Nonfiction Resources A-B
Abells, C. B. (1983). The children we remember: Photographs from the archives of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel. Rockville, MD: Kar-Ben Copies.
“Through moving photographs from the Yad Vashem Archives in Jerusalem, Israel, archivist Chana Byers Abells has created an unforgettable essay about the children who lived and died during the Holocaust. While it is a story of death and loss, it is also a story of courage and endurance, a story to be shared with today's children.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/children-we-remember-chana-byers-abells/1004899070?ean=9780688063719
Age Range: 7-9 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 2.1; AD500L
Teacher’s Guide:
Adler, D. A. (1994). Hilde and Eli, children of the Holocaust. New York: Holiday House.
“Through the biographies of two Jewish children, this picture book for older readers will bring home to grade-schoolers what the Holocaust meant to kids like them. Nothing is sensationalized, but the facts are terrifying. The history is told from the point of view of children who were there, and no false comfort is offered.
“Hilde Rosenzweig lived happily with her family in Frankfurt, Germany, until Hitler came to power, and her life was restricted by vicious anti-Semitism. Eli Lax never met Hilde: he lived in Czechoslovakia in a mountain village. Then World War II broke out, and the Nazis came . . . The SS murdered Hilde in a freight train filled with poisonous gas. Eli died in the gas chambers in Auschwitz.
“The text is quiet, the particulars inexorable, drawn from Adler’s interviews with the surviving relatives. The illustrations are powerfully realistic, contrasting the light-filled happiness of the pre-Nazi times with the gray-toned and sepia scenes of the roundups and camps. One unforgettable picture shows Eli in bed, rigid with terror, hearing his cousins scream as they are taken away in the night. In fact, the pictures are almost overwhelming at times, taking up much of every page.”
“Despite the format, Hilde and Eli is not for very young children. It will be an important resource in the middle grades, especially in curriculum units where kids can talk about it together with an adult.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hilde-and-eli-children-of-the-holocaust-david-a-adler/1000595656?ean=9780823410910
Age Range: 9-11 years
Reading Level: 710L
Teacher’s Guide:
_____. (1995). Child of the Warsaw ghetto. New York: Holiday House.
“This is the story of Froim Baum, a Holocaust survivor now living in the U.S., who was born to a poor Jewish family in Warsaw in 1926. With the boy’s personal biography, Adler weaves together the history of Hitler’s rise to power, the Nazi invasion of Poland, the raging anti-Semitism, the herding of more than 400,000 Jews into the walled Warsaw ghetto, and, finally, the death camps. Froim found shelter in the orphanage of the beloved Janusz Korczak and moved between there and home. The story is told with restraint, never exploitative, never sweet. Overwhelmingly, what we see is that this child survived by a mixture of cunning, courage, and sheer accident. The realistic pictures are grim, increasingly brown and gray as the genocide crowds out the light. Several illustrations evoke the photos of the time: the beggars in the street; the skeletal people piled on bunks.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/child-of-the-warsaw-ghetto-david-a-adler/1000595754?ean=9780823411603
Age Range: 9-11 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 4.4
Teacher’s Guide:
_____. (1997). Hiding from the Nazis. New York: Holiday House.
“The true story of Lore Baer who, as a four-year-old Jewish child, was placed with a Christian family in the Dutch farm country to avoid persecution by the Nazis.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hiding-from-the-nazis-david-a-adler/1002196692?ean=9780823412884
Age Range: 7-10 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 4.1; 620L
Teacher’s Guide:
Altman, L. J. (2010). Escape – teens on the run: Primary sources from the Holocaust. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers.
“Stuck in an airtight boxcar on a cattle train, Eva was destined for a Nazi death camp. But Eva’s father told her and her two siblings to jump off the speeding train. Eva jumped last, landing in a snow bank as the Nazis shot at her. The bullets had missed Eva, but her brother and sister were both killed. At seventeen and all by herself, Eva had to live on the run to survive. Thousands of Jews lived on the run during the Holocaust. Some were able to escape Germany before the war started. Others had to move throughout Europe to flee the Nazis. And many more could not escape.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/escape-teens-on-the-run-linda-jacobs-altman/1111462332?ean=9780766032705
Age Range: 14-17 years
Reading Level: 970L
Teacher’s Guide:
_____. (2010). Hidden teens, hidden lives: Primary sources from the Holocaust. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers.
“Hiding behind a double wall in a ghetto in Poland, ten-year-old Aaron Elster heard gunshots and people screaming. In moments, Nazi troops discovered his family and herded them into the street, where Nazis were gunning people down. This young boy's hiding place did not save his family that time, but thousands of Jews went into hiding during the Holocaust. Barns, trapdoors, bunkers, secret attics, forged identity papers, and fake names became tools for survival. Although some non-Jewish families sheltered Jews from the Nazis, the difference between life and death was one mistake, and often Jews could not trust anyone.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hidden-teens-hidden-lives-linda-jacobs-altman/1111462333?ean=9780766032712
Age Range: 14-17 years
Reading Level: 920L
Teacher’s Guide:
_____. (2010). Shattered youth in Nazi Germany: Primary sources from the Holocaust. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers.
“Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party’s rise to power in the 1930s changed life dramatically for all people living in Germany. Hitler used propaganda, fear, and brutality as his main weapons. Jewish children faced strong anti-Semitism in their schools and on the street, and saw their families ripped apart. Non-Jewish children deemed ‘undesirable’ suffered a similar fate. ‘Aryan’ children were forced to enter Hitler Youth groups or endure humiliation.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shattered-youth-in-nazi-germany-linda-jacobs-altman/1111462330?ean=9780766032682
Age Range: 14-17 years
Reading Level: 1010L
Teacher’s Guide:
Aly, G. (2007). Into the tunnel: The brief life of Marion Samuel, 1931-1943. (A. Millin, Trans.). New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt.
Table of contents only http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0720/2007024463.html
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0740/2007024463-b.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0740/2007024463-d.html
Sample text http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0828/2007024463-s.html
“When the German Remembrance Foundation established a prize to commemorate the million Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust, it was deliberately named after a victim about whom nothing was known except her age and the date of her deportation: Marion Samuel, an eleven-year-old girl killed in Auschwitz in 1943. Sixty years after her death, when Götz Aly received the award, he was moved to find out whatever he could about Marion’s short life and restore this child to history.
“In what is as much a detective story as a historical reconstruction, Aly, praised for his ‘formidable research skills’ (Christopher Browning), traces the Samuel family's agonizing decline from shop owners to forced laborers to deportees. Against all odds, Aly manages to recover expropriation records, family photographs, and even a trace of Marion's voice in the premonition she confided to a school friend: ‘People disappear,’ she said, ‘into the tunnel.’
“A gripping account of a family caught in the tightening grip of persecution, Into the Tunnel is a powerful reminder that the millions of Nazi victims were also, each one, an individual life.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/into-the-tunnel-gotz-aly/1100626036?ean=9780805089141
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Appleman-Jurman, A. (1988). Alicia: My story. Toronto, Canada: Bantam Books.
“A young girl’s experience of the Nazi pogrom in her Polish hometown is related with an immediacy undimmed by time in her autobiography. In 1942, the author and her family undergo a brutal separation. Thirteen-year-old Alicia escapes her captors, fleeing through fields and woods, encountering fellow refugees and occasionally finding safe harbors. Although she sees her mother’s wanton murder and endures physical and mental deprivation, the teenager is supported by faith in family and in the goodness of people. Capable of rallying others, she eventually heads a group who settle in Palestine. In 1949, she marries an American in Haifa and moves to the United States.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/alicia-alicia-appleman-jurman/1103252076?ean=9780553282184
Age Range:
Reading Level: AR level – 6.1; 880L
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(BookRags) BN ID: 2940015545463
_____. (2012). Six cherry blossoms and other stories. San Jose, CA: Desaware.
“[This is] a collection of stories that answer two of the questions readers ask her most frequently after reading [Alicia, My Story]: ‘How old should you be to read this book?’ and ‘What happened next?’
“ ‘Six Cherry Blossoms’ is a tale of survival written for children, presented in larger type for children and parents to share.
“ ‘Cyprus’ is the story of Alicia’s time in a British concentration camp in Cyprus - it is the immediate sequel to Alicia: My Story.
“ ‘I Love Israel’ tells of her first day in school at Mikveh Israel, an agricultural school near Tel-Aviv.
“ ‘Childhood Memories’ recalls her life before the war. It is a prequel to Alicia: My Story.
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/six-cherry-blossoms-alicia-appleman-jurman/1113125461?ean=9781936754014
Age Range:
Reading Level: early elementary
Teacher’s Guide:
_____. (2013). Alicia, my story continues: A journey in historical photographs. San Jose, CA: Desaware.
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Auerbacher, I. (1986). I am a star: Child of the Holocaust. New York: Prentice-Hall Books for Young Readers.
“Inga Auerbacher’s childhood was as happy and peaceful as any other German child’s--until 1942. By then, the Nazis were in power, and she and her parents were rounded up and sent to a concentration camp. The Auerbachers defied death for three years until they were freed. This story allows even the youngest middle reader to understand the Holocaust.
“The author’s reminiscences about her childhood in Germany, years of which were spent in a Nazi concentration camp. Includes several of her original poems.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/i-am-a-star-inge-auerbacher/1102343703?ean=9780140364019
Age Range: 9-12 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 6.6
Teacher’s Guide:
_____. (1995). Beyond the yellow star to America. Unionville, NY: Royal Fireworks Press.
“The author of I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust here returns to her life story, a story full of cataclysmic events if not one particularly well rendered. She and her parents, newly liberated from Terezín and again living in their native Germany, emigrate in 1946 to the U.S., where they rise to financial and social struggles with bravery and determination. Shortly thereafter, Inge is diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to a hospital for almost two years of enforced rest and other treatment. The painful irony of this development-that a girl spared from a death camp is now exiled to another institution to fight for her life-remains largely unexplored, with Auerbacher insistently looking on the bright side and recalling strings of episodes without clearly linking them to the progress of her narrative. Perhaps particularly mature young adults can rely on their own resources to understand the author's determined cheer; however, it invites readers' sympathy rather than their empathy."
