the liberation of Paris in August, 1944. &quot;A Bridge Too Far&quot; continues the march to Germany in late 1944. And Stephen Ambrose wrote several books about the Allied invasion of Europe and the struggle to end the war.

Nurnberg was the site of Hitler's Nazi rallies during the 1930's. The Reichsparteitag complex is a ruined shell that can be viewed as a grim reminder of the hideous Hitler era. There is also a small museum underneath the stands with memorabelia of that era.

Oradour sur-Glane was a small French village south of Paris that was burned completely by the Nazis on 10 June, 1944, in retaliation for the French Resistence killing a Nazi officer. The burned-out ruins provide a stark lesson of the brutality.

The Mauthausen Concentration Camp in northwestern Austria is well worth a visit. Well-preserved, it was termed the &quot;mother camp&quot; by the SS guards for all of Austria's 49 sub-camps.

Good luck on your search through history.

Jinx Hoover

I agree with other's above that this era isn't something one should approach with a tick-off list, each place tells its tale, but in itself is nothing but a mosaique stone. The more aspects you try to consider, the clearer the 'picture' will get, yet it takes sageness and your own individual inquisitiveness to select which places this should be - not a simple task when you've to decide this for others.

As suggested by others above, be sure to take a slow approach at concentration camps, at her age, I couldn't enter the crematorium buildings in Majdanek, they were just to haunting to me (by the way: in Poland, visitors are discouraged from taking minors below the age of 14 to concentration camps, probably for similar reasons).


Let me add some movies &amp; books.
In case she's a buff for older movies (alas too few youngsters are nowadays), I would recommend 'Hangmen also die' (by Fritz Lang) about the Heydrich assassination, 'Popiol i diament' ('Ash and diamant'), a film from Poland by Andrzej Wajda (there should be an English translation) and 'A Foreign Affair' by Billy Wilder (for some post-war impressions, 'The Third Man' would fit in well, too).

Personally, I didn't like 'Downfall' at all, it's a superficial, kitschy movie full of stereotypes that helps little to understanding, I would prefer 'The Last Act' by Georg Pabst to it for a similar approach, alas it's from 1955, so I don't know whether it appeals to a teen (in my opinion, Chaplin's 'The Great Dictator', though it's fictional, still fits as a very accurate portrait of Hitler).

But a recent movie that might be of interest could be 'Sophie Scholl: The Final Days' based on the biography of the student's resistance movement leader in Munich, trialed and sentenced to death in 1943.

Books... very hard to suggest, a lot of them (especially non-fiction) could be very boring or very difficult to a youngster.

- I consent to Jorge Semprun, alas I would recommend 'The Long Voyage' over 'What a beautiful Sunday!' as the latter elaborates a lot about ideologies, which sometimes is hard to follow).

- the 1933-45 diaries of the Jewish writer Victor Klemperer (cousin to the famous conductor/componist Otto Klemperer) about the gradually changeing everyday-life of a jew in Germany are very much worth reading, in case language skills don't pose a barrier, I would recommend the (shortened) German special edition for young readers ('Das Tagebuch 1933 - 1945. Eine Auswahl f&uuml;r junge Leser', paperback), but there are translations, too.

- another very interesting person to read about is Albert Speer, the 'good nazi' who might have been the successor to Hitler. There are several biographies about him, of which I haven't read but the one by German historian Joachim Fest, who paints a very probable picture of the NS-elite as a bunch of self-concerned intriguers, constantly rivaling for Hitler's benevolence.

There are so many fictional books... In case you would be looking for a book for your younger daughter (and again, German language doesn't pose a barrier), I could thoroughly recommend 'Das Schweigen der Eulen' by Jan de Leuuw, which covers a tiny, tiny fragment of history (collaboratism, guilt, ...), but is set in the present.

You could link the movie on Sophie Scholl (which is out on DVD with English subtitles) with a visit to Munich and the university where it all happened. And as she and her group were so young, the story might be more meaningful to someone so close to their age.