Writings on Literary and Artistic Responses to the Holocaust
Select Bibliography (English)

There are separate bibliographies for Holocaust Memoirs, Testimonies, and Histories; Secondary Sources on the Holocaust, and  Anti-Semitism.

For a list of Holocaust novels, stories, plays, and poems, see Literary Responses to the Holocaust.

*#Afterimage: Evocations of the Holocaust in Contemporary Canadian Arts and Literature. Ed. Loren Lerner. Montreal: The Concordia University Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies, 2002. [Canadian creative writers, cultural historians, and performing artists respond to the Holocaust; includes article and filmography on Canadian Holocaust films by Gary Evans; the volume is based on the conference 4-5 May 2000 at the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre; 2004 Joseph and Faye Tanenbaum Prize for Scholarship on a Jewish Subject.]

Alvarez, A. "The Literature of the Holocaust." In Commentary (November 1964) 65-69.

*Angress, Ruth K. "A 'Jewish Problem' in German Postwar Fiction." In Modern Judaica, 5 (1985) 215ff.

*Angress, Ruth K. "Discussing Holocaust Literature." In Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, 2 (1985), 179-92.

*Bahti, Timothy and Marilyn Sibley Fries. Eds. Jewish writers, German Literature: The Uneasy Examples of Nelly Sachs and Walter Benjamin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.

*Banner, Gillian. Holocaust Literature: Schulz, Levi, Spiegelman and the Memory of the Offence. Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000.

Bartov, Omer. The “Jew” in Cinema: From the Golem to Don’t Touch My Holocaust. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.

#Bartov, Omer. Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation. New York: Oxford Press, 1996.

Bigsby, Christopher. Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. [About W.G. Sebald, Rolf Hochhuth, Arthur Miller, Peter Weiss & o.]

*#Blatter, Janet and Sybil Milton. Art of the Holocaust. Preface Irving Howe, Historical Introduction Henry Friedlander. York: Rutledge Press, 1981.

Bosmajian, Hamida. Metaphors of Evil: The Shadow of Nazism in Contemporary German Literature. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1979.

*Bower, Kathrin M. Ethics and Remembrance in the Poetry of Nelly Sachs and Rose Ausländer. Rochestern NY: Camden House, 2000).

Braham, Randolph L. Reflections of the Holocaust in Art and Literature. Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1990.

*Brody-Moskowitz, Cynthia, ed. Bittersweet Legacy: Creative Responses to the Holocaust. Foreword. Michael Berenbaum. University Press of America, 2001.

*Cernyak-Spatz, Susan E. German Holocaust Literature. New York: Peter Lang, 1985.

*Costanza, Mary S. The Living Witness: Art in the Concentration Camps and Ghettos. New York: Free Press, 1982.

Czarnecki, Joseph P. Introduction Chaim Potok. Last Traces: The Lost Art of Auschwitz. New York: Atheneum, 1989. [Photos of paintings, inscriptions, decorations, scratchings on the walls of Auschwitz]

*Dawidowicz Lucy, ed. Spiritual Resistance: Art From Concentration Camps, 1940-1945. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1981. [A selection of drawings and paintings from the collection of Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot, Israel, with essays by Miriam Novitch, Lucy Dawidowicz, & Tom L. Freudenheim; maps]

Derrida, Jacques. "Shibboleh for Paul Celan." In Word Traces: Readings of Paul Celan. Ed. Fioretos Aris. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

*Doerr, Karin. The Depiction of Auschwitz in an American Novel: Sherri Szeman’s The Kommandant’s Mistress.” In Rendezvous: Journal of Arts and Letters. Vol. 34 no. 1. Idaho State U (Fall 2000) 37-46.

*Doerr, Karin. “Memories of History: Women and the Holocaust in Autobiographical and Fictional Memoirs.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. Vol 18 Number 3. Perdue University (Spring 2000) 71-90.

Doerr, Karin. “Words of Fear and Fear of Words: Language Memories of Holocaust Survivors.” In Subjects of Fear. vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology. Vol 9, Number 1 (2009) 47-57 [Mentions artists Ruth Liberman and Vera Meisels]. 

Doerr, Karin. “Words of Fear and Fear of Words: Language Memories of Holocaust Survivors.” In Subjects of Fear. vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology. Vol 9, Number 1 (2009) 47-57 [Mentions artists Ruth Liberman and Vera Meisels].

Dresden, Sem. Persecution, Extermination, Literature. Trans. from the Dutch Henry G. Schogt. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.

*Druxes, Helga. "Remembering as Revision: Fictionalising Nazism in Postwar Germany." In Modern Languages Studies: Holocaust Literature, xxiv, 4 (Fall l1994) 54-62.

*Eliach, Yaffa. Hasidic Tales of the Holocaus. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

*#Ezrahi, Sidra Dekoven. By Words Alone: The Holocaust in Literature. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Feinstein, Stephen C. Ed. Absence/Presence: Critical Essays on the Artistic Memory of the Holocaust. Syracuse, NJ: Syracuse University Press, 2005).