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beyond-the-yellow-star-to-america-inge-auerbacher/1001566053?ean=
9780880922524
Age Range: 11 years
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Auerbacher, I. & Gilbride, B. U. (2009). Children of Terror. iUniverse, Incorporated.
“Two very young girls, one a Catholic from Poland, the other a Jew from Germany, are caught in a web of terror during World War II. These are their unforgettable true stories.
“War does not spare the innocent. Two young girls, one a Catholic from Poland, the other a Jew from Germany, were witnesses to the horror of the Nazi occupation and Hitler’s terror in Germany. As children they saw their homes and communities destroyed and loved ones killed. They survived deportation, labor camps, concentration camps, starvation, disease and isolation.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/children-of-terror-inge-auerbacher/1103780247?ean=9781440178092
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Axelrod. T. (1999). In the camps: Teens who survived the Nazi concentration camps. New York: Rosen Publishing Group.
“Relates the stories of Jewish teenagers who were sent to Nazi concentration camps where they were separated from their families and survived years of exhausting labor, scarce food, and cruel guards.”
summary from http://catalog2.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=11982&recCount=25&recPointer=1&bibId=4980850
Age Range: 12-17 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 6.2
Teacher’s Guide:
Ayer, E. H. (1995). Parallel journeys. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.
“Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck were born just a few miles from each other in the German Rhineland. But their lives took radically different courses: Helen’s to the Auschwitz extermination camp; Alfons’ to a high rank in the Hitler Youth.
“While Helen was hiding in Amsterdam, Alfons was a fanatic believer in Hitler's ‘master race’. While she was crammed in a cattle car bound for the death camp Auschwitz, he was a teenage commander of frontline troops, ready to fight and die for the glory of Hitler and the Fatherland. This book tells both of their stories, side-by-side, in an overwhelming account of the nightmare that was WWII. The riveting stories of these two remarkable people must stand as a powerful lesson to us all.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/parallel-journeys-eleanor-h-ayer/1103141576?ean=9780689832369
Age Range: 12-17 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 7.2; 1050L
Teacher’s Guide:
_____. (1999). In the ghettos: Teens who survived the ghettos of the Holocaust. New York: Rosen Pub. Group.
“Chronicles the deportation of Jews into ghettos during Hitler’s Third Reich and presents the narratives of three individuals who, as teenagers, lived in the ghettos of Łódź, Theresienstadt, and Warsaw and survived physical deprivations, abuse, and deportation to the death camps.”
summary from http://catalog2.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=241423&recCount=25&recPointer=5&bibId=2144303
Age Range: 12-17 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 6.1; 860L
Teacher’s Guide:
Bachrach, S. (1994). Tell them we remember: The story of the Holocaust. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
“Draws on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s collections of artifacts, photographs, maps, and taped oral and video histories to teach young people about this period of history.
“Since opening its doors in April 1993, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has been visited by more than one and a half million people. Written by a member of the museum’s education department staff, this extraordinary book draws on the museum’s large collection of artifacts, photographs, maps, and taped oral and video histories of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses to teach young readers about this terrible period in history.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tell-them-we-remember-susan-bachrach/1100897442?ean=9780316074841
Age Range: 10-14 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 8.7; 1190L
Teacher’s Guide:
Bailly, D. (Ed). (2010). The hidden children of France, 1940-1945: Stories of survival. Albany: Excelsior Editions / State University of New York Press.
“Interviews with eighteen Jewish ‘hidden children’ of France and Belgium, telling the story of their survival during World War II.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-hidden-children-of-france-1940-1945-danielle-bailly/1112398742
?ean=9781438431963
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Bannister, N. (2009). The secret Holocaust diaries: The untold story of Nonna Bannister. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.
“Nonna Bannister carried a secret almost to her Tennessee grave: the diaries she had kept as a young girl experiencing the horrors of the Holocaust. This book reveals that story. Nonna’s childhood writings, revisited in her late adulthood, tell the remarkable tale of how a Russian girl from a family that had known wealth and privilege, then exposed to German labor camps, learned the value of human life and the importance of forgiveness. This story of loss, of love, and of forgiveness is one you will not forget.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/secret-holocaust-diaries-nonna-bannister/1102175469?ean=9781414325477
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Baumel-Schwartz, J. T. (2012). Never look back: The Jewish refugee children in Great Britain, 1938-1945. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
“This book charts the history of the Kindertransport movement, focusing on the dynamics that developed between the British government, the child refugee organizations, the Jewish community in Great Britain, the general British population, and the refugee children. After an analysis of the decision to allow the children entry and the machinery of rescue established to facilitate its implementation, the book follows the young refugees from their European homes to their resettlement in Britain either with foster families or in refugee hostels. Evacuated from the cities with hundreds of thousands of British children, they soon found themselves in the countryside with new foster families, who often had no idea how to deal with refugee children barely able to understand English. Members of particular refugee children’s groups receive special attention: participants in the Youth Aliyah movement, who immigrated to the United States during the war to reunite with their families; those designated as ‘Friendly Enemy Aliens’ at the war’s outbreak, who were later deported to Australia and Canada; and Orthodox refugee children, who faced unique challenges attempting to maintain religious observance when placed with Gentile foster families who at times even attempted to convert them. Based on archival sources and follow-up interviews with refugee children both forty and seventy years after their flight to Britain, this book gives a unique perspective into the political, bureaucratic, and human aspects of the Kindertransport scheme prior to and during World War II.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/never-look-back-judith-tydor-baumel-schwartz/1110980778?ean=9781557536129
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BenGershom, E. (1998). David: Testimony of a Holocaust survivor. Berg Publishers.
