The October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel – resulting in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – have not only scarred the Israeli psyche but also awakened a new literary urgency.
Within weeks, firsthand testimonies, raw memoirs, and fictional accounts began to pour out, documenting the unimaginable: the slaughter of over 1,200 people, the abduction of more than 250, and the desecration of entire communities. This growing body of post-October 7 literature seeks to preserve memory, bear witness, and insist that such horrors not be forgotten – nor denied.
In theme, tone, and intent, this emerging literature recalls the post-Holocaust literary canon. And while many scholars caution against equating the Holocaust’s unprecedented scale with modern-day atrocities, others contend that the response to October 7 bears unmistakable resemblance to the first wave of Holocaust narratives. The comparison remains fraught – both historically and emotionally – but the literary impulse is undeniably similar: to document trauma, affirm human dignity, and resist cultural erasure.
Historical proportionality
Holocaust scholar Marianne Hirsch has warned of the “ideological misuse of Holocaust memory.” Likewise, journalist Amy E. Schwartz argues, “The events on and since October 7, however terrible, can be thought of as in no way comparable to the Holocaust itself.” Yet, these objections speak more to historical proportionality than literary or moral function. Holocaust literature began as a means of giving voice to survivors who had experienced unimaginable cruelty. Today, post-October 7 literature similarly gives voice to those who suffered firsthand and now demand that the world bear witness.
The power of firsthand accounts lies not only in their authenticity but also in their immediacy. Schwartz acknowledges the potency of such narratives: “All those accounts are transformed when you stand in the teller’s presence, hearing the words in the sufferer’s own voice.”
Holocaust narratives today are often mediated through second- or third-generation descendants. In contrast, the October 7 literature offers vivid, unfiltered memories from those who lived through the events – mothers shielding children from gunfire, festivalgoers playing dead, and paramedics returning to infernos to rescue the wounded.
David Roskies, one of the foremost experts on Jewish literary responses to catastrophe, has called October 7 the “Black Shabbat.” He sees it as a continuation of what he termed in his seminal work, The Literature of Destruction, a tradition of Jewish writing in response to persecution and genocide.
October 7 is a wrenching reminder that this canon is not closed,” Moment magazine noted. Roskies believes that by naming and narrating the catastrophe, Jewish writers are reclaiming agency and rewriting victimhood into resilience.
What distinguishes October 7 from earlier calamities in Jewish history, including the Holocaust, is that this atrocity occurred not in exile but in Israel. The promise of Zionism was that Jews would never again be helpless, never again be unprotected.
The shock of October 7 stems in part from the betrayal of that promise. And so, literature becomes not just a record of loss but a means of reasserting control over the narrative – of transforming trauma into testimony.
Within months of the attacks, several major literary works had already emerged. The first wave includes memoirs, testimonies, reportage, and novels, each contributing to a collective archive of Jewish memory and resilience.
Testimony and moral reckoning
Eric D. Fingerhut’s October 7: Voices of Survivors and Witnesses, compiled under the support of the Jewish Federations of North America, was among the first nonfiction collections to appear. It features firsthand accounts from kibbutz members, Supernova festivalgoers, soldiers, and medics – people who saw their homes destroyed and loved ones killed. “The whole world needs to know what we’ve been through,” says one survivor. Like the early Holocaust memoirs, these stories are raw, painful, and determined not to be forgotten.
Alon Pentzel’s Testimonies Without Boundaries: Israel, October 7, 2023 is a remarkable achievement from a 23-year-old University of Haifa student. Pentzel interviewed over 60 individuals, including ZAKA volunteers who recovered bodies, survivors of the Supernova music festival, and Dr. Chen Kugel, director of the National Center of Forensic Medicine, where mutilated victims were identified. His book is unflinching in its detail and scope.
“They immediately realized the initiative’s significance and my ambition to commemorate what happened,” Pentzel said. “They were able, step by step, to open up to me.” What emerges is not only a chronicle of grief but also a moral ledger – one that indicts indifference and demands accountability.
British columnist Brendan O’Neill’s After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel, and the Crisis of Civilisation broadens the lens, examining the attacks in global and philosophical terms. A longtime liberal, O’Neill spares no criticism for the Left’s moral collapse after the attacks.
