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 "The Pianist"... I plan to watch "Schindler's List" 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:

"Holocaust Journey" by Martin Gilbert

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

"I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945: A Diary of the Nazi Years"
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
"Destined to Witness... Growing Up
Black in Nazi Germany" 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: "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.