“A frightening yet fascinating account of a German-Jewish youth, BenGershom (‘David’), who successfully evaded the death camps of the Third Reich. Resourceful and in many respects unique, David escaped The Final Solution by first becoming part of a prototype kibbutz which the Nazi's had hollowly promised resettlement in Palestine; and then by going underground in an odyssey that took him through Eastern Europe to eventual safety in Turkey. Throughout his narrative David raises some poignant questions concerning the nature of the Holocaust and, miraculously, even manages to preserve his sense of humor amid a horror [that] cost him his family.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/david-ezra-bengershom/1112681338?ean=9780854962228
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Bermowitz, M. (2012). Mindele’s journey: Memoir of a hidden child of the Holocaust. (N. Wait, Ed.). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
“Mindele’s journey began when her father pulled her onto the rooftop through an attic window to escape Nazi soldiers. Her mother and four siblings were not so lucky. Mindele never saw them again. Her father went into hiding while she was taken to a convent and renamed Mariette. As danger loomed, the Mother Superior sent her to live in the Belgian countryside where she was protected and nurtured by three loving women she called ‘les tantes’, Mariette will have a life-long relationship with them.
“The ‘war after the war’ began when Mariette’s father took her back to live with him in the squalor of a world devoid of meaning for the Jews who survived. They immigrated to America, but she will always feel torn between two worlds. After a broken marriage, her quest for wholeness took her to Iran. Looking up at thousands of shards of broken mirror covering the domed ceiling of a mosque, Mariette suddenly saw herself as all those broken pieces.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mindeles-journey-mariette-bermowitz/1111204166?ean=9781468001051
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Bernstein, S. T. (1997). The seamstress: A memoir of survival. New York: Putnam.
“Growing up, Sara (Seren) Tuvel was the smartest, most ambitious girl in her Romanian mountain village. When she won and accepted a scholarship to a Gentiles-only Gymnasium, she was forced to make a decision that would change her path forever. At thirteen, faced with a teacher's anti-Semitism, Seren walked out of her classroom and into a new existence. She became the apprentice to a seamstress, and her skill with needle and thread enabled her again and again to patch the fraying pieces of her life. As the Nazis encircled the country and bombs rained down, Seren stitched her way to survival, scraping together enough money to provide for her family. When she, her younger sister Esther, and two friends were sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, the four girls became one another’s shelter.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/seamstress-sara-tuvel-bernstein/1100171475?ean=9780425166307
YALSA “Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults”, 1998
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Reading Level: AR Level – 5.8
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Bikales, G. (2004). Through the valley of the shadow of death. New York: iUniverse.
“This is a beautifully written, insightful chronicle of a young girl’s Holocaust survival. Though very private and personal, it nevertheless captures the common torments of children living through this disastrous civilizational breakdown.
“What makes this book unique is that the author pulls the reader into the story. We get to know her parents and other memorable characters for the kind of people they were. There is an immediacy [sic] in the writing that almost makes the reader a participant in the daily struggles to keep alive. We get an honest look at the relationships between men and women on the edge of annihilation and how children coped with these unusual alliances.
“This emotionally powerful yet intellectually lucid work stands out within the Holocaust literature. Students and others will greatly benefit as the author guides the reader, setting forth the political and historical context in which the action unfolds.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/through-the-valley-of-the-shadow-of-death-gerda-bikales/1006943326?ean=9780595325405
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Birger, T. (1992). A daughter’s gift of love: A Holocaust memoir. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society.
“The author, a survivor of the Holocaust, describes her ordeal of being held with her mother in the concentration camp at Stutthof.”
summary from http://catalog2.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchArg=trudi+birger&searchCode=GKEY^*&searchType
=0&recCount=25&sk=en_US
Age Range: 5-7 years
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Bitton-Jackson, L. (1997). I have lived a thousand years: Growing up in the Holocaust. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
“A graphic narrative describes what happens to a 13-year-old Jewish girl when the Nazis invade Hungary in 1944. Includes a brief chronology of the Holocaust.
