Byers, Ann. Saving Children From the Holocaust.

Byers, Ann  Saving Children From the Holocaust  

 Enslow      2012  128p  31.93 978-0-7660-3323-8 

 ms/hs E-BNS       

   Subtitled A Heroic Story from the Holocaust, this is a book about extraordinary courage and valor. Each chapter offers the personal narratives and photographs of the active participants, both the Jewish escapees and the Danes.  The first-person accounts are presented in italics and discuss the reasons for their actions and the events that took place.          

     During World War II, the Nazis attempted to conquer Europe and rid the world of the Jewish people and others they considered “undesirables.”  They succeeded, to a great extent, in exterminating more than six million Jews and many millions of others.   Only in Denmark was there nationwide resistance to this plan.  The Jews had been welcomed in there as full citizens for several hundred years before the war.  Since the Germans wanted their occupation of Denmark to be as trouble-free as possible because they needed Danish agricultural and industrial products for the war effort, they made no attempt, in the beginning, to remove the Danish Jews.  It was not until 1943, when Hitler demanded the death of the Jews, that the Germans put their plans into action.  Georg Duckwitz, a German attaché living in Denmark, informed his Danish friends of the coming roundup.  Word was spread by the Resistance and the Jews were hidden in the homes of many of their neighbors and later smuggled across the sea to Sweden.  This was the only time in Nazi Germany’s history that a large-scale operation to round up the Jews had failed.  Because of the help of so many of the Danes, the lives of nearly eight thousand Jews were saved.
     The book is both exceptionally well written and very exciting.  Each chapter offers the personal narratives and photographs of the active participants, both the Jewish escapees and the Danes that helped them.  The first-person accounts are presented in italics and discuss the reasons for their actions and the events that took place.  These highlight the factual information given and include what happened in the years after the war. They share their feelings, fears, memories, and the sense of decency that made them become part of the Danish Resistance.  Doing what was right in their eyes was more important than doing what was easy.  The book ends with a chronology, a section of source notes, a bibliography, a glossary, and an index. 
      Holocaust Through Primary Sources (Enslow)     This excellent series contains books covering Kristallnacht, Auschwitz, liberation of the concentration camps, saving the children of the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and rescuing the Danish Jews.  Each presents primary source information that is well-researched and clearly written, providing an excellent discussion of one of mankind’s darkest periods. Holocaust   Susan Ogintz

Trapped - Youth in the Nazi Ghettos.

Byers, Ann. Trapped - Youth in the Nazi Ghettos.

Enslow 2010 128p 31.93 True Stories of Teens in the Holocaust(Enslow)

978-0-7660-3272-9 ms/hs VG-BN

Through diaries and interviews, teenagers recall life as a Jew during World War II. In particular, their life in the ghettos established by the Nazis. Black and white photos, and quotes make the events of the Holocaust come alive for today’s teens. Grades 7 up. Primary source quotations from diaries and interviews are interwoven into the text of the book. Black and white photographs capture the fear and blankness on the faces of those who were housed in ghettos and forced to work as slave labor in factories. In contrast, photographs of happy families before the Holocaust are shown for specific people who are interviewed or have their diaries excerpted. The harsh living conditions, meager food rations, and certain exposure to disease in the ghettos were in stark contrast to the lives lived prior to Hitler’s rise to power. The brutality of the Nazis is captured quite well through the text of the book augmented by research primarily from the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. The book chronicles the reason for ghettos being built, the sealing of the ghettos, life in the ghetto, what kept people alive both in body and spirit and the final solution as Hitler called the proposed extermination of the Jewish people. Those who survived either find it hard to speak out or have made it their life’s work to speak out so such an atrocity will be remembered and condemned. A timeline, chapter notes, glossary, further research sources and index complete the book. Because of the common meaning of ghetto, the lack of a definition of ghetto in the glossary is a glaring omission. Excellent reading for grades 7 and up. McNicol,Lois