Women Holocaust survivors: A Reading List

To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day (Jan. 27), below you'll find all the books I have read or want to read by or about women who survived the Holocaust. Note, this list is NOT exhaustive!  Mainly Italian authors, for starters. But a good primer on works involving a group of survivors that has often been marginalized, as I wrote in an article for the American Scholar last year. 

Available in translation

Who Loves You Like This, Edith Bruck (Paul Dry Books; Thomas Kelso, translator)

Lost Bread, Edith Bruck (Ibid., Gabriella Romani and David Yanoff, translators)

Letter to My Mother, Edith Bruck (Brenda Webster and Gabriella Romani, translators)

There's a Place on Earth, Giuliana Tedeschi, (Tim Parks, translator)

Sentenced to Live, A Survivor's Memoir, Cecilie Klein

Ravensbrück, The Women's Camp of Death, Denise Dufournier

Smoke Over Birkenau, by Liana Millu, translated by Lynne Sharon Schwartz 

Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo (French resistance fighter)

A Scrap of Time, Ida Fink (a collection of stories that includes "The Key Game" -- devastating)

Distant Fathers, Marina Jarre (click to read my reviews of both Jarre titles)

Return to Latvia, Marina Jarre (both Jarre books were translated by Ann Goldstein)

*Women in the Holocaust, edited by Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman (I cited this book in the article I published in the American Scholar about women Holocaust survivors)

Not available in English translation

L'esile filo della memoria, Lidia Beccaria Rolfi (This book begins a few days before the writer was liberated from the concentration camp called Ravensbruck, which is fascinating because it deals with the saga of afterward. As if the saga of before -- the camps -- weren't enough.)

Come una rana d'inverno: Conversazioni con tre donne sopravvissute ad Auschwitz, Daniela Padoan (interviews with three women who survived the Holocaust) 

Il silenzio dei vivi, Elisa Springer

Andremo in città, Edith Bruck (Note, I'm translating this, thanks to an NEA grant)

Due Stanze Vuote, Edith Bruck (" ")

Transit, Edith Bruck

Signora Auschwitz, Edith Bruck

Scolpitelo nel vostro cuore, Liliana Segre

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