What We Are Reading: Children & Young Adult

A thread to share our reading of Holocaust focused children's and YA books both fiction and nonfiction.

For more understanding of children's books on the Holocaust, here are three articles.

1) A 2018 New Yorker article, How should children's books deal with the holocaust? by Ruth Franklin.

2) From YadVashem's website - Eva Tal's How much should we tell the children?

3) Here is Eric Kimmel's 1977 essay, Confronting the Ovens: The Holocaust and Juvenile Fiction

Jacob's Rescue: a Holocaust Story by Malka Drucker and Michael Halperin (1993)
This is based on a true story. Drucker co-wrote Rescuers: Portraits in Moral Courage in the Holocaust and this simplified story for children is about the Roslans, a couple featured in the book. The Roslans hide Jacob in their home when life in the Warsaw Ghetto is becoming too dangerous. Alex Roslan had earlier arranged for Jacob's two younger brothers (3yrs & 5yrs) to hide with families in the countryside.
The story is poignant because after the war when the two surviving brothers were reunited in Israel with their father, he hid correspondence from the Roslans and never mailed the boys' letters to them. So it was many years later that they met and Alex and Mela Roslan received their Righteous Among Nations Medal. The story ends with Jacob's young daughter reading the wording on the medal, 'Whoever saves a single life is one who has saved the entire world.'

Probably the most moving story I have read on this topic, for children, is Hana's Suitcase by Karen Levine. It began as a radio documentary for CBC radio here in Toronto, in 2002 or 2003, I can't remember. The response to the doc was so strong, that Levine published a book and it took off from there. The actual backstory of this book is as fascinating as the story itself.

Here is a portion of the blurb from the intro to the book:

"Hana's Suitcase is a true story that takes place on three continents over a period of seventy years. It brings together the experiences of a girl and her family in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and 40s, a young woman and a group of children in Tokyo, Japan, and a man in Toronto, Canada in modern times...

"At a Children's Forum on the Holocaust held in 1999, two hundred students from schools in the Tokyo area met Holocaust survivor Yaffa Eliach. She told them about how almost every Jew in her village, young and old, was murdered by the Nazis. At the end of her talk, she reminded her audience that children have the power "to create peace in the future". A dozen of the young Japanese people there took her challenge to heart and formed a group called "Small Wings". Now the members of Small Wings, aged 8 to 18, meet every month. They publish a newsletter, help run the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Centre and work to interest other Japanese children in the history of the Holocaust. They do their work under the guidance of Fumiko Ishioka, the director of the Tokyo Holocaust Centre.

"The suitcase - Hana's suitcase - is a key to the success of their mission. In it lies a story of terrible sadness and great joy, a reminder of the brutality of the past and of hope for the future"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What the introduction doesn't say, what it leaves to unfold in the rest of the book, is exactly how Fumiko came to receive the suitcase and how she used it -- like a detective -- to uncover and discover the back story and bring it, remarkably, into the present.

I was still teaching at the time, and when a local theatre company decided to bring the story to the stage, a few years after the doc aired on the radio, I wondered how on earth this could even be possible. I went to a special teacher's preview showing, with a Q&A after the show with the producer/director, along with George Brady and his daughter. It was a most remarkable and unforgettable presentation and evening.

I am including here 2 short links to interviews with George Brady (who passed away in 2019). If I can find the link to the actual documentary as it first aired on CBC, I will edit it into this post. The link I had for it is no longer working but I am sure that with a bit of digging, I should be able to find something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyzNTdsBoeE&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_gp0lNOiCM

Well, the original documentary doesn't seem to be archived at CBC, which is a head-scratcher. But I found this and I did not know it had been made into a film, as well!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/docu-drama-tells-story-of-hana-s-suitcase-...

>2 avatiakh: Thank you for the links, Shelley. I just happened to have Hana's Suitcase among books which were recently donated to my Little Free Library. I sat down to read it today after knowing you just recently mentioned it. It was unputdownable and had me in tears probably throughout most of the book. I think it is an excellent teaching tool for children as it doesn't dwell on horrors, but states the facts of Hana's life under the Nazis in Czechoslvakia. The tension of Hana's sad story is broken by the excitement and enthusiasm of Fumiko's parallel story of researching Hana's story. I'm sorry to learn that George Brady is no longer alive. You were so lucky to have been able to hear him in person.

---------------------------

Hana's Suitcase - Karen Levine



This is a true story in which Fumiko Ishioka, the director of the Tokyo Education Resource Center in Tokyo, Japan, reaches out to museums for artifacts with which to teach Japanese children about the Holocaust. After much effort, she was given a package of items, of which one, a suitcase which had belonged to Hana Brady, a Czechoslovakian child murdered by the Nazis, motivated her to teach others about the Holocaust by breaking the experience down to just one individual and searching for more information about her.

This book is written for school-age children, but it is well worth reading by any adult. I was surprised that anyone in Japan with their own suffering during World War II would put so much effort into learning about a Jewish child in Europe. However, the theme is the importance of learning about others who differ from ourselves culturally and seeking the human and decent things about them-- thereby learning how we are all more alike than different.

