Holocaust Books
So instead of a great big list I'll stick up a few at a time in loose categories

Mixing fiction and non here as there's no real fiction here
Auschwitz and Afterwards by Charlotte Delbo- Just astonishing, should be much better known

This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentleman Tadeusz Borowski. Subversive in the way it implicates the reader

If This is a Man by Primo Levi. A foundational text.

At the Mind's Limit by Jean Amery, especially the essays on Torture and Resentments

The Destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg is magisterial and comprehensive. Abridged will still tell you plenty

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning. Sobering and horrible. Think Milgram.

I could go on and if anything really vital strikes me I'll edit. Anyone mentions the boy in the fucking striped pyjamas, I'll find you and break out the zyklon B. There is no defence for such purulent garbage

Oh yes, completely forgot to say Jorge Semprun. The Cattle Truck and Literature or Life are both excellent. The first was written early and the second long after. It's a meditation on the first and as a pair they are absolutely up there.

The first two volumes of Victor Klemperer's diaries are also an interesting insight into how it felt to be under the Jackboot as events developed.
(unclestinky, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 22:34, 2 replies)

"If this is a man/ the truce" is truly stunning
in every sense.
There's been several biographies of Levi attempted & they're all pretty dire & best avoided. I guess (like Borges) writers that draw on their own lives so much for their fictions aren't good biographal subjects
How about Aaron Appelfeld? From memory, I can't remember the title of the book.
( Tab Hunter Make this useless process end and so, begin again, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 23:29, closed)

The novel
Badenheim 1939, yes. And of Modern fiction Anne Michaels Fugitive Pieces is strongly recommended. Not without problems but still a brave attempt which doesn't just co-opt the material
(unclestinky, Sat 7 Jan 2012, 21:52, closed)

Fugitive Pieces I tried a decade+ ago.
On the recommendation of my old boss, who's ridiculously well read (& Jewish, with many stories of his relatives' travails during the war). I had real trouble with it. I can't remember why; I'll give it another go.
( Tab Hunter Make this useless process end and so, begin again, Sun 8 Jan 2012, 0:02, closed)

Have you tried Auschwitz - a Doctor's eyewitness account by Miklós Nyiszli? Worked as a SonderKommando doctor for Mentele as a pathologist - truly harrowing. Used as prima facie evidence at the Nuremburg trials.
( Hunter Stockton was murdered by a bicycle wielding axolotl,.,.,.,., Sat 7 Jan 2012, 12:25, closed)

indeed
it's one of my hobby horses so I have read more than is good for me.

If it's nitty gritty you want then Auschwitz Inferno: Testimony of a Sonderkommando by Filip Muller is fascinating

Hoess's account of running Auschwitz is self serving bilge but still interesting.

Into That Darkness, Gita Sereny's interviews with Franz Stangl repays the time.

And of course 9 hours of Lanzmann's Shoah is indispensable. "If you could lick my heart it would poison you" Abraham Bomba.
(unclestinky, Sat 7 Jan 2012, 21:49, closed)