Nonfiction Resources L-O
Lagnado, L. M. & Dekel, S. C. (1991). Children of the flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the untold story of the twins of Auschwitz. New York: Morrow.
“During World War II, Nazi doctor Josef Mengele subjected some 3,000 twins to medical experiments of unspeakable horror; only 160 survived. In this remarkable narrative, the life of Auschwitz’s Angel of Death is told in counterpoint to the lives of the survivors, who until now have kept silent about their heinous death-camp ordeals.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/children-of-the-flames-lucette-matalon-lagnado/1102224309?ean=9780140169317
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(BookRags) BN ID: 2940013107748
Lamet, E. (2011). A child al confino. Avon, MA: Adams Media.
“Eric Lamet was only seven years old when the Nazis invaded Vienna - and changed his life and the lives of all European Jews forever. Five days after Hitler marches, Eric Lamet and his parents flee for their lives. His father goes back to his native Poland - and never returns. His mother hides out in Italy, on the run from place to place, taking her son deeper and deeper into the mountains to avoid capture.
“In this remarkable feat of memory and imagination, Lamet recreates the Italy he knew from the perspective of the scared and lonely child he once was. We not only see the hardships and terrors faced by foreign Jews in Fascist Italy, but also the friends Eric makes and his mother’s valiant efforts to make a home for him.
“In a style as original as his story, the author vividly recalls a dark time yet imbues his recollections with humor, humanity, and wit. Very few Holocaust memoirs address the plight of Jews sent into internal exile in Mussolini's Italy. Lamet offers a rare and historically important portrait, one you will not soon forget.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/child-al-confino-eric-lamet/1102042153?ean=9781440511264
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Laskier, R. (2008). Rutka’s notebook: A voice from the Holocaust. (Y. Vashem, Ed.). New York: Time Books.
“More than sixty years after her 1943 death in Auschwitz, the words of fourteen-year-old Rutka Laskier, a young Jewish girl from Będzin, Poland, recreate the everyday lives of the Polish Jews of her town caught up in the Holocaust.”
summary from http://usf.catalog.fcla.edu.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/sf.jsp?st=SF028934830&ix=pm&I=0&V=D&pm=1
Notable Book, Sydney Taylor Award – Teen Readers, 2009
Age Range: 12-15 years
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Lau, Rabbi I. M. (2011). Out of the depths: The story of a child of Buchenwald who returned home at last. New York: Sterling Publishing.
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1205/2011275304-b.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1205/2011275304-d.html
“Israel Meir Lau, one of the youngest survivors of Buchenwald, was just eight years old when the camp was liberated in 1945. Descended from a 1,000-year unbroken chain of rabbis, he grew up to become Chief Rabbi of Israel – and like many of the great rabbis, Lau is a master storyteller. Out of the Depths is his harrowing, miraculous, and inspiring account of life in one of the Nazis' deadliest concentration camps, and how he managed to survive against all possible odds.
“Lau, who lost most of his family in the Holocaust, also chronicles his life after the war, including his emigration to Mandate Palestine during a period that coincides with the development of the State of Israel. The story continues up through today, with that once-lost boy of eight now a brilliant, charismatic, and world-revered figure who has visited with Popes John Paul and Benedict; the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and countless global leaders including Ronald Reagan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Tony Blair.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/out-of-the-depths-rabbi-israel-meir-lau/1102844081?ean=9781402786310
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Lauer, B. (2004). Hiding in plain sight: The incredible true story of a German-Jewish teenager’s struggle to survive in Nazi-occupied Poland. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus.
“ ‘Bertel is twelve years old and living in Hindenburg, Germany, with her mother Ilona and her sister Eva. They are waiting for their American visas to arrive while making preparations to join Oskar in America. These plans are crushed in October 28 when the Nazis round up the Jews in Hindenburg, forcibly expelling Bertel and her family from Germany into Poland. For the next seven years, Bertel conceals her true identity. She learns to speak Polish, changes her appearance, and uses falsified documents. Living as a young Polish woman under an assumed name, she struggles to survive as she moves from town to town in Nazi-occupied Poland. Although at times there is the blessing of friendship and a helping hand, Bertel lives in constant fear of discovery and certain death.’ This is a story of faith, Providence, and the ability of a young girl to survive while hiding in plain sight, in the dark shadow of the Nazi death factory.”