The book not only tells Hana's story well, but it provides photographs to bring it alive and much closer to to hearts of those who read it. It’s beautifully done.

As well as learning the truth of the Holocaust, it is also very important for children, we believe, to think about what they can do to fight against racism and intolerance and to create peace by their own hands.

--Fumiko Ishioka in a letter to Hana Brady’s brother, George Brady - August 22, 2000

Re >4 jessibud2:, >5 SqueakyChu: - I think I may have found the link I was looking for. Here is a rebroadcast. At first, I got a note saying it won't play on my browser but I clicked it anyhow and it worked.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1428476483549

Just as an interesting aside, the host of the program, The Sunday Edition is Michael Enright. He is the one who first aired the documentary. He also happens to be the husband of author Karen Levine!

>He is the one who first aired the documentary. He also happens to be the husband of author Karen Levine!

That's pretty cool!

Didn't Karen Levine do a great job with the way she set up this book? It was amazing!

I've pulled out my copy of Hana's Suitcase after reading Paul's review.


The Cage by Ruth Minsky Sender (1986)
YA nonfiction / Read in 2015
Sender writes of her experiences as a girl during the Holocaust. Her mother is taken in one of the roundups and she becomes responsible for her younger brothers in the Lodz ghetto at the age of sixteen. Eventually she ends up in Auschwitz and then is moved on to other work camps. Through it all she never stops writing poems, and this actually saves her life, when she gets an infection in her hand, the doctor convinces the commandant that the poems raise the morale of the other inmates, and Sender is sent to a hospital for treatment. After the war she is reunited with two of her three older siblings (her mother had sent them into Russia at the start of the war). Reading this makes one aware once again of the horrors that the Jewish people faced during the war years. Her mother's mantra, 'as long as there is life, there is hope', a saying that sustains Sender throughout as she loses friends and family.

I noticed that illustrator Anita Lobel, wife of children's writer Arnold Lobel has written a memoir of her life during WW2 in hiding in Poland, No pretty pictures : a child of war. She was only 5 yrs old and was hidden along with her baby brother by the family's nanny in a convent.

>8 avatiakh: - See my note in >6 jessibud2:, for the rebroadcast of the original radio documentary of Hana's Suitcase, from which the book was created. It's worth the listen!

>9 jessibud2: Thanks, I'll do that. There are so many worthy books to read.

>8 avatiakh: I own No pretty pictures : a child of war. Sadly it's packed away somewhere with all my Holocaust, history, and biography books. I need to find a different handyman, as I think the one who was supposed to build my bookshelves is not coming back. I'm tired of so many books boxed away.

I've now read both Hana's Suitcase and Uncle Misha's Partisans by Yuri Suhl which won the National Jewish Book Award for Children's Literature (1974) & the Sydney Taylor Book Award (1973).

>11 labfs39: My copy is sitting close by. I have too many books and it is exasperating to know I own a book but can't locate it.

>12 avatiakh: Saturday I took advantage of the snowstorm raging outside and went through all my boxes in the backroom. Ostensibly I was looking for A Tale of Love and Darkness, but I pulled out probably fifty books that I want to read and felt deserved the light of day. The Oz book was in the next to last box, of course.

ETA: I found No Pretty Pictures too.

I saw Hana's Suitcase on a cart of new books at work and checked it out as soon as the labels were on. It's an amazing and inspirational story.

>14 cbl_tn: Great spotting.

Willy & Max by Amy Littlesugar (2006)
picturebook/Read in 2017

A Holocaust story around the friendship between two Belgium boys, one of whom is Jewish. Willy's family promise to look after a painting, The Lady, belonging to Max's family when the Nazis arrive and take valuables from Max's home. However someone informs on Willy's family having contact with Jews, so their antique shop is raided. Many years later in the USA, Willy is contacted, authorities have found the painting and because of a photo of the two boys attached to the back of The Lady, they've identified him. Willy, an old man now is determined to track down Max to give him his painting back. He locates Max's family, Max has recently died, but his family finally gets the painting that Max talked about so much. A good story that could lead to much discussion. There is nothing too upsetting in this story. Illustrated by William Low.

The author's note tells about The Commission for Art Recovery and stolen Jewish art.

The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust co-written and co-illustrated by Karen Gray Ruelle & Deborah Durland DeSaix (2010)
picturebook / read in 2017

This was quite fascinating. During World War Two the Muslims of Paris helped many North African Jews and small children pass as Muslim and avoid capture by the Nazis. At the time most of the Paris based Muslims were Berbers from Kabylia in Algeria. The Kabyle were also active in the resistance, hiding people in the mosque for a few days before getting them out of Paris. The Nazis were less likely to search the premises thoroughly as they didn't want to stir up trouble with any North Africans while they had a war on in the North African desert.
The author got most of their material from interviews with Derri Berkani who made a documentary on the 'forgotten resistance' in 1990. The illustrations are quite lovely, the coverart especially.

