OES Middle School Library
World War II Literature
Humanities 8
The Accident by Eli Wiesel
A man seriously injured when hit by a car is taken to the hospital where a doctor, the woman who loves him, and his artist friend lead him to yearn for life rather than death. (NoveList) (Multnomah County Library)
Aleutian Sparrow by Karen Hesse
An Aleutian Islander recounts her suffering during World War II in American internment camps designed to "protect" the population from the invading Japanese. (NoveList) (FIC HES)
All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein
. . . the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein's six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty. From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops--including the man who was to become her husband--in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey. (Amazon.com) (940.53 KLE)
Along the Tracks by Tamar Bergman
Recounts the adventures of a young Jewish boy who is driven from his home by the German invasion, becomes a refugee in the Soviet Union, is separated from his family, and undergoes many hardships before enjoying a normal home again. (Titlewave) (940.53 BER)
Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family by Miep Gies
An autobiography by the woman who helped to hide the Frank family during World War II. (940.53 GIE)
A Bag of Marbles by Joseph Joffo
Recounts how two Jewish boys in France--the author and his older brother--begin an odyssey of pain and terror when their father sent them off to the Unoccupied Zone with the warning that they must never admit that they were Jews. (NoveList) (940.53 JOF)
Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose
As good a rifle company as any in the world, Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army, kept getting the tough assignments — responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. (Multnomah County Library)
Bearing Witness: Stories of the Holocaust
From the vast body of literature associated with the Holocaust, Rochman and McCampbell (Who Do You Think You Are? Stories of Friends and Enemies) have selected 24 excerpts or short works that powerfully confront aspects of the war against the Jews. Most of the entries are from what might be considered a canonical roster (e.g., Elie Wiesel's Night; Claude Lanzmann's epic film, Shoah; Art Spiegelman's Maus; and Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz). The less familiar authors, however, are no less forceful. An American soldier pens a letter to his wife, feverishly recording his horrified observations after helping liberate the inmates of an Austrian concentration camp; the Dutch writer Carl Friedman describes her own and her brother's reactions to their father's stories of surviving the death camps. An excellent introduction to a dire period of history. (Publishers Weekly) (940.53 BEA)
The Bomb by Theodore Taylor
In 1945, when the American forces take the Bikini Atoll from the occupying Japanese, Sorry Rinamu does not realize that the next year he will lead a desperate effort to save his island home from a much more deadly threat. (NoveList) (FIC TAY)
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors. (NoveList) (FIC ZUS)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: a Fable by John Boyne
Bored and lonely after his family moves from Berlin to a place called "Out-With" in 1942, Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer, befriends a boy in striped pajamas who lives behind a wire fence. (NoveList) (FIC BOY)
The Cage by Ruth Minsky Sender
A teenage girl recounts the suffering and persecution of her family under the Nazis, in a Polish ghetto, during deportation, and in a concentration camp. (940.53 SEN)
Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries
An anthology of 23 diaries written during the Holocaust by children, some of whom were later murdered by the Nazis. (940.53 CHI)
The Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac
After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue. (NoveList) (FIC BRU)
Daughters of Absence: Transformimg a Legacy of Loss
A group of creative young women discuss what it was like to grow up in the shadow of their parents' Holocaust ordeal and how they incorporated that legacy into their work. (Titlewave) (940.53 WEI)
Dawn by Eli Wiesel
Deals with the conflicts and thoughts of a young Jewish concentration-camp veteran as he prepares to assassinate a British hostage in occupied Palestine. (NoveList) (Multnomah County Library)
Dear Ms. Breed by Joanne Oppenheim
The true-life story of Clara Breed, a librarian whose outreach efforts helped a group of Japanese-American children survive the persecutions of the American government during World War II. (940.53 OPP)
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The diary of a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl who died in a concentration camp during World War II.
(940.53 FRA)
Europa, Europa by Shlomo Perel
Perel recounts his experiences as a young Jewish boy who joins the Hitler Youth under an assumed name in order to escape the Holocaust of World War II. (940.53 PER)
Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salisbury
Following orders from the United States Army, several young Japanese-American men train K-9 units to hunt Asians during World War II. (NoveList) (FIC SAL)
Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
Biography of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston relating her experiences of living at the Manzanar internment camp during World War II and how it has influenced her life. (540.54 HOU)
Flyboys: A True Story of Courage by James Bradley
Examines the disappearance of eight American airmen shot down and taken prisoner on the remote island of Chichi Jima in World War II and the secrecy that surrounded the events for decades, and discusses the violence inflicted by both sides in the Pacific war. (940.54 BRA)
Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley
Presents an account of the Marines who came together during the battle of Iwo Jima to raise the American flag in a moment that has been immortalized in one of the most famous photographs of World War II.