“The author describes her experiences during World War II when she and her family were sent to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/i-have-lived-a-thousand-years-livia-bitton-jackson/1101102089?ean=9780689823954
YALSA “Best Books for Young Adults”, 1998
Age Range: 13 years & up
Reading Level: AR Level – 4.8; 720L
Teacher’s Guide:
BN ID: 2940012422958
_____. (1999). My bridges of hope: Searching for life and love after Auschwitz. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/simon033/98008046.html
“After liberation from Auschwitz, fourteen-year-old Elli, her brother, and their mother attempt to rebuild their lives in Czechoslovakia. But it doesn't take long for Elli to realize that even though the war is over, anti-Semitism is not, so she and her family decide to escape to America along with thousands of other Jews. Little do they know what agonies and adventures await them still.
“Elli’s memoir of her experiences after Auschwitz will captivate readers as they follow her through heartache, frustration, adventure, excitement, love, and ultimately, triumph.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/my-bridges-of-hope-livia-bitton-jackson/1102663129?ean=9780689848988
Notable Book, Sydney Taylor Award – Older Readers, 1999
Age Range: 13 & up
Reading Level: AR Level – 5.6; 800L
Teacher’s Guide:
_____. (2005). Hello, America: A refugee’s journey from Auschwitz to the New World. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0631/2004014495-d.html
Sample text http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0641/2004014495-s.html
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0909/2004014495-b.html
“Having withstood the horrors of Auschwitz and made it out alive, eighteen-year-old Elli is more than ready to leave behind the painful memories and start fresh in America. What she is not fully prepared for, though, are all the challenges of creating a new life in a completely new place — especially one as hectic as New York City! Within moments of stepping off the ship and into the arms of welcoming relatives, Elli’s mind starts spinning with questions. Will she go to college? Will she have to take on a full-time job to pay the bills? And will she be able to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher?”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hello-america-livia-bitton-jackson/1112149385?ean=9781416916253
Age Range: 11 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 5.5
Teacher’s Guide:
Blaikie, E. (2003). Magda’s daughter: A hidden child’s journey home. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York.
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/cons041/2003005051.html
“To survive the long shadow of the Third Reich, many Jewish children were placed in hiding, forced to keep their true identities—names, religion, places of birth, even gender—absolutely secret. Although these ‘hidden children’ avoided capture and murder, many of their -family members did not, and their experiences marked them for life. Evi Blaikie’s passionate memoir depicts a life lived in the shadow of exile.
“Evelyne Juliette was born in Paris to privileged Hungarian immigrants of high intellect and great passion. Scarcely a year following her birth, France would fall to the Nazis, putting Evi’s family among hundreds of thousands on the run. Her father, forced to flee Paris and go underground, never again emerged. Her mother, Madga, an indomitable woman, managed to send her young daughter to safety in Hungary before being captured in a dragnet and imprisoned in a forced labor camp. Evi, just barely three, was eventually brought by an aunt to Budapest under her cousin’s passport. ‘Claude Pollak’ would be only the first of many identities assumed to protect the shattered remnants of this young child’s life.
“Eventually reunited with her mother, Evi would survive the war and the chaos of post-World War II Europe, but not without tremendous cost: when life blurs with survival, when one is set adrift in perpetual exile, what does it mean to go on living? In Magda’s Daughter, Evi Blaikie, a natural storyteller, deftly explores the many influences—cultural, geographic, religious—with which she had to come to terms in order to finally embrace her own true sense of home and self.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/magdas-daughter-evie-blaikie/1112016704?ean=9781558614437
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Bleier, I. J. & Gumpert, D. E. (2004). Inge: A girl’s journey through Nazi Europe. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing.
“In Early 1939, after Kristallnacht, young Inge Joseph’s family in Germany is broken apart, and her desperate mother sends her alone to Brussels to live with wealthy relatives. But she soon finds herself one of a hundred Jewish children fleeing for their lives following Hitler’s invasions of Belgium and France. For a time, in 1941 and 1942, it seems as if Inge and the others have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, as they find shelter through the Swiss Red Cross in an idyllic fifteenth-century French chateau. Inge even finds love there. But the rumors and horrors of the Holocaust are never far away, and eventually French gendarmes surprise the children, taking them from their protectors to a nearby transit camp. In their desperate attempts to escape, Inge and her boyfriend face unexpected life-and-death decisions -- wrenching decisions that will haunt Inge for the rest of her life.
“This powerful, never-before-told memoir is based on Inge’s own sixty-six-page manuscript, found after her death; David Gumpert has also drawn from Inge’s personal letters, from the recollections of friends, relatives, and people who were with her in Europe, and from his own close relationship with his aunt. One of the most dramatic stories of Christian rescue of Jewish children during the Holocaust, Inge is at the same time a totally frank account of the life and feelings of a teenage girl struggling to survive the Holocaust on her own – and of how the effects of that experience reverberated through her life and on into the lives of her descendants. No matter how or why one reads it, Inge is a story of survival not soon to be forgotten.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/inge-inge-joseph-bleier/1112681196?ean=9780802826862
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Reading Level: AR Level – 7.5
Teacher’s Guide:
Blitt, L. (2007). No strength to forget: Survival in the Ukraine, 1941-1944. London: Vallentine Mitchell.
