As Yom Hashoa approaches — the 27th of Nisan, it falls on April 15 this year — images and symbols loom large, especially as the generation of survivors grows smaller. Of course, memories and stories can be preserved. And so this is an opportunity to present an overview of several books that explore those events — through memoirs and even novels.

Yom Hashoa can be a difficult time, and these books can, at times, be difficult to read. Details are harrowing; the sense of loss is palpable. But each is compelling and, in its own way, uplifting.

Remembering for Life, edited by Rabbi Brad Hirschfield — Perhaps one of the more imaginative attempts at recounting those gruesome years, this book gathers recollections of some 70 survivors from numerous countries — but rather briefly, just a few paragraphs, in most cases. Yet the concept is ingenious — each contribution is presented as if it's a commentary on the weekly readings of the Torah or holidays. And the anecdotes, snippets of interviews in which survivors speak in their own words, are aligned with such concepts, experiences, and values as justice, departures, reunion, destiny, identity, restitution, sacred time, and sacrifice, among a few dozen others. Each personal recounting is poignant, filled with first-person emotion and detail that can stop you in your tracks. The tales allow you to come away with fresh insights into the survivors' experiences and what that can mean for the rest of us. Moreover, the book is bound in a way that makes it resemble a siddur, suggesting it should take its place among our most precious tomes. And it should.

The Story of a Life by Aharon Appelfeld — Appelfeld is one of the more prolific and insightful writers to deal with the Shoa. He uses straightforward prose and clear thinking to describe, probe, and ponder characters in a series of works that have won him acclaim and respect. This one, a memoir, is no less powerful than any of his novels. Like many such chronicles of the era, the story line is depressingly familiar. But what distinguishes this from other first-person accounts is Appelfeld's ability to concisely convey imperfections and uncertainties about people and places. He uses a journalist's eye to explore and recount his own past, a task that he makes clear is very hard for him. Even so, he accomplishes his objective — Appelfeld not only unloads his burden but helps us gain a better understanding of the time and events being explored; that's what a good memoir should do.

Letters from Prague: 1939-1941, compiled by Raya Czerner Shapiro and Helga Czerner Weinberg — After their mother's death in 1990, sisters Raya and Helga found a box of 77 letters written by their grandfather and uncle — who had been trapped in Prague after the Nazi occupation — to the girls' parents, who had escaped to New York in 1939. The letters are testimony to the grinding existence Jews faced during that time. One by one, each piece of correspondence, all bearing the mark of the Third Reich, gives us a glimpse of the writers' desperation as dead end after dead end thwarted their efforts to escape the Nazi noose. Letters from Prague is moving, insightful, and poignant.

Fragments of Memory: From Kolin to Jerusalem by Hana Greenfield — This memoir is a collection of articles that Greenfield, a member of the Terezin Ghetto Museum, has written over the years, some of which are quite harrowing. In a way, her stories of life, and death, as she experienced the Shoa, pick up where Anne Frank's diary left off — it lays bare the darkness suffered by a young girl as a captive.

We Are Still Here by Rebecca Liebermann Nissel — The author recounts her family's plight during the war in Hungary, but defiantly and happily detours into the present, describing her son's wedding, for instance, as a means of asserting to the world — and reassuring herself — that Jews and Judaism survive.

The Fighter by Jean-Jacques Greif — A stand-out among recent novels centered on the Holocaust. Greif, a journalist and son of survivors who works in Paris, has based several of his novels, including this one, on stories he heard from his parents and their friends. The Fighter is about a boy, Moshe Wisniak, whose family leaves Poland for France; sick of being taunted by bullies, he learns to box. It is a useful skill that leads him to a moral dilemma when he is interned in a concentration camp: Should he fight a dying prisoner as ordered by the SS or sacrifice himself by refusing? This is strong stuff, but a wonderful book for readers of most any age.

Something Remains by Inge Barth-Grozinger — Another book aimed at a younger audience, Something Remains recounts the life of a Jewish family in a small German town. The tale centers on Erich Levi, a boy who has no clue why the pleasant world around him is changing and shattering his every notion of family, community, security, and sense of self. Not everyone is cruel, though, and — though danger lurks everywhere — Erich learns firsthand the full range of possibilities offered by humanity.

The Polish Woman by Eva Mekler — A book not to overlook is this work, of all things, a mystery. One day in Manhattan in 1969, a woman with a Polish name shows up in the office of a Jewish lawyer and claims to be the daughter of his recently deceased uncle. She claims to have survived the Shoa as a hidden child and now wants to connect with family members. The lawyer thinks she's after the uncle's inheritance, so they journey together to Lublin to find the truth. This is an intriguingly good read that explores some of the uncomfortable and intriguing twists and turns that lives took as a result of the Holocaust.

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