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hiding-in-plain-sight-betty-lauer/1006573754?ean=9781575253497
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Leapman, M. (1998). Witnesses to war: Eight true-life stories of Nazi persecution. London: Viking.
“For millions of children, living in Europe during the Second World War was a terrifying and traumatic experience. This book tells the true stories of eight of these children, from different countries and backgrounds, seven of whom survived to tell their tales and one whose voice survived in the form of a diary. Each tale is different – living in the Warsaw Ghetto, being sent to concentration camps, being selected for ‘Germanization’ – but each represents the story of millions of other innocent victims whose lives were cut short or changed irrevocably by the Holocaust.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/witnesses-to-war-michael-leapman/1114591878?ean=9780141308418
Age Range: 10-14 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 7.3; 1120L
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Lebenstein, A. (2008). The gazebo. (D. Levin, Ed.). Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse.
“November 10, 1938. Germany. Kristallnacht. Night of Broken Glass. Eleven-year-old Alex Lebenstein comes face-to-face with the Nazi regime that is determined to exterminate all Jews from the face of Europe. After witnessing the beating of his family, they escape to be hidden for a few days before being forced into the newly created Jewish Ghetto where he will spend the next three years. A six-day cattle car ride during one of the coldest winters on record to the larger Jewish Ghetto in Riga, Latvia is merely the first destination of what will become a three-year battle of survival. From the concentration camps Kaiserwald and Stutthof, and slave labor camps Hasenpot and Burggraben to liberation and escape, teenaged Alex Lebenstein lived the sights, sounds, and smells of death. Despite facing execution, and living under the shadows of the crematoria chimneys that darkened the skies with black smoke, this is a tale of hope and wonder.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-gazebo-alexander-lebenstein/1015140796?ean=9781438931722
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Leitner, I. (1985). Saving the fragments: From Auschwitz to New York. New York: New American Library.
“Leitner’s first work, Fragments of Isabella*, was a memoir of the Holocaust itself. This second volume is a moving narration of her experiences from the moment of her liberation from Auschwitz to the early days of her arrival in the United States. It brings home to the reader, poignantly and gracefully, the enormous difficulty for survivors in returning to the ‘normal’ world. It takes us through Leitner’s liberation from numbness and anger to the first signs of the return of emotion . . . Leitner shares with us the strength and love she and her sisters brought to their experience.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/saving-the-fragments-isabella-leitner/1002333365?ean=9780453005029
* Fragments of Isabella is not included in this listing, as no summary information could be found.
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_____. (1992). The big lie: A true story. New York: Scholastic.
“The author describes her experiences as a survivor of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz during World War II.”
summary from http://catalog2.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=286823&recCount=25&recPointer=4&bibId=2016310
Age Range: 8-11 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 4.1; 700L
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Levendel, I. (1999). Not the Germans alone: A son’s search for the truth of Vichy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
“On the eve of D-Day, Isaac Levendel’s mother left her hiding place on a farm in southern France and never returned. After 40 years of silence and torment, he returned to France in 1990 determined to find out what had happened. This is the story of how, with perseverance, luck, and official help, he gained access to secret wartime documents laying bare the details of French collaboration – and the truth about his mother’s fate.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/not-the-germans-alone-a-sons-search-for-the-truth-of-vichy-isaac-levendel/1103040340?ean=9780810118430
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Levine, K. (2003). Hana’s suitcase: A true story. Morton Grove, IL: Albert Whitman.
“A biography of a Czech girl who died in the Holocaust, told in alternating chapters with an account of how the curator of a Japanese Holocaust center learned about her life after Hana's suitcase was sent to her.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hanas-suitcase-karen-levine/1100995684?ean=9780807531471
Winner, Sydney Taylor Award – Older Readers, 2002
National Jewish Book Award – Special Recognition, 2002-2003
Age Range: 10-13 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 5.0; 730L
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ISBN-13: 9781257554393
*Holocaust Remembrance Series* ISBN-13: 9781897187685 and ISBN-13: 9781897187777
Levy, D. (2010). The year of goodbyes: A true story of friendship, family, and farewells. New York: Disney-Hyperion Books.
