Fitzgerald, Stephanie. Kristallnacht.

Fitzgerald, Stephanie. Kristallnacht. Capstone/Compass Point  2018 112p $35.99  ISBN 978-0-7565-5583-2     ms   Nonfiction  VG-BNS   series: Eyewitness To World War II 

Middle-school students who are interested in learning more about Kristallnacht and the beginnings of the Holocaust will appreciate this new title in the Eyewitness to World War II series.  The book is written in a story-like fashion with personal quotations and primary sources, and students will gain a better understanding of Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass". When German Jews were blamed for Germany’s problems, Hitler and the Nazi Party encouraged their private army, known as the Sturmabteilungen or SA, to destroy Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues.  Students read first-hand the devastation this event caused Jews, with more than 8,000 Jewish-owned homes, businesses, and schools destroyed by fire and total destruction and more than 30,000 Jews sent to concentration camps. The author provides readers with insights into Hitler and his power, as well as the conditions in the concentration camps -- the deaths, the discrimination against Jews, and what occurred in the aftermath of Kristallnacht.  Students will empathize with Jews, as these death camps murdered more than six million Jews, or two-thirds of the Jews living in Europe in 1939.

The author includes black-and-white period photographs, personal quotations, maps, primary sources, interesting sidebars, a timeline of events, a glossary of terms, a list of recommended books and websites, critical thinking questions, source notes, a bibliography, and a comprehensive index.  The title would make an excellent addition to a middle-school collection for both reading and history reports.   

Summary: “Recounts the events surrounding the November 1938 attacks in which Nazi troops in Germany and Austria destroyed more than eight thousand Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues, beginning the Nazi's persecution of the Jews.”

Holocaust, World War II, Kristallnacht, 1938      

                                         --Charleen Forba-MacCain

Gruenbaum, Michael, and Todd Hasak-Lowy. Somewhere There Is Still a Sun.

Gruenbaum, Michael, and Todd Hasak-Lowy.  Somewhere There Is Still a Sun.  Aladdin see Simon Schuster 2015  384p.  $17.99  ISBN 978-1-4424-8486-3    ms/hs  Memoir  VG-BN 

This well-written memoir details the life and experiences of Michael (Misha) Gruenbaum, who was born in Prague and lived in the Jewish community there until his transfer to a concentration camp in Terezin, Czechoslovakia, with his mother and sister.  Written in the first person, Michael’s memoir tells the story of the most horrific years of his life, from 1939-1945, from the perspective of the boy that he was at that time.

The events are written as Misha the boy understood them, so young readers will feel empathy for him and relate to his family’s trials and suffering. Gruenbaum tells in great detail of the fear that he felt every day, waiting to be transported, and then being sent with his mother and sister to live in the concentration camp in Terezin until the end of the war when the Red Cross arrived, and the reader feels as though s/he is coming along on the journey.  Misha describes the conflict and surreal emotions that he experienced for four years as he roomed with forty other boys who became his brothers, playing soccer one day, hiding another day, and always hungry.

The book is written with sensitivity, but it accurately depicts the brutal events and raw emotions felt by many Jews during the Holocaust. It will resonate well with students seeking first-person information on the Holocaust. The memoir ends with an epilogue that provides an adult’s perspective on Misha’s adolescent misconceptions and misunderstandings of the events that occurred. It also describes his move to the United States and his reasons for writing the book, which is highly recommended.

Summary: This is a well-written memoir detailing the life and experiences of Michael Gruenbaum, born into Prague’s Jewish community and later transferred to a labor camp in Terezin, Czechoslovakia, during the Holocaust, 1939-1945.

Holocaust, World War II                               --Virginia McGarvey

Bascomb, Neal. The Nazi Hunters.

Bascomb, Neal.  The Nazi Hunters.  Scholastic/Arthur Levine  2013  245p  $16.99  ISBN 978-0-545-43099-9  ms/hs  Nonfiction  VG-BN      

This well-written book describes how a team of volunteers, Israeli Secret Service, spies and survivors worked together to locate Adolph Eichmann in Argentina, capture him, and secretly extradite him to Jerusalem for trial. Adolf Eichmann was one of the most notorious war criminals of the Holocaust who was responsible for sending millions to death camps under Adolf Hitler’s plan to solve “the Jewish problem.”

The plot is straightforward and the writing is thoughtful, yet not overladen with sentimentality. While the book reads like a novel, it chronologically and factually presents the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann.

