Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem(Penguin, 1963). Subtitled "A Report on the Banality of Evil", Arendt was the first to report how ordinary and unremarkable many Nazis were, and to comment on the ways in which some Jews collaborated in their own destruction.
Borowski, Tadeusz, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, (Penguin 1967). Borowski was a Polish political inmate whose Auschwitz reminiscences are frighteningly sardonic and cruel.
Cohen, Arthur, The Tremendum, (Continuuum 1993). An extremely bitter interpretation of the Holocaust in history, from a Jewish theological perspective.
Conot, Robert, Justice at Nuremberg, (Carroll and Graf, 1983). An account of the original, and most important of the war crimes trials.
Dawidowicz, Lucy, The War Against the Jews, (Bantam, 1975) This is the best one-volume overview of the Holocaust.
Des Pres, Terrence, The Survivor, (Oxford, 1976). An analysis of the reasons why certain were able to survive the camps.
Friedrich, Otto, The Kingdom of Auschwitz, (Harper Perennial, 1982). This brief overview of Auschwitz is a good introduction to the topic.
Gutman, Yisrael, and Michael Berenbaum, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, (Indiana University Press, 1994). Published in association with the Holocaust Museum, this is a definitive series of essays on Auschwitz, with articles on perpetrators, inmates, the mechanics of destruction and numerous other topics.
Hilberg, Raul, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders, (Harper Collins, 1992). Hilberg is the author of the definitive three-volume history of the Holocaust. This slender book does just what it says--profiles a number of people and organizations from each of the three categories.
Hoss, Rudolph, Death Dealer, (Prometheus, 1992).The written postwar confessions of the commandant of Auschwitz.
Levi, Primo, The Drowned and the Saved, (Vintage International, 1988) and Survival in Auschwitz, (Collier 1993). Levi was a gentle, erudite man who survived Auschwitz because of his extreme youth and his degree in chemistry which earned him a job in Buna. Survival, his first book, is a straight-forward recounting of his stay there;Drowned, his last, is a series of essays interpreting his experience.
Lifton, Robert Jay, The Nazi Doctors, (Basic Books, 1986). Lifton is a psychiatrist who interviewed both Nazi and inmate doctors and who tries to explain the transformation of ordinary men into killers-- and in many cases, back to ordinary men again, when the war was over.
Spiegelman, Art, Maus: A Survivor's Tale (Pantheon, 1986), in two volumes. This almost unclassifiable book is both a comic and a work of history, recounting the author's father's experiences in Germany, deportation to Auschwitz, survival and "afterlife" in the United States.
Swiebocka, Teresa, Auschwitz: A History in Photographs, (Indiana University Press, 1993). Sponsored by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, this volume contains pictures far more distressing than anything I have reproduced here.
Wiesel, Elie, Night (Bantam, 1982). The 15-year-old Wiesel was imprisoned in Auschwitz with his father.