Holocaust Books - Page 6

Hide and Seek

Ida Vos

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

First book I ever read in the present tense 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I first read this book at twelve, and I believe that one of the reasons it's been so unforgettable to me is the fact that I had never read a book written in the present tense before and hadn't known a book could be written in anything but the past tense. It inspired me to use the present tense in my own writing; in this book, the present tense coupled with the tense times and situations the Hartog family must go through makes the story more compelling, immediate, haunting, and page-turning. A story written in the past tense tells us that everything has already happened, but in the present tense, we're living right in each new moment and don't know what might happen next.

I didn't really take notice of this till I recently read it again for the third time, but time really does pass too quickly here; we aren't told how much time has passed between most of the events, and Rachel, who was eight years old in 1940 when the book began, is turning twelve years old in hiding when the book is only about half over. But it only makes sense; Rachel and her little sister Esther are just young children and wouldn't have the same perception of time that an older person would. A person who experienced these events as a teenager or adult would certainly tend to remember in detail how much time had passed after each important event and what all they were doing during the time periods that weren't written about, but a young child is more likely to remember things and people than specifics about the exact passage of time or every little thing that happened. And Rachel sees everything through the eyes of a child, not a mature adult who would have more perspective on these events.

Though the family is happily reunited at the end (even with Rachel and Esther's maternal grandparents), the way Ida Vos and her little sister were reunited with their parents after the war, the story doesn't end there like some childrens' books on this subject might. The family still has to come to terms with all of the missing and dead friends and relatives, finding a new house, catching up in school, having to break out of habits they acquired while in hiding or in the camps (such as Rachel and Esther praying a Christian prayer before meals and their grandfather stealing old bread from garbage cans), and readjust to doing all of the things they were forbidden to do before, like ride bikes, go to school, walk around freely, go swimming, and go shopping whenever they want to. Though it's for a younger audience and thus can't go into the same harrowing detail that an adult book of this nature would, it gets the story and its impact across powerfully.

Editorial Review:

When the swim team's bus breaks down, Alison and her friends find shelter in an old abandoned house, where they play a game of hide-and-seek, but the losers could remain hidden forever.

My Bridges of Hope

Livia Bitton-Jackson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Perfect Addition To Your Holocaust Collection 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

My Bridges of Hope is a fascinating and well-written book that keeps you hooked from the first word to that last. Livia Bitton-Jackson gives you insight into what happened to those who were among the few to survive the Holocaust. The girl in the story is actually a younger Bitton-Jackson when she was growing up. This autobiography is more like a story than a recollection of one's past. The book is set in Czechoslovakia where before the war, Elli (Bitton-Jackson), her brother Bubi, and their parents lived. After the war, their beloved home feels abandoned and changed. Other settings of the book include Elli's apartment and various temporary homes that they live in on their way to finding hope in America.
They have survived the horrid concentration camps but return to find that their father and aunt both perished in the war. The book describes events that happened through June of 1945 to March 30 of 1951 to a young Jewish woman. Elli is 14 when the book starts out. While fighting her past, she helps out in a camp for orphans, helps refuges escape to Palestine, and continues her education. After her schooling, Elli becomes a teacher. Elli is strong-willed, confused, and hopefully. She is loving and smart. Elli's mother is a seamstress and wants to go to America because they can't stay in their homeland any longer. Her mother loves her children very much and is unfamiliar with the "newer" age. Bubi is Elli's older brother. He is a warm, caring, and affectionate. Elli looks up to him and often finds herself needing his comfort.
Although both her mother and brother want to go to America, Elli wants to join her friends in going to their "homeland" The dialog in the book was appropriate because she was the character. The words were probably even words she used herself. She keeps you interested because she adds in different languages and so it matches the period. Her style is wonderful and it flows and blends perfectly. She always made it so you understood what was happening. I think this book was written so she could move on and maybe start healing. I think she also wanted others to know what the Jews went through.
I think this is a wonderful book for young adults. It shows how a young girl changes into a confident woman while she is fighting her past and trying to live her future. It is a great book to add to anyone's Holocaust collection.

Editorial Review:

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.

Gentlehands (Harper Keypoint Book)

M. E. Kerr

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Life 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Buddy Boyle falls in love with an upper class girl, his father beats him, his mother doesn't approve, the only person that understands is his grandfather. I really liked this book. It caught me up right away. His grandfather is an understanding animal lover who was born in Germany. His is Buddy's best friend. GOOD TILL THE LAST PAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Editorial Review:

Buddy Boyle lives year-round with his family in unfashionable Seaville, New York, in a cramped little house on the bay. Skye Pennington spends the summers nearby on lavish estate complete with ocean view and a butler named Peacock.

