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Recommended Books

Becoming a Holocaust Educator: Purposeful Pedagogy Through Inquiry

TOLI’S Associate Director of US Programs, Jennifer Lemberg, along with Maryland Seminar leader Alexander “Sandy” Pope, co-edited Becoming a Holocaust Educator: Purposeful Pedagogy Through Inquiry (Teachers College Press & The National Writing Project), a volume of essays by educators in TOLI’s network describing their experiences teaching about the Holocaust and human rights. Grounded in the experiences and voices of classroom teachers who are actively navigating the challenges of teaching about the Holocaust, this book helps readers teach a specific set of historic events while helping students address broader questions about responding to injustice. Order Becoming a Holocaust Educator here.

Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz

TOLI’s Olga Lengyel tells, frankly and without compromise, one of the most horrifying stories of all time. This true, documented chronicle is the intimate, day-to-day record of a beautiful woman who survived the nightmare of Auschwitz and Birkenau. This book is a necessary reminder of one of the ugliest chapters in the history of human civilization. Originally published in 1946 in French, Five Chimneys is one of the most detailed personal accounts of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Olga was an inmate in the women’s barracks at Birkenau for seven months in 1944-1945, and her narrative highlights issues of special importance to women. Order Five Chimneys here.

On Austrian Soil: Teaching Those I Was Taught To Hate

In On Austrian Soil, TOLI’s Emeritus Director of US Programs, Sondra Perl, opens her classroom to reveal the struggles and successes she encounters when she, not without trepidation, raises the questions of history with her adult Austrian students, descendants of Nazis. Her students, teachers themselves, come face-to-face with the question of their responsibility not only to the past but also to the future. Perl’s careful descriptions are an invitation to scrutinize her teaching and thinking as well as her students’ own histories and hatreds. Writing together, she and her students break lifelong silences—discovering along the way the power of dialogue to transform deeply held prejudices. Order On Austrian Soil here.