“No Strength to Forget relates the struggle for survival of the author’s family in the direst of circumstances. In a world of legalized mass murder, instigated by the Nazis and adopted by many in Ukraine, the family was hunted for the crime of being born Jewish, and spent three years surviving against impossible odds, hiding in the forests in Ukraine. Supported by their unshakeable belief in divine guidance, the author's parents secured food and shelter and maintained a semblance of human dignity, keeping a calendar and observing the Sabbath and holidays. Written many years later as a testimony for his children, the book presents a child’s experience of survival in the face of Nazi persecution. To this day, the author still relives the many occasions when his life was in the balance, but by the grace of God and the determination of his parents, he survived.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/no-strength-to-forget-laizer-blitt/1111479887?ean=9780853036968
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Bluglass, K. (2003). Hidden from the Holocaust: Stories of resilient children who survived and thrived. Wesport, CT.: Praeger.
Table of Contents: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy042/2003053556.html
“From twins torn away from their family and separated, to a girl shut in a basement, maltreated and malnourished, the world of Jewish children who were hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust becomes painfully clear in this volume. Psychiatrist Bluglass presents interviews with 15 adults who avoided execution in their childhoods thanks to being hidden by Christians, all of whom have since developed remarkably positive lives. All are stable, healthy, intelligent, and share a surprising sense of humor. Together, they show a profound ability to recover and thrive—an unexpected resilience.
“That their adjustment with such positive outcomes was possible after such harsh childhood experiences challenges a popular perception that inevitable physical and psychological damage ensues such adversity. Their stories offer new optimism: hope and grounds for research that may help traumatized children of today, and of the future, become more resilient. The book's core consists of these remarkable survivors’ narratives, told in their own words. Also included are childhood and current pictures of each survivor, a list naming their rescuers (people who hid them), and a detailed bibliography.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hidden-from-the-holocaust-kerry-bluglass/1112047382?ean=9780275974862
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Boas, J. (Ed.). (1995). We are witnesses: Five diaries of teenagers who died in the Holocaust. New York: Henry Holt.
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bios/hol054/94043889.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/hol042/94043889.html
“The five diarists in this book did not survive the war. But their words did. Each diary reveals one voice, one teenager coping with the impossible. We see David Rubinowicz struggling against fear and terror. Yitzhak Rudashevski shows us how Jews clung to culture, to learning, and to hope, until there was no hope at all. Moshe Ze’ev Flinker is the voice of religion, constantly seeking answers from God for relentless tragedy. Eva Heyman demonstrates the unquenchable hunger for life that sustained her until the very last moment. And finally, Anne Frank reveals the largest truth they all left for us: Hitler could kill millions, but he could not destroy the human spirit. These stark accounts of how five young people faced the worst of human evil are a testament, and an inspiration, to the best of the human soul.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-are-witnesses-jacob-boas/1101348891?ean=9780312535674
Age Range: 12-17 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 7.1; 970L
Teacher’s Guide:
Bosmajian, H. (2002). Sparing the child: Grief and the unspeakable in youth literature about Nazism and the Holocaust. New York: Routledge.
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0647/2001019481-d.html
“Bosmajian explores children’s texts that have either a Holocaust survivor or a former member of the Hitler Youth as a protagonist.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sparing-the-child-harlan-bosmajian/1114918504?ean=9780815338567
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Brandman, B. & Beirman, C. (2010). The girl who survived: A true story of the Holocaust. New York: Scholastic.
“Bronia helped her family survive during the occupation of Poland by smuggling goods to trade for food. Then Bronia and her sisters were deported to Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp and with courage and the help of strangers Bronia became one of the youngest survivors.”
summary from http://catalog2.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchArg=bronia+brandman&searchCode=GKEY^*&searchType=0&recCount=25&sk=en_US
“During World War II, eleven-year-old Bronia was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Through kindness of a stranger and courage, Bronia lived to tell her tale of survival. The text contains descriptions of violence.”
summary from http://www.arbookfind.com/advanced.aspx
Age Range: 10-13 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 6.3; 910L
Teacher’s Guide:
Brenner, H. (2010). The song is over: Survival of a Jewish girl in Dresden. (B. Fischer, Trans.). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
“February, 1945. After heavy bombing by Allied air forces, Dresden was on fire and in ruins. Ironically, for the few Dresden Jews who had not yet been deported and murdered by the Nazis, the destruction meant rescue. With the Gestapo order for the family to report for deportation still in hand, Henny Wolf Brenner and her parents ran for their lives. They went into hiding and waited for the end of the war. Despite the family’s fears, the Gestapo did not succeed in tracking down the city’s last few Jews, and the family survived.
“At the end of the war the Red Army liberated Dresden. But instead of the desired release from terror into a resumption of a peaceful, productive life, different forms of repression awaited Brenner and her parents. In the new communist-run East Germany, she was refused advanced schooling because she was not a Party member. Under the communist regime, it was clear the Jewish population was not welcome, and consequently normal life was impossible. With heavy hearts, the family decided to abandon their beloved home and risk the dangers of flight from East Berlin to West Berlin. With the help of good friends, they were successful in their venture.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/song-is-over-henny-brenner/1101608752?ean=9780817355968
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Brenner-Wonschick, H. (2009). The girls of room 28: Friendship, hope, and survival in Theresienstadt. (J. E. Woods & S. Frisch, Trans.) New York: Schocken Books.
