Happy Friday, Wildcats! Falvey Library is delivering you another semester of Weekend Recs, a blog dedicated to filling you in on what to read, listen to, and watch over the weekend. Annie, a graduate assistant from the Communication department, scours the internet, peruses the news, and digs through book stacks to find new, relevant, and thought-provoking content that will challenge you and prepare you for the upcoming week. 

Today, Jan. 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day dedicated to remembering the appalling human rights atrocities of the Nazis and genocide against Jewish people during World War II. With Jewish hate, Holocaust denial, and antisemitic conspiracy theories gaining a recent (and celebrity) upsurgence, it is important to remember the Holocaust as a very, very real and horrifying historical event that still has impacts to this day. In dedication to Holocaust Remembrance Day, this weekend’s recs will help bring this topic into focus.

Photo by J. Amill Santiago on Unsplash

If you have 8 minutes…and get depressed by the horrific realities of the Holocaust, read this article from the New York Times. Although the Holocaust is never a light-hearted topic, this article profiles the actions of Adolfo Kaminsky, a forger who was able to save thousands of Jewish people living in France during World War II.

If you have 10 minutes…and want to learn more about antisemitism, read this article. It provides working definitions and examples of antisemitism and Holocaust denial and distortion.

If you have 12 minutes…and want to learn about some of the non-Jewish targets of the Holocaust and Nazi regime, read this article from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). Groups such as Romani people, gay people, disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Slavic people, among others, were all targeted and persecuted to varying degrees. A late Ukrainian family friend of mine was actually a survivor of a Nazi work camp as a teenager before coming to the U.S.

If you have 14 minutes…and need to brush up on your Holocaust history (thank you, American education system), watch this Crash Course video. It recaps the details of what is widely considered to be the worst and most horrific genocide and human rights crisis in human history.

Photo by Ann Buht

If you have 15 minutes…and want to learn about the Roma Holocaust, read this article from USHMM. Romani people were horribly impacted by the Nazi regime and subject to racial genocide.

Bonus: check out this blog from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust explaining the debates surrounding commemorating the Roma Holocaust and how it has largely remained unrecognized.

If you have 30 minutes…and want to hear first-person accounts of the Holocaust, check out USHMM’s “Meet Holocaust Survivors” profiles. This page features dozens of profiles of Holocaust survivors and their stories of survival, loss, grief, horror, and hope.

If you have 2 hours and 7 minutes…and are a movie person (or a fan of Jessica Chastain), watch The Zookeeper’s Wife, a based-on-a-true-story film about a Polish woman who hid hundreds of Jewish people fleeing from the Nazis in her family’s zoo during World War II.

Bonus: check out this list of film recs from the Jewish Heritage Center of Western Canada for more.

If you have 6 hours…and want to read something that is both an autobiographical account of Holocaust survival and a practical self-help book, read Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy by Viktor E. Frankl, available at Falvey. This book provides a powerful lesson in finding meaning in your life and, on a personal note, is also one of my mom’s favorite books of all time.

If you have 10 hours…and want to read arguably the most iconic Holocaust autobiography, read The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition by Anne Frank, available at Falvey.

Bonus: if you’re more of a movie person, watch The Diary of Anne Frank film, available online in 4-parts through Falvey.

Annie Stockmal is a graduate student in the Communication Department and graduate assistant in Falvey Library.