Feinstein, Stephen C. Ed. Absence/Presence: Critical Essays on the Artistic Memory of the Holocaust. Syracuse, NJ:  Syracuse University Press, 2005).

# Felstiner, John. Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

(*)Fewell, Danna Nolan, Gary A. Phillips, and Yvonne Sherwood, eds.Representing the Irreparable: The Shoah, the Bible, and the Art of Samual Bak. Boston, MS: Pucker Art Publications, 2008.

*Foley, Barbara. "Fact, Fiction, Fascism: Testimony and Mimesis in Holocaust Narratives." In Comparative Literature, 34 (Fall 1982).

Friedlander, Saul, ed. Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution." Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press, 1992. [Papers from the conference by the same name, held at the University of California, Los Angeles, 26-29 Apr. 1990]

*Fuchs, Elinor. Ed. Plays Of The Holocaust: An International Anthology. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1987.

*Fuchs, Esther, ed. Women and The Holocaust: Narrative and Representation. New York: New York and Oxford: University Press of America, 1999.

*Gelber, Mark. "Nelly Sachs 'In den Wohnungen des Todes': Poetic Structure for Human Suffering." In Neue Germanistik, 1/1 (1980) 5-24.

*#Glowacka, Dorota. “Disappearing Traces: Emmanuel Levinas, Ida Fink’s Literary Testimony, and Holocaust Art.” In Between Ethics and Aesthetics: Crossing the Boundaries. Eds. Dorota Glowacka and Stephen Boos. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.

*#Heinemann, Marlene. Women Prose Writers of the Nazi Holocaust. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1986.

*Heinemann, Marlene E. Gender and Destiny: Women Writers and the Holocaust. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1986.

Heinemann, Marlene E. Women Prose Writers Of The Nazi Holocaust. Diss. 1981; Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1986.

Hirsch, David H. Deconstruction of Literature: Criticism after Auschwitz. Hanover and London: Brown University Press, 1991.

Hirsch, David H. Ed. Modern Language Studies: Holocaust Literature. Vol. xxiv, 4 (Fall 1994).

The Holocaust in Literature. In Special issue Rendezvous: Journal of Arts and Letters. Vol. 34 no. 1. Idaho State U: Fall 2000 (37-46).

Hornstein, Shelley and Florence Jacobowitz. Image and Remembrance: Representation and the Holocaust. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. [On Holocaust photo images, trauma, collective and individual memory, artistic representation]

*Horowitz, Sara R. Linguistic Displacement in Fictional Responses to the Holocaust. Diss. 1984; Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1987. [Interpretations of Kosinski, Wiesel, Lind, and Tournier]

*Horowitz, Sara E. Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997.

Hungerford, Amy. The Holocaust of Texts: Genocide, Literature, and Personification. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

*Jacques, Melissa M. Tracing the Holocaust: Experiments in Late Twentieth-Century Art and Literature. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Diss.Services, 2007. [On Christian Boltanski, Sarah Kofman a.o.]

Kaplan, Brett Ashley. Unwanted Beauty: Aesthetic Pleasure in Holocaust Representation. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007. [About Paul Celan, Jorge Semprun, Edmond Jabès, Anselm Kiefer, Peter Eisenman, Jochen Gerz &.a.]

*Knopp, Josephine. “Holocaust Literature II: Novels and Short Stories.” In Encountering the Holocaust: An Interdisciplinary Survey. Byron L. Sherwin and Susan G. Ament, eds. Chicago: Impact, 1979, 267-315.

*Kremer, S. Lillian Women's Holocaust Writing: Memory And Imagination. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. [Analyzes American writings on the Holocaust by and about women; authors include Cynthia Ozick, Marge Piercy, and Norma Rosen]

Lang, Berel. Holocaust Representation: Art Within The Limits of History and Ethics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

Lang, Berel, ed. Writing and the Holocaust. New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1988.

Langer, Lawrence L. The Age of Atrocity: Death in Modern Literature. Boston: Beacon Press, 1978.

#Langer, Lawrence L. Art from the Ashes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Langer, Lawrence L. The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975.

*Lauckner, Nancy Ann. The Image of the Jew in the Post-War German Novel. Diss. The University of Wisconsin, 1971.

*#Liberman, Ruth. “Of Testimony, Piles, and Poetics of Final Letters.” In Contemporary Portrayals of Auschwitz: Philosophical Challenges, Alan Rosenberg, James R. Watson and Detlef Linke. New York: Humanity Books (55-68).

*Linden, R. Ruth, Making Stories, Making Selves: Feminist Reflections on the Holocaust. Ohio State University Press. March 1995.

*Loshitzky, Yosefa. Ed. Spielberg’s Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler’s List. Bllomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. [Collection of essays on popular representation and the strength and limitations of the film]

*Ma, Shen-mei, The Holocaust in Anglo-American Literature: Particularism and Universalism in Relation to Documentary and Fictional Genres, Diss. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI, 1991.