“Like other girls, Jutta Salzberg enjoyed playing with friends, going to school, and visiting relatives. In Germany in 1938, these everyday activities were dangerous for Jews. Jutta and her family tried to lead normal lives, but soon they knew they had to escape – if they could before it was too late.
“Throughout 1938, Jutta had her friends and relatives fill her poesiealbum – her autograph book – with inscriptions. Her daughter, Debbie Levy, used these entries as a springboard for telling the story of the Salzberg family’s last year in Germany. It was a year of change and chance, confusion and cruelty. It was a year of goodbyes.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/year-of-goodbyes-debbie-levy/1016600267?ean=9781423129011
Notable Book, Sydney Taylor Award – Older Readers, 2011
Age Range: 11-14 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 5.8; 910L
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Lewyn, B. (2001). Holocaust memoirs: Life on the run in Nazi Berlin. Philadelphia, PA:Xlibris.
“In 1942, Gestapo agents knocked on the door of the Lewyn family. Bert Lewyn was a teenager, only 18 years old. Like thousands of other Jewish families, Bert, his mother and father were all arrested and taken away. His parents were deported to a concentration camp and Bert was conscripted as a slave laborer, forced to work in a weapons factory building machine guns for the German Wehrmacht. This is the story of Bert’s escape and subsequent struggle to survive on his own, living underground in Nazi Berlin.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/holocaust-memoirs-bert-lewyn/1005614524?ean=9781462825622
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Leyson, L. (2013). The boy on the wooden box: How the impossible became possible . . . on Schindler’s list. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.
“Leon Leyson (born Leib Lezjon) was only ten years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and his family was forced to relocate to the Krakow ghetto. With incredible luck, perseverance, and grit, Leyson was able to survive the sadism of the Nazis, including that of the demonic Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszow, the concentration camp outside Krakow. Ultimately, it was the generosity and cunning of one man, a man named Oskar Schindler, who saved Leon Leyson’s life, and the lives of his mother, his father, and two of his four siblings, by adding their names to his list of workers in his factory—a list that became world renowned: Schindler’s List.
“This, the only memoir published by a former Schindler’s List child, perfectly captures the innocence of a small boy who goes through the unthinkable. Most notable is the lack of rancor, the lack of venom, and the abundance of dignity in Mr. Leyson’s telling. The Boy on the Wooden Box is a legacy of hope, a memoir unlike anything you’ve ever read.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-boy-on-the-wooden-box-leon-leyson/1115251762?ean=9781442497832
Honor Book, Sydney Taylor Award – Older Readers, 2014
ALSC “Notable Children’s Books”, 2014
Top Ten, YALSA “Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults”, 2014
Age Range: 9-14 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 7.0; 1000L
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Liebman, M. (2005). Born Jewish: A childhood in occupied Europe. (L. Heron, Trans.). London: Verso.
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1311/2005025814-b.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1311/2005025814-d.html
“This fierce memoir is both elegiac and indicting. Marcel Liebman’s account of his childhood in Brussels under the Nazi occupation explores the emergence of his class-consciousness against a background of resistance and collaboration. He documents the internal class war that has long been hidden from history how the Nazi persecution exploited class distinctions within the Jewish community, and how certain Jewish notables collaborated in a systematic program of denunciation and deportation against immigrant Jews who lacked the privileges of wealth and citizenship.
“An eminent anti-Zionist and Marxist, Liebman tells the story of his family’s struggle to survive in the face of persecution, terror and constant evasion, an existence observed with acuity, humor and lyricism.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/born-jewish-marcel-liebman/1115844100?ean=9781844670390
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Ligocka, R. (2002). The girl in the red coat: A memoir. (M. B. Dembo, Trans.). New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bios/hol051/2002005201.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/hol031/2002005201.html
“As a child in German-occupied Poland, Roma Ligocka was known for the bright strawberry-red coat she wore against a tide of gathering darkness. Fifty years later, Roma, an artist living in Germany, attended a screening of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, and instantly knew that “the girl in the red coat”—the only splash of color in the film—was her. Thus began a harrowing journey into the past, as Roma Ligocka sought to reclaim her life and put together the pieces of a shattered childhood.