Mister Doctor: Janusz Korczak and the Orphans of the Warsaw Ghetto by Irène Cohen-Janca (2015)
illustrated story / Read 2017

I found this children's story about the orphans and Janusz Korczak really inspiring. The text succeeds to convey the spirit of Korczak's philosophy of respect, honour and kindness that made his orphanage so different. There are hints of fairy tale and also mentions of his character Matt from King Matt the First, the children carry a King Matt flag when they enter the ghetto for the first time. Overall a very good children's story about a very sad event in human history.

The artwork is by Italian Maurizio Quarello and looking at his other work it appears to be quite a departure. Here he uses graphite pencils on a tinted background to great effect.

A youtube presentation of the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUgdKA_BQVY
A more informative review here: https://thechildrenswar.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/mister-doctor-janusz-korczak-orph...

Janusz Korczak: "The lives of great men are like legends-difficult but beautiful, "

'Janusz Korczak once wrote, and it was true of his. Yet most Americans have never heard of Korczak, a Polish-Jewish children´s writer and educator who is as well known in Europe as Anne Frank. Like her, he died in the Holocaust and left behind a diary; unlike her, he had a chance to escape that fate-a chance he chose not to take.
His legend began on August 6, 1942, during the early stages of the Nazi liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto - though his dedication to destitute children was legendary long before the war. When the Germans ordered his famous orphanage evacuated, Korczak was forced to gather together the two hundred children in his care. He led them with quiet dignity on that final march through the ghetto streets to the train that would take them to "resettlement in the East" - the Nazi euphemism for the death camp Treblinka. He was to die as Henryk Goldszmit, the name he was born with, but it was by his pseudonym that he would be remembered.

It was Janusz Korczak who introduced progressive orphanages designed as just communities into Poland, founded the first national children´s newspaper, trained teachers in what we now call moral education, and worked in juvenile courts defending children's rights. His books How to Love a Child and The Child´s Right to Respect gave parents and teachers new insights into child psychology. Generations of young people had grown up on his books, especially the classic King Matt the First, which tells of the adventures and tribulations of a boy king who aspires to bring reforms to his subjects.

It was as beloved in Poland as Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland were in the English-speaking world. During the mid- 1930s, he had his own radio program, in which, as the "Old Doctor," he dispensed homey wisdom and wry humor. Somehow, listening to his deceptively simple words made his listeners feel like better people.

At the end, Korczak, who had directed a Catholic as well as a Jewish orphanage before the war, had refused all offers of help for his own safety from his Gentile colleagues and friends. "You do not leave a sick child in the night, and you do not leave children at a time like this," he said.' - from http://korczak.com/Biography/kap-1who.htm

Benno and the night of broken glass by Meg Wiviott (2010)
picturebook
A story from a cat's perspective of Kristallnacht and the growing Nazi threat to Jewish families living alongside their German neighbours in a Berlin neighbourhood. I especially liked the illustration style used by Josée Bisaillon. There is a short bibliography and additional reading list as well as a factual afterword with two photos of the events described in the text including the burning of the Neue Synagogue, the largest in Berlin.


The Butterfly by Patricia Polacco (2000)
picturebook
Based on the true story of Polacco's aunt whose mother was in the French resistance and hid a Jewish family in the cellar. Young Monique wakes to see a ghost of a young girl in her room, but it turns out to be a real girl who is living in her cellar. They share a friendship until it becomes dangerous and Sevrine and her parents must be moved. A compelling story and equally compelling images.
The cat and the Star of David necklace reminded me of an excellent Holocaust YA read, The Thought of High Windows which is also set in the south of France.

It's amazing to me how many wonderful children's picture books there are that deal with the Holocaust.

The Whispering Town by Jennifer Elvgren (2014)
picturebook / Read in 2014
This picturebook story is based on a true story about helping Danish Jews escape to neutral Sweden. The illustrations by Fabio Santomauro would be very much at home in a graphic novel format but here they also work very well. I came across mention of this book in an online article about recent children's publications on the Holocaust: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/170927/picture-books-about-hol...

>19 labfs39: I seem to have read a fair few of them.

I've read two books by Kathy Kacer recently. She's written about 24 books mostly of Jewish experience of World War Two aimed at middle grade readers. Under the Iron Bridge was about the Edelweis Pirates, with the main character motivated to join based on seeing his Jewish friend and family being mistreated. Masters of Silence was about two Jewish children hidden with others in a French convent and eventually being helped by Marcel Marceau to cross the border to Switzerland.
As an adult reader these were a tad too juvenile though are good introductions for child readers.

I also read Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued by Peter Sis, this borders the picturebook/graphic novel divide. I love Sis's work. This was about Nicholas Winton's kindertransport. Vera Diamantova Gissing was one of the children and later wrote Pearls of Childhood: The Poignant True Wartime Story of a Young Girl Growing Up in an Adopted Land.

I recently finished a children's time slip novel Running with Ivan by Suzanne Leal. Australian Leal had had many interesting talks with her landlord who was a child Holocaust survivor and she utilised some of his experiences in this book. Part of the book is set in Terezin camp just outside of Prague.