PHOENIX – The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) has announced its selection for the 2025 Sophie Brody Medal, an annual honor bestowed by the Collection Development and Evaluation Section (CODES) of RUSA during the Book & Media Awards Virtual Ceremony.
This year’s winner is József Debreczeni, author of Cold Crematorium, published by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group, translated by Paul Olchváry. Harrowing and chilling, this is a haunting eye-witness account of surviving Nazi labor and concentration camps. The raw memoir recounts journalist and poet Debreczeni’s twelve months of incarceration culminating in his stay in the Cold Crematorium, the barracks for the dying. Cold Crematorium stands among the foremost Holocaust testimonials.
Honorable mentions include Leah Hager Cohen, author of To & Fro, published by Bellevue Literary Press, Amir Tibon, author of The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands, published by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., Yael van der Wouden, author of The Safekeep, published by Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC, and Lee Yaron, author of 10/7: 100 Human Stories, published by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
Further noteworthy titles include:
Becoming Janet: Finding Myself in the Holocaust by Jane Singer Applefield. Cypress House.
A Brilliant Life: My Mother’s Inspiring True Story of Surviving the Holocaust by Rachelle Unreich. HarperCollins Publishers.
A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft. Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Displaced Persons by Joan Legant. New American Press.
Final Verdict: The Holocaust on Trial in the 21st Century by Tobias Buck. Hatchette Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare by Michelle Ephraim. University of Massachusetts Press.
The Hebrew Teacher by Maya Arad. New Vessel Press.
The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia’s Jews on the Eve of World War I by Steven Ujifusa. Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
My Kaddish: A Child Speaks from the Warsaw Ghetto by Therese Masson. Cherry Orchard Books/Academic Studies Press.
No Road Leading Back: An Improbable Escape from the Nazis and the Tangled Way we Tell the Story of the Holocaust by Chris Heath. Schocken Books, an division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Olive Days by Jessica Elisheva Emerson. Counterpoint.
Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family by Jordan Mechner. First Second, an imprint of Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing.
The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss by Margalit Fox. Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Unalone by Jessica Jacobs. Four Way Books.
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience by Lyndsey Stonebridge. Hogarth, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
With Darkness Came Stars: A Memoir by Audrey Flack. Pennsylvania State University Press.
Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkyat: The War Years, 1939-1945 by Isaac Bashevis Singer, translated by David Stromberg. White Goat Press, the Yiddish Book Center’s imprint.
Your Presence is Mandatory by Sasha Vasilyuk. Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury Publishing
The Sophie Brody Medal is given to encourage, recognize and commend outstanding achievement in Jewish literature. Works for adults published in the United States in the preceding year are eligible for the award.
This year’s winner, honor books and further noteworthy titles were selected by the Sophie Brody Medal committee: David Suárez, chair, Loudoun County Public Library; Sean Boyle, Association of Jewish Libraries, president; Alexis Braun; Paula Breger, Temple Emanu-El; Jack Forman, San Diego Mesa College Library, retired; Allison Gray, Goleta and Santa Ynez Valley Library System, retired director; Marlene Harris, Reading Reality, LLC; Mary Parker, Minitex, retired; Adela Peskorz, Metropolitan State University, emerita; Karen Tannenbaum, University of Evansville.
The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association, represents librarians and library staff in the fields of reference, specialized reference, collection development, readers’ advisory and resource sharing. RUSA is the foremost organization of reference and information professionals who make the connections between people and the information sources, services, and collection materials they need. Learn more at www.rusaupdate.org.