“The result is this remarkable memoir, a fifty-year chronicle of survival and its aftermath. With brutal honesty, Ligocka recollects a childhood at the heart of evil: the flashing black boots, the sudden executions, her mother weeping, her father vanished . . . then her own harrowing escape and the strange twists of fate that allowed her to live on into the haunted years after the war. Powerful, lyrical, and unique among Holocaust memoirs, The Girl in the Red Coat eloquently explores the power of evil to twist our lives long after we have survived it. It is a story for anyone who has ever known the darkness of an unbearable past—and searched for the courage to move forward into the light.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-girl-in-the-red-coat-roma-ligocka/1005771161?ean=9780385337403
Shortlist, Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize – Nonfiction, 2003
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Lobel, A. (1998). No pretty pictures: A child of war. New York: Greenwillow Books.
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/hc043/97048392.html
“Anita Lobel was barely five years old when World War II began and the Nazis burst into her home in Kraków, Poland. Her life changed forever. She spent her childhood in hiding with her brother and their nanny, moving from countryside to ghetto to convent—where the Nazis finally caught up with them.
“Since coming to the United States as a teenager, Anita has spent her life making pictures. She has never gone back. She has never looked back. Until now.
“The author, known as an illustrator of children’s books, describes her experiences as a Polish Jew during World War II and for years in Sweden afterwards.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/no-pretty-pictures-anita-lobel/1102082106?ean=9780061565892
YALSA “Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults”, 1999
Age Range: 8-12 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 5.0; 750L
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Marks, J. (1993). The hidden children: The secret survivors of the Holocaust. New York: Ballantine Books.
“They hid wherever they could for as long as it took the Allies to win the war – Jewish children, frightened, alone, often separated from their families. For months, even years, they faced the constant danger of discovery, fabricating new identities at a young age, sacrificing their childhoods to save their lives. These secret survivors have suppressed these painful memories for decades. Now, in The Hidden Children, twenty-three adult survivors share their moving wartime experiences – some for the first time.
“There is Rosa, who hid in an impoverished one-room farmhouse with three others, sleeping on a clay pallet behind a stove; Renee, who posed as a Catholic and was kept in a convent by nuns who knew her secret; and Richard, who lived in a closet with his family for thirteen months. Their personal stories of belief and determination give a voice, at last, to the forgotten. Inspiring and life affirming, The Hidden Children is an unparalleled document of witness, discovery, and the miracle of human courage.
“In riveting first-person accounts, twenty-three adult survivors share the memories many had long suppressed – how they lived in constant danger of discovery, fabricated new identities, and risked life, health and sanity to escape Nazi torture. Here, too, is how they grew, battled the guilt of surviving, and found the spirit to love and to heal.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hidden-children-jane-marks/1112272894?ean=9780449906866
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Medwed, S. (2005). Live! Remember! Tell the world!: The story of a hidden child survivor of Transnistria. Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah.
“Leah Kaufman was nine years old when the Romanian Jews were driven on a death march to Transnistria, a frigid area with hardly any food, shelter, or human decency. Somehow, she lived – and lived with her Judaism intact! As a young orphan, all alone, she kept Pesach and Yom Kippur, and remained faithful to her parents’ faith in Hashem and love of Judaism. She retained her humanity after a series of harrowing experiences and miraculous rescues that would have destroyed a less resourceful, less pure person. When the War was over, the memories of her past lay dormant inside her for fifty years, while she put together a new life in Canada and raised a fine Jewish family. But then she remembered her legacy, her mother’s constant charge to her during the last weeks of her life: ‘Leah, you must live! You must remember! You must tell the world!’ She has been telling it ever since. She speaks for those who are forever silenced. Her message of triumph, hope, and continuity brings pride to her audiences and inspires them to return to the Judaism of their grandparents. It’s a gripping story, an uplifting story, a story that makes us marvel at the greatness of the Jewish spirit that enabled a young girl all alone in the world to persevere and triumph. Leah Kaufman has spent many years telling the tale to audiences all over the world; and with Sheina Medwed as her collaborator, she tells it in this marvelous book with flair and sensitivity.”
summary from http://www.amazon.com/Live-Remember-Tell-World-Transnistria/dp/157819671X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394045959&sr=1-3&keywords=sheina+medwed
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Mendelsohn, D. (2006). The lost: A search for six of six million. New York: HarperCollins.
