Auschwitz was one of the most tragic experiences of World War II. In 1940, the small outpost in the town of Oświęcim was taken over by Nazi occupants and transformed into what was to become the deadliest concentration camp in history.
Over 1.4 million people passed through the infamous gates, and only around 200 thousand lived to tell the tale.
And many of them did.
Ever since the end of the war, hundreds of biographies, testimonials and novels about Auschwitz have come out, both from the actual Auschwitz survivors, as well as talented writers and scientists who decided to add their take on the Final Solution. You can most likely buy all these books in paperback at your local bookstore, or buy these books online – physical or PDF – if they’re not available at the moment.
Here are some of the best books about Auschwitz that we think could spark your interest and enhance your knowledge before an Auschwitz tour.
Our top picks for Auschwitz books
Viktor E. Frankl – “Man’s Search for Meaning” (1946)
Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist responsible for one of the most instrumental schools of psychotherapy – logotherapy. Being an Auschwitz survivor, he has done a great deal of work on his theory during his time in the camp. After all, there weren’t many times and places in human history that could let a person learn so much about life and death.
Man’s Search for Meaning is part memoir, part philosophical experience about a young psychiatrist looking for a way to cope with the misery of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The author recounts the people he has met at the camp and uses their stories as examples for his extensive analysis of the human psyche. He concluded that the people who were most likely to survive Auschwitz were those, who felt like they had some higher purpose to fulfill. That is why logotherapy considers finding meaning in one’s life its most important purpose.
Primo Levi – “If This Is a Man (The Truce)” (1959)
Primo Levi was a chemist by trade, but nowadays he’s mostly known as a bestselling author. Being a Jewish Italian, he didn’t have an easy life during the Second World War. While he lucked out by enrolling before the passing of the Italian Racial Laws (1938), the antisemitic tendencies of Fascist Italy almost prevented him from completing his PhD thesis. After struggling to find a job in his trade, he’s taken to the Alps to serve as a liberal partisan. Unfortunately, he was quickly detained and later sent to Auschwitz III – Monowitz. He’d barely survived thanks to his relatively easy job and trading supplies for food.
The most important theme of “If This Is a Man” is finding humanity in an inhumane environment like Auschwitz. Levi went into writing this book with the mindset of a man trying to defend his case in court. The language is concise, simple, and brutally descriptive. He wanted to make people believe that the unbelievable atrocities of Auschwitz weren’t at all overblown by the Holocaust survivors. It was a complete debunking of the Auschwitz denial propagated by Germans after the war. Almost serving as a parallel to the Nuremberg Trials (which were happening at the time), Primo Levi worded his story in a way that forces the readers to make judgements about the genocide and dehumanisation depicted in this story.
Learn more about the Auschwitz concentration camp
Heather Morris – “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” (2018)
While Heather Morris didn’t even visit Auschwitz until way into her adulthood, she befriended and conducted a series of interviews with Ludwig “Lale” Sokolov, a Slovakian businessman who had been detained at Auschwitz for almost 3 years. Being one of the tattooists who put the infamous ID number tattoos on prisoners meant he’d had a slightly better life in the camp than most, but also that he had seen more life come and waste away than almost any human in history. After Lale’s death, Morris initially compiled his stories into a screenplay (with moderate critical success), but when she rewrote it as a novel, it became an overnight bestseller.
Ever since that, Heather Morris wrote two more novels on similar topics, which completed what we know as “The Tattooist of Auschwitz Trilogy”. The original book has also gotten a miniseries adaptation produced by Synchronicity Films and Sky Studios in 2024.
Tadeusz Borowski – “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” (1946)
Tadeusz Borowski was a man with a very tragic backstory. Born in modern-day Ukraine, he was separated from his parents as they were deported to Syberia. He only reconnected with them after an effort by the Red Cross to get him and his brother back to Poland. By the time he finished his education, the Third Reich was already occupying Poland for some time.
While Borowski is more known as a Polish poet, his Auschwitz memoir has been a quintessential lecture about the subject for generations. It’s a short story about his experience as one of the prisoners working the infamous Judenrampe – the place where people brought in from the ghettos were sorted by the Nazis for detainment at the labour camp or extermination in the gas chambers.
