Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)

In 2005, journalist Laurence Rees described the inner workings of the Nazi death camp in his book, Auschwitz: A New History, and Elie Wiesel spoke in 1988 about his experience at Auschwitz.

Oz, who died Dec. 28, co-founded Peace Now, a group that calls for negotiations with Palestinians and the creation of a Palestinian state. He spoke to Fresh Air in 1988, 1991 and 2004

In Daniel Torday's The Last Flight of Poxl West, a Jewish refugee tells his heroic World War II story in a best-selling — and partly fabricated — memoir.

Author and journalist Yoram Kaniuk died June 8 at age 83. He joined Fresh Air's Terry Gross in August 1988 to talk about fighting in the Israeli underground and his belief that, for Israelis and Palestinians, "the only way is to live somehow together."

In What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Nathan Englander writes about his own faith — and what it means to be Jewish — in stories that explore religious tension, Israeli-American relations and the Holocaust.

Actress Kristin Scott Thomas stars in the drama Sarah's Key, about the French roundup of Jews during the Nazi occupation. "It's something the French have been extremely wary of talking about," she says. "It's been hidden away for a very, very long time."

Daniel Mendelsohn's new book is The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. As a child, his old Jewish relatives told stories of family members killed in the Holocaust. Mendelsohn undertook a worldwide search for surviving members of his family's town. During his investigation, Mendelsohn discovered letters from the family begging their relatives in the United States to help them get out of their Ukrainian town.

Writer-artist Maurice Sendak talks about his collaboration with playwright Tony Kushner (best known for Angels in America) on an adaptation of the opera Brundibar. The children's opera originally performed by children in the Nazi concentration camp Terezin. This interview originally aired Oct. 30, 2003.

Laurence Rees' Auschwitz: A New History provides details about the inner workings of the camp: techniques of mass murder, the politics, the gossip mill between guards and prisoners, and the camp brothel.