Bearing Witness

From the vast body of literature associated with the Holocaust, Rochman and McCampbell (Who Do You Think You Are? Stories of Friends and Enemies) have selected 24 excerpts or short works that powerfully confront aspects of the war against the Jews. Most of the entries are from what might be considered a canonical roster (e.g., Elie Wiesel's Night; Claude Lanzmann's epic film, Shoah; Art Spiegelman's Maus; and Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz). The less familiar authors, however, are no less forceful. An American soldier pens a letter to his wife, feverishly recording his horrified observations after helping liberate the inmates of an Austrian concentration camp; the Dutch writer Carl Friedman describes her own and her brother's reactions to their father's stories of surviving the death camps. An excellent introduction to a dire period of history. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)