Resources: The Holocaust in Poland

These resources on the Polish experience are available for free loan from MCHE’s resource library.

The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in the Warsaw Ghetto

By: Mary Berg

On her fifteenth birthday, with the German army pouring into Warsaw, Mary Berg began her personal diary. From the siege of Warsaw to the final, brutal suppression of the Ghetto Uprising, she records in vivid detail the plight of the refugees, the life of the nouveau riche, the forced conscription, deportations, heroism and resistance at the forefront of the fight against German oppression. Rescued with her family through an allied prisoner exchange, Berg survives with her diaries, which are a good resource for helping young readers better understand life in the ghettos.

The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto

By: Dawid Sierakowiak

Off mountain climbing and studying in southern Poland during the summer of 1939, Dawid begins his diary with great enthusiasm, but that enthusiasm wanes as Lodz is occupied by the Nazis and the Sierakowiak family becomes part the city's 200,000 Jews who are soon forced into a sealed ghetto. Sierakowiak’s diary describes his daily struggles - from obtaining food to coping with death and deportation. Repeatedly he rallies himself against fear and pessimism, fighting the cold, disease, and exhaustion, which finally consume him.

Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan

By: Chaim Kaplan

Chaim Kaplan's diary is a detailed eyewitness report of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw and a unique account of the destruction of the Jewish communities of Poland. Scroll of Agony begins on September 1, 1939, as the author, a respected educator, describes the Nazi blitzkrieg that stunned the world. Kaplan depicts a world of starvation and forced labor, of capricious death and planned mass murder. Yet his diary also gives insight into acts of resistance that are used to hold on to humanity and life.

Image Before My Eyes: A History of Jewish Life in Poland Before the Holocaust

By: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research—DVD and VHS

Image Before My Eyes focuses on Jews in Poland between the two World Wars. Discovering the stories of Jewish villagers, aristocrats, socialists, Zionists, and artists, this film illustrates the vibrant and dynamic community of the 3.5 million Jews living in pre-war Poland. The film uses rare artifacts such as home movies, photographs, and forgotten song recordings, along with the memories of survivors to recreate the Jewish culture and life of Poland.

Jews of Poland: Bialystok, Lvov, Krakow, Vilna, Warsaw

By: Spielberg Jewish Film Archives---VHS

Between 1938 and 1939, filmmakers Yitzhak and Shaul Goskind visited six Jewish communities in Poland in an effort to record the vitality of Jewish life. Little did they suspect that their film recordings would be one of the last visual accounts of a once vibrant world. Five of the films survived, through the efforts of the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive in Jerusalem, leaving us with a unique glimpse into the world of pre-war Polish Jewry.

The Jews of Warsaw 1939-1942: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt

By: Yisreal Gutman

Yisrael Gutman in his book, The Jews of Warsaw, depicts the Nazi persecution of the Jewish community of Warsaw and traces the development of the Jewish armed resistance movement in the Warsaw ghetto. His work chronicles the struggle of Warsaw Jewry from the outbreak of World War II through the armed Jewish uprising, the annihilation of the remnant Jewish community, and the destruction of the traditional Jewish sector of the city.

Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust

By: Yitzhak Arad

For centuries, its large number of rabbinic scholars ensured Vilna a central place in the cultural life of Lithuanian Jewry. Arad’s scholarly and groundbreaking study focuses on the Jewish community at the outbreak of the war, the struggles the community faced under Nazi occupation, and the annihilation of the Jews of Vilna in the period between 1941 and 1944.

The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz

By: Dawid Rubinowicz

Dawid’s diary, begun when he was twelve years old during the German occupation of Poland, was discovered in the post-war rubble. The diary, in which he wrote for two years and which consisted of five school notebooks, recorded emotional scenes as well as mundane ones. The reader learns of the fears and pain that Jews felt under Nazi persecution and watches, as Dawid watched, the Nazis’ movement toward the “Final Solution.”