Murdoch, Brian. "Transformations of the Holocaust: Auschwitz in Modern Lyric Poetry." In Comparative Literature Studies 2 (1974) 123-50.

*Merrill, Charles S. and Susan E. Cernyak-Spatz, eds. Language and Culture: A Transcending Bond. New York, 1993.

*Nowak, Susan E. “Writing to Break the Frozen Seas Within.” In Alan L. Berger and Gloria L. Cronin, eds. Jewish American and Holocaust Literature. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004, 115-124.

*Ozick, Cynthia. Metaphor & Memory: Essays. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1989.

*#Ozick, Cynthia. “The Rights of History and the Rights of Imagination.” In Commentary. March 1999.

Patterson, David. The Shriek of Silence: A Phenomenology of the Holocaust Novel. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.

*#Peroomian, Rubina. Literary Responses to Catastrophe. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1993.

Pinsker, Sanford. "Fictionalizing the Holocaust." Judaism 29 (1980) 489-96.

Reading Charlotte Salomon. Eds. Michael P. Steinberg and Monic Bohm-Duchen. Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 2006.

*Reiter, Andrea Ilse Maria. Narrating the Holocaust. Trans. from the German Patrick Camiller. New York: Continuum, 2000. [Concentration camps in literature: Psychological aspects; issues of language.]

Rosenberg, James R. Watson. Contemporary Portrayals of Auschwitz: Philosophical Challenges. New York: Humanity Books. [On testimony, ethics, art, history, memory, representation]

Rosenfeld, Alvin. A Double Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.

Roskies, David G. Against The Apocalypse: Responses To Catastrophe In Modern Jewish Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.

#Roskies, David G., ed. The Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988.

Sars, Paul. “Paul Celan’s Aesthetics of Hermetism.” In Contemporary Portrayals of Auschwitz: Philosophical Challenges, Alan Rosenberg, James R. Watson and Detlef Linke. New York: Humanity Books (169-184).

*Schlant, Ernestine and J. Thomas Rimer. Eds. Legacies and Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction and Culture in West Germany and Japan. Baltimore, DC: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.

*#Schlant, Ernestine. The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Schmitz, Helmut On Their Own Terms: The Legacy of National Socialism in Post-1990 German Fiction. Birmingham: The University of Brimingham University Press, 2004.

Schwarz, Daniel R. Imagining the Holocaust. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

*#Schwertfeger, Ruth. Women of Theresienstadt: Voices From a Concentration Camp. Oxford: Berg, 1989. [Introduction of memoirs and poems, some of them trans. into English for the first time; exploration of Theresienstadt’s “dying space” that also generated “living space.”]

Sibelman, Simon P. Silence in the Novels of Elie Wiesel. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.

*Sicher, Efraim. The Holocaust Novel. New York: Routllege, 2005. [Incl. definition; analyses; bibliographies]

Skloot, Robert. The Darkness We Carry: The Drama of the Holocaust. Vol. I. Wisconsin, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

Skloot, Robert, ed. and Introduction. The Theatre Of The Holocaust: Six Plays. Vol. II. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.

*#Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation. New York: Octagon B, 1982.

Steiner, George. Extraterritorial: Papers on Literature and the Language Revolution. New York: Atheneum, 1971.

#Steiner, George. Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature and the Inhuman. New York: Atheneum, 1982.

#Sujo, Glenn. Legacies of Silence: The Visual Arts and Holocaust Memory. London: Imperial War Museum, 2001. [Contains many visual images]

*#Toll, Nelly S. Without Surrender: Art of the Holocaust. Philadelphia: Running Press, 1978. [Reproductions of art from the camps, especially Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and Gurs; also Nelly S. Toll’s art and retrospective representations by Mauricio Lasansky and Jan de Ruth]

Trilling, Lionel. "Art and Fortune." In The Liberal Imagination. New York: Viking, 1950 (264-65).

*#Vice, Sue. Holocaust Fiction. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

#Weinstein, Andrew. “Art After Auschwitz and the Necessity of a Postmodern Modernism.” In Contemporary Portrayals of Auschwitz: Philosophical Challenges, Alan Rosenberg, James R. Watson and Detlef Linke. New York: Humanity Books (151-68).

White, Hayden. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.

White, Hayden. "Historicism, History, and the Figurative Imagination." In History and Theory 14 (1975) 53.

Wiesel, Elie. "Art and Culture After the Holocaust." In Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? Reflections on the Holocaust. Ed. Eva Fleischner. New York: Ktav, 1977.

Young, James E., ed. The Art Of Memory: Holocaust Memorials In History. New York: Jewish Museum, 1994.

#Young, James E. At Memory's Edge: After-Images Of The Holocaust In Contemporary Art And Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Young, James E. The Changing Shape Of Holocaust Memory. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1995.

Young, James E.. The Texture Of Memory: Holocaust Memorials And Meaning. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

#Young, James E. Writing and Re-Writing the Holocaust: Essays on the Nature of Holocaust Literature and its Critical Interpretation. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1983.

Young, James E. Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988.