WE REMEMBER THE HOLOCAUST

There are already two excellent, recent books on this subject for young people: Chaikin's A Nightmare in History (1987) and Rogasky's Smoke and Ashes (1988). While of similar length and difficulty, this merits consideration because of its different mode of presentation, being based on Adler's direct quotes from interviews with survivors: brief, chilling anecdotes that exemplify the horror, accompanied by photos of the interviewees as young people--the way they looked before the war or even during it, sometimes with relatives who did not survive. The effect is twofold: the narrators' survival mitigates the story's terrible despair; but their firsthand knowledge makes it bitterly immediate. Adler links these memories with a simply stated account of major events. More than half of the text is dedicated to the prewar period; the ghettos are discussed briefly, the camps more fully. Postwar anti-Semitism, the continued reluctance of nations to accept Jews, and the enduring psychic wounds of the survivors and their children are also movingly discussed. The last third of the book is supplementary material: a detailed chronology and a glossary that includes names of places and people (both illustrated with more carefully selected photos from private as well as public sources); a list of suggested reading, admittedly ""not comprehensive""; a list of sources; an index that allows readers to link the references to each interviewee.