But Skye and Buddy fall in love anyway. And every once in a while they visit Buddy's estranged grandfather, who makes them forget they're from opposite sides of town. Then a reporter appears, searching for a man known as Gentlehands, a man with a horrifying past. Who is Gentlehands? And what is his connection to Buddy's handsome, aristocratic grandfather? The mystery threatens to shatter Buddy and Skye's relationship, and change their lives forever.

To Life

Ruth Minsky Sender

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

How Do I Title This Review? 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Some of you are probably wondering why I wrote this review and how I had the nerve to criticize a book in which a Holocaust survivor told their story. So first I must say that I am NOT belittling the horrors that Ruth Minsky Sender went through or minimizing her astounding bravery as she faced them, I am critquing the way this book was presented.

Picking up right were "The Cage" left off, "To Life" chronicles Riva's (Ruth's) life immediately following her liberation from a concentration camp. Horrors still plague Riva, and she finds that the heartache of discovering the deaths of her family member and friends and attempting to rebuild her life is in some ways as horrible as the Holocaust itself. But Riva carries bravely on, marrying fellow survivor Moniek, having children, and wondering what her future holds.

The values of hope, courage, bravery, optimism, selflessness, and love shown throughout "To Life" are totally precious and the finest aspect of this novel. While portraying the intense grief she endured following WW2, Sender also portrays her (and her family's) determination to focus on their new life and make the best of their situation. Although many of the book's settings and happenings are depressing, Sender refuses to make "To Life" a book without some happiness and much hope for the future. For its portrayal of many excellent ideals, "To Life" is to be commended.

So, as I have said before, I am not attacking the author when I discuss the less-than-perfect aspects of this book. Really, I think the "book" would have been excellent were it simply shortened somewhat and made into a final "section" of "The Cage." Many of the happenings in "To Life" were repetitive, and the happenings in the author's life shared through this book would have been even more moving and gripping if they were shortened somewhat; it would have heightened their impact.

Hopefully no one takes offense from this review. The events in this book deserve to be shared and heard, and I believe that it is important to relieve what Jews suffered AFTER the Holocaust, I just believe the author's story could have been told in a different and better format.

Editorial Review:

"WE ARE FREE!"

When Russian soldiers liberate Grafenort, the Nazi labor camp where she is a prisoner, nineteen-year-old Riva discovers that liberation doesn't mean the end of her hardship and suffering.

Cold and starving, threatened with rape by the same Russian soldiers who were her saviors, Riva makes her way to her old home in Poland, searching like so many others for family who may have survived. Strengthened by her mother's credo, as long as there is life, there is hope, and by the promise of a new love and a new life, Riva endures the long years of waiting for real freedom and a real home.

Picking up where her acclaimed memoir The Cage leaves off, Ruth Minsky Sender has written another inspirational document of the power of hope and love over unspeakable cruelty.

Daniel Half Human: And the Good Nazi (Mildred L Batchelder Honor Book (Awards))

David Chotjewitz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Daniel Half Human : And the Good Nazi 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I loved this book! The Nazi/WWII era is one I have always found interesting and have read many books about it. This is one of the best. It portrays the Nazis effect on Aryans, Jews, youth, poor, rich, and adults.
The story is about Daniel, a regular teenage boy, who admires and wants to be a Nazi. All that changes when he learns he is Jewish. He is then faced with tough realizations and new appreciations. He goes from having many friends and a lot of money, to being on the run from the Nazis, having hardly any friends, with little money. However, his best friend Armin continues to be his friend but also continues his Nazi career.
This book really makes you think and I definitely recommend it.
If you are really interested in this time period, as I am, I also suggest you read: Until We Meet Again by Michael Korenblit and Kathleen Janger , The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman, Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally, and Night by Eli Wiesel.

Editorial Review:

All his life, Daniel has been hiding. He just doesn't know it.