“From 1942 to 1944, twelve thousand children passed through the Theresienstadt internment camp, near Prague, on their way to Auschwitz. Only a few hundred of them survived the war. In The Girls of Room 28, ten of these children—mothers and grandmothers today in their seventies—tell us how they did it.
“The Jews deported to Theresienstadt from countries all over Europe were aware of the fate that awaited them, and they decided that it was the young people who had the best chance to survive. Keeping these adolescents alive, keeping them whole in body, mind, and spirit, became the priority. They were housed separately, in dormitory-like barracks, where they had a greater chance of staying healthy and better access to food, and where counselors (young men and women who had been teachers and youth workers) created a disciplined environment despite the surrounding horrors. The counselors also made available to the young people the talents of an amazing array of world-class artists, musicians, and playwrights–European Jews who were also on their way to Auschwitz. Under their instruction, the children produced art, poetry, and music, and they performed in theatrical productions, most notably Bründibar, the legendary ‘children’s opera’ that celebrates the triumph of good over evil.
“In the mid-1990s, German journalist Hannelore Brenner met ten of these child survivors—women in their late-seventies today, who reunite every year at a resort in the Czech Republic. Weaving her interviews with the women together with excerpts from diaries that were kept secretly during the war and samples of the art, music, and poetry created at Theresienstadt, Brenner gives us an unprecedented picture of daily life there, and of the extraordinary strength, sacrifice, and indomitable will that combined—in the girls and in their caretakers—to make survival possible.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/girls-of-room-28-hannelore-brenner/1100312842?ean=9780805242447
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Bretholz, L. (1999). Leap into darkness: Seven years on the run in wartime Europe. New York: Anchor Books.
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bios/random051/99031373.html
Sample text http://www.loc.gov/catdir/samples/random041/99031373.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/random043/99031373.html
“Young Leo Bretholz survived the Holocaust by escaping from the Nazis (and others) not once, but seven times during his almost seven-year ordeal crisscrossing war-torn Europe. He leaped from trains, outran police, and hid in attics, cellars, anywhere that offered a few more seconds of safety. First he swam the River Sauer at the German-Belgian border. Later he climbed the Alps on feet so battered they froze to his socks—only to be turned back at the Swiss border. He crawled out from under the barbed wire of a French holding camp, and hid in a village in the Pyrenees while gendarmes searched it. And in the dark hours of one November morning, he escaped from a train bound for Auschwitz.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/leap-into-darkness-michael-olesker/1112964626?ean=9780385497053
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Brodsky, A. F. (1998). Fragile identity: Survival in Nazi-occupied Belgium. London: Radcliffe.
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0916/2008396250-b.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0916/2008396250-d.html
“This is a moving, sharp-edged, and tense story, haunted by fear of betrayal and disaster, of a Jewish family and the author’s formative years, in Belgium during the German occupation. Alexandra Harris’s father is arrested by the Gestapo and deported, her mother has to take refuge in a convent in Flanders; Alexandra, then only seventeen, receives death threats, and she and her sister depart and assume different names. At first Alexandra becomes a student in a Catholic boarding school in the Ardennes, but another pupil in a similar situation discovers her true identity and spreads false rumors about her. In 1943, she transfers to a job in occupied Namur. However, her immersion in this environment does not eliminate the constant danger and risk of betrayal that hangs over her. She lives in fear right up to the liberation by American forces, and even then her euphoria is dampened by her concern over the fate of her family. For the general reader and the historian Fragile Identity shows what it was really like to experience these ghastly years.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fragile-identity-alexandra-fanny-brodsky/1112247390?ean=9781860641305
Brostoff, A. (Ed.). 1998. Flares of memory: Stories of childhood during the Holocaust. Pittsburgh, PA: Holocaust Center of the United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh.
Book review (H-Net) http://www.h-net.org/review/hrev-a0d1m3-aa
Book review (H-Net) http://www.h-net.org/review/hrev-a0c9y4-aa
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0638/00044583-d.html
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0724/00044583-b.html
“In a series of writing workshops at the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, survivors assembled recently to remember the pivotal moments in which their lives were irreparably changed by the Nazis. These ‘flares of memory’ invoke lost childhoods, preserving the voices of over forty Jews from throughout Europe who experienced a history that cannot be forgotten—by them nor us.
“Including a timeline that chronicles the rise of the Nazis, their devastating campaigns for control of Europe, and the successive edicts that would annihilate millions, Flares of Memory consists of 92 brief vignettes arranged both chronologically and thematically. Survivors from Munich, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, and the Netherlands recreate the disbelief and chaos that ensued as families were separated, political rights were abolished, and synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed—before and especially after Kristallnacht. . . . Others remember the daily humiliation, the quiet heroes among their friends, and the painful abandonment by neighbors as Jews were restricted to ghettos, forced to don yellow stars, and loaded like cattle in trains destined for the camps . . . Vivid memories of hunger, disease, and a daily existence dependent on cruel luck in Dachau, Auschwitz, and other concentration camps provide penetrating testimonies to the ruthlessness of the Nazi killing machine, yet they also bear witness to the resilience and fortitude of individual souls bombarded by evil.
