Six Million Little Pieces?

Days after Oprah Winfrey’s last Book Club selection was unmasked as fraud, triggering a national conversation among literati and lay readers alike about the definition and significance of memoir, the talk show host and cultural arbiter announced her next choice: “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s seminal autobiographical account of his experience during the Holocaust. Continue reading

USHMM Recommends Wilkomirski — He’s Comparable to Wiesel (!)

Bill and Bob’s comments about relying on “the classics” of Holocaust literature resonated for me in interesting ways. On the one hand, I agree with them that Wiesel’s _Night_ is not only one of the most powerful survivor memoirs that I have read and probably one of the most accessible to multiple reading levels. On the other hand, Holocaust literature has evolved over time as more survivors are willing to record their experiences and more diaries and documents from the time of the Holocaust are published. Additionally, there is much more interest in non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust now than in the past, and this corresponds to an increase in publications of their stories.

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