Obviously, Neal Bascomb has spent a lot of time researching and finding primary accounts related to the capture.  The inclusion of primary documents, photographs and illustrations adds to the credibility of the crisply written text and adds validity and clarification.  Bascomb also responsibly comments in the author’s note that he has recorded information as accurately as possible but that “now, despite my best efforts, my reconstruction of these events is no doubt imperfect.”

Because of the chronological arrangement and novel-like feel of the writing, this nonfiction book will captivate readers as they learn of the horrid acts of Adolf Eichmann and his involvement in the Holocaust. Additionally, a list of the participants provides lucidity for the reader. The book concludes with an epilogue, a comprehensive bibliography, notes for each chapter, the author’s note, and an index, all of which make this book a fabulous research resource tool as well.        

Summary: This book describes how a team of spies and survivors locate and capture Adolf Eichmann, one of the world’s most notorious war criminals of the Holocaust.

Eichmann, Adolf, 1906-1962                                  --Virginia McGarvey

Gratz, Alan. Prisoner B-3087.

Gratz, Alan.  Prisoner B-3087.  Scholastic Press  2013  260p  $16.99    ISBN 978-0-545-45901-3  ms    Historical Fiction  VG-BN

Based on the life of Jack Gruener, a Holocaust survivor, this is the story of Yanek, a Jewish boy who survives ten concentration camps, even after everything he has and everyone he loves have been brutally stripped from him.  Tattooed with the identification “PRISONER B-3087,” Yanek learns to survive at any cost.

Telling the fictionalized tale in the first-person voice increases the immediacy of this moving narrative.  When Hitler invades Poland, Yanek has no inkling of what the future holds, having turned a deaf ear to Hitler’s radio broadcasts that boast of making Europe “Jew-free.”  Yanek and his family adjust to having their neighborhood walled off, living in a ghetto, and eventually making their exodus to live in a rooftop pigeon coop in order to avoid Nazi death crews.   When his parents are lost to Nazi “selection,” Yanek is on his own.  He is thirteen years old.

Yanek’s struggle to survive rapidly becomes raw and brutal.  He is rounded up, deported, and sent to the first of ten concentration camps.  In each camp, Yanek narrowly escapes death; his harrowing experiences are related matter-of-factly, which lends a surreal, yet chilling, quality to the story.  The episode in which Yanek hides under the floorboards of the prisoner barracks at Amon Goeth is especially harrowing, and actually happened to Jack Gruener.  Against all odds, Yanek survives for six years, until the Allies liberate the Dachau concentration camp.

Author Alan Gratz was able to interview the “real-life” Yanek, Jack Gruener.  With Gruener’s blessing, Gratz admits: “I’ve taken some liberties with time and events to paint a fuller and more representative picture of the Holocaust as a whole.”  Both Gruener and Gratz felt this story was important to tell so that “the realities of the Holocaust....would not be forgotten.”

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)-Poland-Fiction.               -–Hilary Welliver

Hodge, Deborah. Rescuing the Children.

Hodge, Deborah.   Rescuing the Children.  Tundra Books  60p   $17.95    978-1-77049-256-9 2012  ms   E-BN        History     

This insightful book presents primary-source information about the Holocaust.  Of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis, more than 1.5 million were children.  The Kindertransport succeeded in rescuing nearly ten thousand children from the clutches of the Nazis.  It began after Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, in November 1938, and lasted until the formal start of the war.  The idea of the Kindertransport was proposed by a delegation of British Jewish leaders and members of the Society of Friends who requested their government offer sanctuary to Jewish children under the age of seventeen. 

Well researched and well presented, Rescuing the Children provides an excellent look at one of mankind's darkest periods.  It begins with a brief explanation of the rise of Hitler and his plans to annihilate the Jewish people and discusses the Kindertransport through first-person accounts of eight still-living children who escaped.  The difficulties and struggles that these children experienced in leaving their families and going to a strange place are not minimized but explained in context.  The author continues with a description of the children’s trips by train and boat, their lives in England during and after the war, and their ultimate discovery that most of their families had perished in the concentration camps.  The book also contains brief biographies of several of the Righteous who helped these children.  Hodge offers the information in a well-balanced, succinct, and lucid manner.  The writing is clear and concise, presenting the topic through both primary sources and narrative accounts.  The text is enhanced by the inclusion of black-and-white photographs and documents, colorful quilted squares representing the children, and maps.  The book ends with a glossary, a timeline, a bibliography of books and Internet addresses, and an index.

Kindertransport                                             --Susan Ogintz