“In this rich and riveting narrative, a writer’s search for the truth behind his family’s tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic – part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work – that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history.
“The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust – an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives’ fates. That quest eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents, and forces him to confront the wrenching discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him, finally, back to the small Ukrainian town where his family’s story began, and where the solution to a decades-old mystery awaits him.
“Deftly moving between past and present, interweaving a world-wandering odyssey with childhood memories of a now-lost generation of immigrant Jews and provocative ruminations on biblical texts and Jewish history, The Lost transforms the story of one family into a profound, morally searching meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Deeply personal, grippingly suspenseful, and beautifully written, this literary tour de force illuminates all that is lost, and found, in the passage of time.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lost-daniel-mendelsohn/1111509638?ean=9780062277770
Winner, National Book Critics Circle Award – Autobiography/Memoir, 2006
Winner, Sophie Brody Award, 2007
National Jewish Book Award – Biography & Autobiography, 2006
“Jewish Book Month” List for Adults, 2006
American Academy of Arts & Letters, “Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award”, 2014
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Meyerhoff, M. (2007). Four girls from Berlin: A true story of friendship that defied the Holocaust. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Table of contents only http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0711/2007006192.html
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0739/2007006192-b.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0739/2007006192-d.html
“Lotte Meyerhoff’s best friends risked their lives in Nazi Germany to safeguard [ ] treasured heirlooms and mementos from her family and return them to her after the war. The Holocaust had left Lotte the lone survivor of her family, and these precious objects gave her back a crucial piece of her past. Four Girls from Berlin vividly recreates that past and tells the story of Lotte and her courageous non-Jewish friends Ilonka, Erica, and Ursula as they lived under the shadow of Hitler in Berlin.
“Written by Lotte’s daughter, Marianne, this powerful memoir celebrates the un-severable bonds of friendship and a rich family legacy the Holocaust could not destroy.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/four-girls-from-berlin-marianne-meyerhoff/1008405440?ean=9780471224051
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Meyers. O. (1997). Doors to Madame Marie. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
“This eloquent and spirited memoir of a young Jewish girl’s coming of age in Nazi-occupied France recounts her own family’s difficult and brave survival and portrays as well the love and quiet heroism of her rescuers. A powerful central figure is Madame Marie Chotel, the Catholic concierge and seamstress who hides seven-year-old Odette and her mother in her broom closet while police search, who secures the child’s safe haven in a distant province, and who is cherished by Odette, even in absentia, as her godmother and mentor.
“The story unfolds as a drama of many parts, told in a lyrical prose rich with flashes of humor and a startling perceptivity that takes nothing for granted. Odette is hidden during the occupation, a secret Jew in a remote and conservative Catholic village. Absorbed in the village’s life, she becomes a fervent Catholic child. When she returns to Paris, she struggles over her Jewish identity and religion and her fierce nostalgia for the wild countryside, but she accepts again the secular Judaism of her working-class intellectual parents, immigrants from Poland who survived the war (though many relatives did not), her father as a French Army prisoner of war, her mother as a member of the Resistance. And she again finds Madame Marie, who tells her, simply, to look in her heart . . .
“The story does not close with the war’s end and the departure of fourteen-year-old Odette and her parents for America. It continues with her search, many years later, for Madame Marie, and with the inscription of the name of Marie Chotel on the Wall of Righteous Gentiles at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C. This memoir is extraordinary not only for its broad historic sensibility but for its fascinating portrait of wartime France from the unusual perspective of a Jew whose life was permitted to go on.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/doors-to-madame-marie-odette-meyers/1102339555?ean=9780295975764
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Miklos, S. W. (2000). Paper gauze ballerina: Memoir of a Holocaust survivor. iUniverse, Incorporated.
“Paper Gauze Ballerina is a memoir of a Holocaust survivor. This book is one person’s plight to rise above the ashes of the Holocaust and become a whole and functioning human being again. It will make you aware of how genocide and the aftermath of genocide extend through a lifetime, and sometimes for generations to come.