“This book also includes poignant recollections of American liberators who were often devastated by the horrors that they discovered after the fall of the Nazis. . . . Flares of Memory will inspire these emotions and will stay with you, long after you finish its pages.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/flares-of-memory-anita-brostoff/1101394016?ean=9780195156270
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Buchignani, W. (2008). Tell no one who you are: The hidden childhood of Régine Miller. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Tundra Books.
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0906/2008276873-b.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0906/2008276873-d.html
“During the days of Nazi terror in Europe, many Jewish children were taken from their families and hidden. Régine Miller was one such child, who left her mother, father, and brother when she was 10 years old. Utterly alone as she is shunted from place to place, told to tell no one she is Jewish, she hears that her mother and brother have been taken by the SS, the German secret police. Only her desperate hope that her father will return sustains her. At war’s end she must learn to live with the terrible truth of The Final Solution, the Nazi’s extermination camps.
“The people who sheltered Régine cover a wide spectrum of human types, ranging from callous to kind, fearful to defiant, exploitive to caring. This is a story of a brave girl and an equally brave woman to tell the story so many years later.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tell-no-one-who-you-are-walter-buchignani/1112461857?ean=9780887768170
Age Range: 9-12 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 5.2; 720L
Teacher’s Guide:
Buergenthal, T. (2009). A lucky child: A memoir of surviving Auschwitz as a young boy. New York: Little, Brown.
Table of contents only http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0824/2008033732.html
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0902/2008033732-b.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0902/2008033732-d.html
“Thomas Buergenthal, now a Judge in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, tells his astonishing experiences as a young boy in his memoir A Lucky Child. He arrived at Auschwitz at age [ten] after surviving two ghettos and a labor camp. Separated first from his mother and then his father, Buergenthal managed by his wits and some remarkable strokes of luck to survive on his own. Almost two years after his liberation, Buergenthal was miraculously reunited with his mother and in 1951 arrived in the U.S. to start a new life.
“Now dedicated to helping those subjected to tyranny throughout the world, Buergenthal writes his story with a simple clarity that highlights the stark details of unimaginable hardship. A Lucky Child is a book that demands to be read by all.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lucky-child-thomas-buergenthal/1103271046?ean=9780316043397
Honor Book, Sophie Brody Award, 2010
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Byers, A. (2010). Courageous teen resisters: Primary sources from the Holocaust. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers.
“As the Warsaw ghetto in Poland went up in flames in April 1943, Jewish fighters fought bravely for twenty-seven days against Nazi soldiers. With deportation to a death camp all but certain, young Jews in the ghetto decided not to go quietly. Although the Nazis defeated the Jewish resistance group, the spirit of the uprising lived on. For Jews living in Europe during the Holocaust, survival was often the only from of resistance. But Jews in ghettos, concentration camps, and partisan groups did fight back. Some non-Jews came to their aid as well. Told through the words of teen resisters, author Ann Byers details the stories of courageous young people who fought back against Nazi Germany.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/courageous-teen-resisters-ann-byers/1111462331?ean=9780766032699
Age Range: 14-17 years
Reading Level: 840L
Teacher’s Guide:
_____. (2010). Trapped – youth in the Nazi ghettos: Primary sources from the Holocaust. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers.
“With her family starving, thirteen-year-old Charlene tried to smuggle eggs into a ghetto in Poland. A Nazi guard caught her and the eggs were smashed right in front of her. A few days later Charlene’s friend was caught smuggling bread into the ghetto – she was murdered. Such was the fate for many Jewish youth living in the ghettos in Nazi Europe. They faced death, fear, hunger, hard labor, and disease everyday. Millions of Jews were forced into ghettos, where the Nazis kept them until they could be deported to the death camps. Through their own words, author Ann Byers explores the lives of young people living in the ghettos as the Nazis carried out their plan to annihilate Europe’s Jews.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/trapped-youth-in-the-nazi-ghettos-ann-byers/1111462334?ean=9780766032729
Age Range: 14-17 years
Reading Level: 880L
Teacher’s Guide:
_____. (2010). Youth destroyed – the Nazi camps: Primary sources from the Holocaust. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers.
“Upon her arrival at Auschwitz in 1944, Alice Lok, like thousands of Jews before her, faced a ‘selection’. Alice stood in line as a Nazi doctor quickly examined the new camp inmates. If the doctor pointed one direction, it meant hard labor. But labor meant life. If the doctor pointed the other way, that meant immediate death in the gas chambers. Alice was lucky. She survived Auschwitz and two other camps. However, millions of Jews were not so lucky. There were six death camps in operation during World War II and thousands of other work and prison camps.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/youth-destroyed-the-nazi-camps-ann-byers/1111462335?ean=9780766032736
Age Range: 14-17 years
Reading Level: 890L
Teacher’s Guide: