Holocaust Reading List - Background Reading for Wagner at Pacific Opera Victoria

Pacific Opera Victoria will present Richard Wagnerâ??s five-hour epic opera Die Walküre in October 2023. Although the music transcends, approaching Wagner in 2023 means reckoning with Wagner's influentially anti-Semetic views and the legacy that they have had.

This list offers some context for Wagner's views alongside the history of the real life impact those views have had.

Updated September 27, 2023
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Greater Victoria Public Library
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Alias Anna : a true story of outwitting the Nazis : Zhanna Arshanskaya, a biography in verse
Hood, Susan
A Sydney Taylor Book Award 2023 Middle Grade Notable! A Jewish Book Council Award Middle Grade Finalist! The moving true story of how young Ukrainian Jewish piano prodigies Zhanna (alias "Anna") and her sister Frina outplayed their pursuers while hiding in plain sight...
I am here [DVD video]
Sank, Jordy, film director. 
By chance alone a remarkable true story of courage and survival at Auschwitz
Eisen, Max 
In the tradition of Elie Wiesel's Night and Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz comes a bestselling new memoir by Canadian survivor Finalist for the 2017 RBC Taylor Prize More than 70 years after the Nazi camps were liberated by the Allies, a new Canadian Holocaust memoir...
Chance : escape from the Holocaust
Shulevitz, Uri
Winner of the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Illustrated Books for Older Readers A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020 A New York Times Best Children's Book of 2020 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2020 Booklist Best...
Come to this court & cry : how the Holocaust ends
Kinstler, Linda
In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called "butcher of Riga," Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing...
Fatherland a memoir of war, conscience, and family secrets
Bilger, Burkhard 
A New Yorker staff writer investigates his grandfather, a Nazi Party Chief, in "a finely etched memoir with the powerful sweep of history" (David Grann, #1 bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon) "Fatherland maintains the momentum of the...
The happiest man on Earth the beautiful life of an Auschwitz survivor
Jaku, Eddie 
A New York Times Bestseller In this uplifting memoir in the vein of The Last Lecture and Man's Search for Meaning, a Holocaust survivor pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom, and living his best possible life. Born in Leipzig, Germany, into a...
House of Glass : the story and secrets of a twentieth-century Jewish family
Freeman, Hadley
Writer Hadley Freeman investigates her family's secret history in this "exceptional" (The Washington Post) "masterpiece" (The Daily Telegraph) uncovering a story that spans a century, two World Wars, and three generations. Hadley Freeman knew her grandmother Sara...
In the garden of the righteous the heroes who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust
Hurowitz, Richard 
"In the Garden of the Righteous brilliantly describes how in the midst of the brutality of the Holocaust and the collaboration, acquiescence and passivity of millions, there were people who risked their lives to save others out of a sense of shared humanity. This book is more timely...
Just a girl : a true story of World War II
Levi, Lia
WINNER OF THE MILDRED L. BATCHELDER AWARD! In this award-winning memoir translated from Italian to English, a Jewish girl grows up during a difficult time of racial discrimination and war, and discovers light in unexpected places. This classic, powerful story from Lia Levi is...
The last secret of the secret annex the untold story of Anne Frank, her silent protector, and a family betrayal
Wijk, Joop van, 1949- author. 
A riveting historical investigation and family memoir that intertwines the iconic narrative of Anne Frank with the untold story of Bep Voskuijl, her protector and closest confidante in the Annex, bringing us closer to understanding one of the great secrets of World War II. Anne...
No place on Earth
Tobias, Janet.
One hundred Saturdays : Stella Levi and the search for a lost world
Frank, Michael
One of Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Books of the Year * Winner of the National Jewish Book Awards for Holocaust Memoir and Sephardic Culture * Recipient of the Jewish Book Council's Natan Notable Book Award * Winner of the Sophie Brody...
Plunder : a memoir of family property and Nazi treasure
Kaiser, Menachem
A New York Times Critics' Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biography From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family's apartment building in Poland--and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure...
Three minutes [DVD video] a lengthening
Stigter, Bianca, Director, Writer. 
Two pieces of cloth : one family's story of the Holocaust
Gold, Joe
Torn apart by war. Reunited through faith. In this remarkable true story of the Holocaust, we follow David Goldberger from the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, back to Budapest where his wife, Aurelia, and infant son are hiding under false Christian identities. By...
Unearthed a lost actress, a forbidden book, and a search for life in the shadow of the Holocaust
Frank, Meryl 
A thrilling mystery woven into a beautifully constructed family memoir: Meryl Frank's journey to seek the truth about a beloved and revolutionary cousin, a celebrated actress in Vilna before World War II, and to answer the question of how the next generation should honor the memory...
A village in the Third Reich how ordinary lives were transformed by the rise of fascism
Boyd, Julia, 1948- author. 
An intimate portrait of German life during World War II, shining a light on ordinary people living in a picturesque Bavarian village under Nazi rule, from a past winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. Hidden deep in the Bavarian mountains lies the...
I want you to know we're still here : a post-Holocaust memoir
Foer, Esther Safran
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS FINALIST * "Part personal quest, part testament, and all thoughtfully, compassionately written."--The Washington Post   "Esther Safran Foer is a force of nature: a leader of the Jewish people, the matriarch of America's leading literary...
When time stopped : a memoir of my father's war and what remains
Neumann, Ariana
In this remarkably moving memoir Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father's past: years spent hiding in plain sight in war-torn Berlin, the annihilation of dozens of family members in the Holocaust, and the courageous choice to build anew. In 1941, the first...

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