“With the help of this book, the author ceased to remain a victim, and most of all got rid of all her feelings of revenge, anger, and hate, bottled up from the injustices done to her during incarceration. She believes that those feelings are the major precursors to another genocide.
“Paper Gauze Ballerina is a must for educators to read. It is a unique book which transforms a negative experience to a positive outlook.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/paper-gauze-ballerina-sophie-miklos/1111902604?ean=9780595151226
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Milton, E. (2005). The tiger in the attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and growing up English. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Table of contents only http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip057/2005002110.html
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0621/2005002110-b.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0621/2005002110-d.html
“In 1939, on the eve of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, seven-year-old Edith Milton (then Edith Cohn) and her sister Ruth left Germany by way of the Kindertransport, the program which gave some 10,000 Jewish children refuge in England. The two were given shelter by a jovial, upper class British foster family with whom they lived for the next seven years. Edith chronicles these transformative experiences of exile and good fortune in The Tiger in the Attic, a touching memoir of growing up as an outsider in a strange land.
“In this illuminating chronicle, Edith describes how she struggled to fit in and to conquer self-doubts about her German identity. Her realistic portrayal of the seemingly mundane yet historically momentous details of daily life during World War II slowly reveals itself as a hopeful story about the kindness and generosity of strangers. She paints an account rich with colorful characters and intense relationships, uncanny close calls and unnerving bouts of luck that led to survival. Edith’s journey between cultures continues with her final passage to America—yet another chapter in her life that required adjustment to a new world—allowing her, as she narrates it here, to visit her past as an exile all over again.
“The Tiger in the Attic is a literary gem from a skilled fiction writer, the story of a thoughtful and observant child growing up against the backdrop of the most dangerous and decisive moment in modern European history. Offering a unique perspective on Holocaust studies, this book is both an exceptional and universal story of a young German-Jewish girl caught between worlds.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tiger-in-the-attic-edith-milton/1101010025?ean=9780226529479
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Millman, I. (2005). Hidden Child. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0614/2003060688-b.html
Sample text http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0615/2003060688-s.html
Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0615/2003060688-d.html
“Isaac was seven when the Germans invaded France and his life changed forever. First his father was taken away, and then, two years later, Isaac and his mother were arrested. Hoping to save Isaac’s life, his mother bribed a guard to take him to safety at a nearby hospital, where he and many other children pretended to be sick, with help from the doctors and nurses. But this proved a temporary haven. As Isaac was shuttled from city to countryside, experiencing the kindness of strangers, and sometimes their cruelty, he had to shed his Jewish identity to become Jean Devolder. But he never forgot who he really was, and he held on to the hope that after the war he would be reunited with his parents.
“After more than fifty years of keeping his story to himself, Isaac Millman has broken his silence to tell it in spare prose, vivid composite paintings, and family photos that survived the war.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hidden-child-millman/1030165451?ean=9780374330712
Age Range: 10-15 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 5.2; 860L
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Muchman, B. (1997). Never to be forgotten: A young girl’s Holocaust memoir. Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House.
“Never to Be Forgotten is a moving and evocative first-person account of the life of a Jewish child in Nazi-occupied Belgium. Beatrice Muchman and her family fled from Germany to Belgium after Hitler came to power. In 1943, when the Nazis began rounding up Jews and sending them to death camps, Beatrice’s parents entrusted her to a Catholic woman. Beatrice’s mother and father were killed, but she survived and was ultimately brought to the United States, where she was adopted by an uncle and aunt who had escaped to America before the war broke out. Because she was so young when these events occurred, Beatrice Muchman often misunderstood situations and motivations, especially because they were never clearly explained, perhaps as an effort to protect her. For years afterwards, she believed that her parents had for some reason abandoned her and in consequence was filled with anger against them. Due to the fortuitous circumstance of discovering a cache of letters from her parents and other relevant documents among the papers of the uncle who had adopted her, Beatrice Muchman, as a mature woman, began exploring her past. Combing her memory for recollections of events she had tried to forget, and combining what she learned from the letters with the account in the diary she had kept as a child, which she now reads with an adult’s insight, she was able to reconstruct the story of her Holocaust childhood. In doing so, she came to understand how much her parents had loved her and how pained they were by their final separation.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/never-to-be-forgotten-beatrice-muchman/1110950747?ean=9780881255980
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Nir, Y. (1989). The lost childhood: A World War II memoir. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
NOTE: This appears to be the same book as The Lost Childhood: The Complete Memoir by the same author. It may also be the same as The Lost Childhood: A Telling Tale of a Brother and Sister Surviving the War by Dr. Yehuda Nir and Ilana Weinreb Levron.
“This compelling memoir takes readers through the eyes of a child surviving World War II in Nazi-occupied Poland. As a nine-year-old, the author witnessed his father being herded into a truck—never to be seen again. He, his mother, and sister fled to Warsaw to live in disguise as Catholics under the noses of the Nazi SS, constantly fearful of discovery and persecution. A sobering reminder of the personal toll of the Holocaust on Jews during World War II, this book is a harrowing portrait of one child’s loss of innocence. This edition contains previously unpublished content from the original text.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lost-childhood-yehuda-nir/1112373300?ean=9780971059863
Age Range: 12-17 years
Reading Level: AR Level – 7.5; 920L
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Oren, R. (2009). Gertrude’s oath: A child, a promise, and a heroic escape during World War II. (B. Harshav, Trans.). New York: Doubleday.
“Michael Stolowitzky, the only son of a wealthy Jewish family in Poland, was just three years old when war broke out and the family lost everything. His father, desperate to settle his business affairs, traveled to France, leaving Michael in the care of his mother and Gertruda Bablinska, the family’s devoted Catholic nanny. When Michael’s mother had a stroke, Gertruda promised the dying woman that she would make her way to Palestine and raise him as her own son. Written with the assistance of Michael, now 72, this book re-creates Michael and Gertruda’s amazing journey. Vignettes bring to life the people who helped ensure their survival, including SS officer Karl Rink, who made it his mission to save Jews after his own Jewish wife was murdered. This is a story of extraordinary courage and moral strength in the face of horrific events.”
summary from http://catalog2.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=298037&recCount=25&recPointer=23&bibId=15561336
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Orenstein, H. (1978). I shall live: Surviving against all odds, 1939-1945. New York: Simon & Schuster.
“I Shall Live tells the gripping true story of a Jewish family in Germany and Russia as the Nazi party gains power in Germany. When Henry Orenstein and his siblings end up in a series of concentrations camps, Orenstein’s bravery and quick thinking help him to save himself and his brothers from execution by playing a role in the greatest hoax ever pulled on the upper echelons of Nazi command.
“Orenstein’s lucid prose recreates this horrific time in history and his constant struggle for survival as the Nazis move him and his brothers through five concentration camps. His description of their roles in the fake Chemical Commando sheds new light on an incredible and generally unknown event in the history of the Holocaust.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/i-shall-live-henry-orenstein/1102010313?ean=9780825305979
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Ozsváth, Z. (2010). When the Danube ran red. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
“Opening with the ominous scene of one young schoolgirl whispering an urgent account of Nazi horror to another over birthday cake, Ozsváth’s extraordinary and chilling memoir tells the story of her childhood in Hungary, living under the threat of the Holocaust. The setting is the summer of 1944 in Budapest during the time of the German occupation, when the Jews were confined to ghetto houses but not transported to Auschwitz in boxcars, as was the rest of the Hungarian Jewry living in the countryside. Provided with food and support by their former nanny, Erzsi, Ozsváth’s family stays in a ghetto house where a group of children play theater, tell stories to one another, invent games to pass time, and wait for liberation.
“In the fall of that year, however, things take a turn for the worse. Rounded up under horrific circumstances, forced to go on death marches, and shot on the banks of the Danube by the thousands, the Jews of Budapest are threatened with immediate destruction. Ozsváth and her family survive because of Erzsi’s courage and humanity. Cheating the watching eyes of the murderers, she brings them food and runs with them from house to house under heavy bombardment in the streets.”
summary from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-the-danube-ran-red-zsuzsanna-oszvath/1102008945?ean=
9780815609803
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