5 books about victims of totalitarian regimes

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L Shirer 

This book is a massive documentation of the Nazi regime, comprising the testimony by Nazi leaders, diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences and army orders, that the author of the book who had watched and reported on the Nazis spent five years sifting through. It is acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.

Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared by Michael Geyer 

The contributors of this book seek to rethink and rework the nature of Stalinism and Nazism and establish a new methodology for viewing their histories that go well beyond the now-outdated twentieth-century models of totalitarianism, ideology, and personality. Doing the labour of comparison gives the reader the means to ascertain the historicity of the two extraordinary regimes and the wreckage they have left.

Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum

In this book, the author offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost. She intimately re-creates what life was like in the camps and links them to the larger history of the Soviet Union. 

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

This is a story of a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family who fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding when the Nazis were occupying Holland in 1942. For two years, the Franks stayed in an old office building. This book vividly captures the struggles they faced in terms of hunger, boredom, and the cruelty of being confined.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

The story is set in a farm, which is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. When Animal Farm was first published in1945, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. It is one of the most telling satiric fables ever written.