(940.54 BRA)
The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill
One of the most famous escape stories from a German prisoner of war camp, [this novel] . . .tells how more than six hundred men worked together for over a year to achieve this break-out. When the right time came, the escape itself was timed to the split second. But, not everything went according to plan..... (Powell’s) (Multnomah County Library)
Hiroshima by John Hersey
An account of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, from the viewpoint of the people who lived through it. (940.54 HER)
I Have Lived a Thousand Years : Growing Up in the Holocaust by Livia Bitton Jackson
A memoir of Elli Friedmann in which she tells about her experiences at Auschwitz concentration camp where she was taken at the age of thirteen in 1944 when the Nazis invaded her native Hungary. (940.53 JAC)
In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke
Recounts the experiences of the author who, as a young Polish girl, hid and saved Jews during the Holocaust. (940.53 OPD)
The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer
Interviews with six women Holocaust survivors relate the last seven months of Anne Frank's life.
(940.53 LIN)
Maus: A Survivor's Tale I: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman
A memoir about Vladek Spiegleman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and about his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his story, and with history itself. Cartoon format portrays Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. (940.53 SPI)
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman
Tells, in cartoon format, the continuing story of Vladek Spiegelman, from the barracks of Auschwitz to life in the Catskills with his son, Art (940.53 SPI)
Memories of Anne Frank: Reflections of a Childhood Friend by Alison Leslie Gold
Recounts the story of Hannah Goslar, a close friend of Anne Frank and one of the last to see her alive. (940.53 GOL)
Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli
Captures the hardships and cruelty of life in the ghettos of Warsaw during the Nazi occupation of World War II, through the eyes of a Jewish orphan who must use all his wits and courage to survive unimaginable events and circumstances. (NoveList) (FIC SPI)
Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust by Gay Block
Contains personal narratives and color portraits of men and women who risked everything to save Jews marked for death during the Holocaust, providing a picture of their lives before, during, and after the war, and discussing the reasons why they took their heroic actions. (Titlewave) (940.53 BLO)
The Rising Tide by Jeff Shaara
As the forces of Nazi Germany overrun the nations of Europe and America is drawn into the war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American troops and their British allies launch a desperate campaign to stop Hitler. (NoveList) (Multnomah County Library)
Run, Boy, Run by Uri Orlev
Based on the true story of a nine-year-old boy who escapes the Warsaw Ghetto and must survive throughout the war in the Nazi-occupied Polish countryside. (NoveList) (Multnomah County Library)
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Gene Forrester remembers a World War II year in prep school and the unexpected events of that year.
(NoveList) (U.S. Library – FIC KNO)
Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer
An account of an Austrian mountain climber's escape from a British internment camp in India during World War II and his twenty-one-month journey through the Himalayas to safety in the Forbidden City of Lhasa in Tibet. (U.S. Library - 915.15 H296s)
Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
Tells the story of the discovery in 1991 of a World War II German U-boat, sunk sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey, by deep sea divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, and their six year obsession with identifying the submarine which sank with its crew onboard. (Titlewave) (Multnomah County Library)
Stones in Water by Donna Jo Napoli
After being taken by German soldiers from a local movie theater along with other Italian boys including his Jewish friend, Roberto is forced to work in Germany, escapes into the Ukrainian winter, before desperately trying to make his way back home to Venice. (NoveList) (Multnomah County Library)
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Sheltering an escaped prisoner of war is the beginning of some shattering experiences for a twelve-year-old girl in Arkansas. (NoveList) (FIC GRE)
Surviving Hitler : A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps by Andrea Warren
A biography of Jack Mandelbaum, who survived Nazi concentration camps when he was a teenager. (940.53 WAR)
Thin Wood Walls by David Patneaude
When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Joe Hamada and his family face growing prejudice, eventually being torn away from their home and sent to a relocation camp in California, even as his older brother joins the United States Army to fight in the war. (NoveList) (FIC PAT)
Torn Thread by Anne Isaacs
In an attempt to save his daughter's life, Eva's father sends her from Poland to a labor camp in Czechoslovakia where she and her sister survive the war. (NoveList) (Multnomah County Library)
We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust
Presents excerpts from the diaries of five Jewish teenagers who were part of the millions of men, women, and children who died under Hitler’s Nazi regime during World War II. (Titlewave) (940.53 WEA)
When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park
With national pride and occasional fear, a brother and sister face the increasingly oppressive occupation of Korea by Japan during World War II, which threatens to suppress Korean culture entirely. (NoveList)
(FIC PAR)
When the Elephants Dance by Tess Uriza Holthe
In the final weeks of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II, three different Filipino narrators recount the experiences of a people desperately struggling in the midst of the horrors of war. (NoveList) (Multnomah County Library)
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
A story told from five different points of view, chronicles the experiences of Japanese Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War II internment camps. (NoveList) (Multnomah County Library)
The White Rose: Munich, 1942-1943 by Inge Scholl
Translation of a 1947 German text that tells the story of Sophie and Hans Scholl, a brother and sister who were executed in 1943 for high treason after it became known that they were members of the anti-Fascist resistance movement, the White Rose. (943.086 SCH)
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World War II Materials in the OES Libraries and Beyond
· Browse in the 940.54s
· Try searching the general subject heading – world war, 1939-1945 – in the MS Library online catalog or the US Library online catalog
· Take a look at:
· Take a look at the following OES Subscription Databases. REMEMBER, if you are using these resources from home, you will need to use usernames and passwords.
Britannica Online School Edition (High School)
Gale’s Biography Resource Center
Proquest Historical New York Times
· Sample these comprehensive Websites:
Multnomah County Library link with tons of WW II resources