The author emphasizes how dehumanising this experience was. How the prisoners were preoccupied with stealing food from the bags rather than the human aspect of it all. Or how the SS men treated sending people to die like a normal day at work. How the working prisoners were giving the detained false hope at life because it was “the only courtesy they could give them”. It’s a true story about the harrowing social dynamics between different sorts of prisoners in Auschwitz.
Books from eyewitnesses of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany
Witold Pilecki – “Witold’s Report from Auschwitz” (1943)
Cpt. Witold Pilecki is one of the most interesting individuals to ever get deported to Auschwitz. He may well be the only person who got caught and sent to an extermination camp deliberately, as he was tasked with a mission from the Polish Resistance group to report on what was happening inside the camp. To not stand out from other Polish political prisoners, he used fake documents with the name of a fellow Resistance member. His fight to survive and thrive in the Nazi concentration camp is nothing short of remarkable.
What’s even crazier, is that he is one of the few people to ever escape from Auschwitz – on the night of April 26, 1943, he and a couple of his collaborators executed a daring plan to bust through one of the gates while cutting off telephone and alarm lines to delay the Germans’ response.
Witold’s Report (also known as “Pilecki’s Report” or “Report W”) was the first ever eyewitness Auschwitz testimony that depicted the mass murder of Jewish and Slavic detainees in scarily efficient gas chambers. I’d personally recommend this one for its historical significance rather than the writing – since it was meant to be a written report, the style is a bit cut and dry. Millitary-like, one could say. However, it makes for a relatively short (~100 page) read that is extremely interesting in context.
Witold’s Report is in the public domain and available to read for free as a PDF.
Elie Wiesel – “Night” (1956)
Elie Wiesel has taken a completely different approach to writing an Auschwitz memoir than most. Rather than making his work biographical, he puts a character-persona of Eliezer as the main character. While many of the events depicted in the book really happen to the author, it lets him change some minor details, making it easier for his creative vision to flourish.
The Night trilogy follows the story of a Jewish man taken away with his family to Auschwitz and being put through hell in the Buna worker’s camp. Wiesel depicts insane acts of cruelty inflicted on him and his fellow prisoners by the Gestapo perpetrators, and the progressive loss of humanity within the camp, as the prisoners start to turn on each other for personal survival. Later on, he and his father were forced to evacuate the camp despite Eliezer’s recent foot surgery. The story ends with the death of Eliezer’s father in the German concentration camp of Buchenwald, and his being recovered by American soldiers after being left to perish.
Summary
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party have created one of the most horrific systems of oppression in the history of humanity. Whether it was Jews or non-Jewish survivors, it’s clear from their testimonies that the experience at Auschwitz Birkenau was simply horrible. Whether you’re working on a presentation, educating yourself or preparing to visit Auschwitz yourself, these books on Auschwitz should be an excellent primer on the history of the Holocaust and the people who went through it.
FAQs
What are the best books to read about Auschwitz?
Some of the most essential reads about Auschwitz include Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, If This Is a Man by Primo Levi and This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski. These books offer various perspectives, from personal memoirs to historical accounts of the Holocaust experience.
Why is Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning an important book about Auschwitz?
Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is a crucial read because it combines his personal experience as an Auschwitz survivor with his insights as a neurologist and psychiatrist. He explores how finding purpose helped many prisoners survive the horrors of the concentration camp, laying the foundation for his psychotherapeutic theory, logotherapy.
What is The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris about?
The Tattooist of Auschwitz tells the story of Ludwig “Lale” Sokolov, a Jewish man who survived Auschwitz by working as a tattooist, marking prisoners with their infamous identification numbers. Based on real-life interviews, Heather Morris’ novel brings a deeply personal narrative of survival, love, and resilience.
What themes are explored in Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man?
Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man focuses on the theme of finding humanity in the face of brutality. Levi recounts his harrowing experience in Auschwitz III-Monowitz, using simple yet powerful language to highlight the dehumanization and moral degradation that took place in the camps.