Until the spring of 1933, he's enjoyed a comfortable German boyhood with his well-to-do family, in school, at soccer. Daniel's even enjoyed jail -- for one exciting night -- with his best friend, Armin, after they've been caught painting a swastika on a wall in the hated Communist section of Hamburg. In their cell, the boys cut their wrists, mingle blood, and swear lasting brotherhood. Then, a thunderclap: Daniel learns to his horror that his mother is Jewish, that he is therefore half-Jewish and, in Aryan eyes, half-human. Daniel keeps the truth a secret. He and Armin still talk of joining the Hitler Youth. But Armin's father, an out-of-work longshoreman and a Socialist, forbids it. Armin joins anyway, with fateful consequences for Daniel's family. Throughout World War II, and until the story's haunting final scene, each friend holds the life of the other in his hands.

Run, Boy, Run

Uri Orlev

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"'Srulik, there's no time. I want you to remember what I'm going to tell you. You have to stay alive. You have to! Get someone to teach you how to act like a Christian, how to cross yourself and pray. . . . The most important thing, Srulik,' he said, talking fast, 'is to forget your name. Wipe it from your memory. . . . But even if you forget everything—even if you forget me and Mama—never forget that you're a Jew.'"

And so, at only eight years old, Srulik Frydman says goodbye to his father for the last time and becomes Jurek Staniak, an orphan on the run in the Polish countryside at the height of the Holocaust. With the danger of capture by German soldiers ever-present, Jurek must fight against starvation, the punishing Polish winters, and widespread anti-Semitism as he desperately searches for refuge. Told with the unflinching honesty and unique perspective of such a young child, Run, Boy, Run is the extraordinary account of one boy's struggle to stay alive in the face of almost insurmountable odds—a story all the more incredible because it is true.

The Man from the Other Side

Uri Orlev

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Man From The Other Side!!!!!!!! 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 6 people found this review helpful.

The Man From the Other Side is a well written by the author he explains the story and other details really well, I could basically see the people in my head when I read the book. This book is placed in the 1940's in Poland were a fourteen year old boy named Marek, and his step-father smuggle goods through a sewer into the jewish community. Marek finds during the book that he is half jew and decides to help another jew he meets to escape from Poland and away from the Nazi.

I would highly recommend this book to people that like or are interested in WWI because it talks about the enivorenment the jews lived in which, was really detailed by the author. Also the author painted a perfect description of the jews and the way they lived. If you want to find out more for yourself take a risk and READ THE BOOK!!!

Editorial Review:

"A Pole, 14-year-old Marek helps his stepfather smuggle goods into the Jewish ghetto, enduring trips through the foul sewers not from altruism but in order to reap lucrative profits . . . When Marek decides to help another Jew, his actions lead him into the ghetto during the peak of the uprising. The author(s) refusal to exaggerate gives the story unimpeachable impact."--Publishers Weekly.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Mirjam Pressler

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The Entertainer and the Dybbuk

Sid Fleischman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent Story 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This story is so well written that my 8-year-old son didn't want me to put the book down until all the facts and details were known. Sid Fleischman keeps you invested in finding out more about the plight and connection between an American ventriloquist and the spirit of a young Jewish boy. This is an astonishing story about differences and justice. A must read for young and old.

Editorial Review:

One night The Great Freddie, a young ventriloquist, is possessed by a dybbuk.

A what?

A Jewish spirit. A scrappy demon who glows as if spray-painted by moonlight.

The dybbuk is revealed to be the ghost of a twelve-year-old boy named Avrom Amos, a victim of the Nazis during World War II. In a plucky scheme to seek revenge, he commandeers The Great Freddie's stage act and entraps the entertainer in the postwar ashes of Germany. Behind the footlights, the dybbuk lights up the terrible fate of a million and a half Jewish children, including Avrom himself.

What tricks does the dybbuk have up his ghostly sleeve? Prepare to be astonished. . . .

Anne Frank and Me

Cherie Bennett, Jeff Gottesfeld

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 81 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The successful play is now a gripping novel. Knocked unconscious after explosions ring out during a field trip to an Anne Frank exhibit, boy-crazy Nicole Burns wakes to find herself living a parallel life as a Jew in 1942 Paris. This Nicole is dating the boy of her present-day dreams, but living under the Nazis gradually becomes a nightmare. Her family survives the Nazi occupation with the help of friends, but when her father is exposed as a resistant, their fate takes a dire turn. The shifts in Nicole's lives -- from a carefree, sophisticated Parisian girl to a wretch riding in a cattle car with Anne Frank; from a modern girl focused only on the drama of her high school life to a thoughtful observer of the potential of everyday injustices -- will engage teens and change their views of history found in books and the history we're making today. Called "eloquent and poignant" by the New York Times and performed to wide acclaim across the country, the play has touched thousands. As a novel, it is sure to grow in popularity.