“On October 7, the progressive Left went from ‘believe women’ to ‘believe fascists.’ They took Hamas at its word over the testimonies of raped women.” He describes the attacks as a regression to 20th-century barbarism: “An orgy of killing of the kind we had previously only seen in black-and-white photos and sanitized Hollywood films unfolded in real time. The past invaded the present. The pogrom returned.”
For O’Neill, the betrayal extends beyond the perpetrators to a Western intelligentsia that excuses atrocity under the guise of anti-colonialism. His book echoes the moral clarity of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. Like Roskies, O’Neill is haunted by the fact that Israel – the sanctuary promised after “Never again” – has now become the site of a new pogrom.
Reconstructing communities and memory
Israeli journalist Lee Yaron’s 10/7: The Day That Changed Everything documents the massacre in granular, almost forensic detail. Yaron constructs each chapter as a portrait of a different community along the Gaza border, combining history, interviews, and personal stories. She does not focus solely on final moments.
“I wanted to depict the fullness of the lives of the people who were attacked,” she explained, “not just their deaths.” Yaron’s style is reminiscent of John Hersey’s Hiroshima, capturing haunting details – a child’s toy, unanswered messages, music turning to terror.
Fox News war correspondent Trey Yingst’s Black Saturday is a journalistic memoir of the day itself. Yingst, one of the first international reporters on the scene, interviewed Israeli victims and even members of Hamas.
“We have a responsibility now to account for and record these events – and tell the world the truth,” he writes. “We cannot look away.”
Other nonfiction titles, such as Seth J. Frantzman’s The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza, and Tal Chaika’s Voices of Survivors and Witnesses, continue to compile testimonies, ensuring that future generations will hear what happened not from textbooks but from voices who were there.
Fiction and symbolic resistance
While nonfiction anchors the historical record, fiction explores the emotional aftermath. Aviva Gat’s novel We Will Dance Again is the first work of fiction to address October 7. Based on true stories, the novel follows a family near the Gaza border whose lives are irrevocably changed. Gat, who also wrote My Family’s Survival, a Holocaust memoir based on her grandmother’s experience, draws deliberate parallels between past and present.
“Jewish continuity itself is an act of defiance,” she says. The novel’s title reflects a spirit of hope and resilience.
Ron Leshem’s Feuer: Israel und der 7. Oktober and Amir Tibon’s The Gates of Gaza blend fiction and journalism to create a hybrid form that captures both the immediacy of the moment and the emotional toll it exacts. These works echo the symbolic power of Life Is Beautiful and The Book Thief in the Holocaust canon. They do not seek to explain trauma; they seek to humanize it.
Toward a new literary archive
Across this expanding body of work, several themes recur:
Testimony and bearing witness: Like the literature that followed the Shoah, these books seek to preserve memory and reject denial. Survivors speak to ensure that history cannot be rewritten.
Resilience in the face of evil: Holocaust literature often ends in moral ambiguity or despair. Post-October 7 literature, by contrast, emphasizes survival – physical, spiritual, and cultural.
Moral reckoning: Authors like O’Neill directly challenge the failure of intellectual and cultural elites to stand with the victims. Their critiques serve as a wake-up call to the West.
Global Jewish consciousness: Just as the Holocaust shaped Jewish identity across the Diaspora, October 7 has reignited fears and solidarity from Paris to New York to Buenos Aires.
It may be too soon to call this a genre, but it is not too soon to see its contours forming. This is a literature forged in catastrophe, yet it affirms life.
Roskies reflects, “October 7 was a flashback to one day in Holocaust time. Code name: Black Shabbat. It has activated a global, multi-media, and multilingual response to catastrophe.”
He views this literary moment not as an anomaly but as part of an unbroken chain of Jewish cultural survival. “By adopting and adapting the age-old system of coding, commemorating, and chronicling catastrophe, October 7 also testifies to Jewish culture as continuous, cumulative, and renewable.”
In that sense, post-October 7 literature is not only a record. It is resistance – against forgetting, against silence, and against the normalization of Jewish suffering.
As the survivors of the Shoah taught us, to forget is to betray. The authors of this new literature remind us that the act of remembering is itself a form of moral defiance.
The writer is a journalist, historian, librarian, and artist and author of On This Day in History...: Significant Events in the American Year and A Constant Battle: McGill University’s Complicated History of Antisemitism and Now Anti-Zionism.