We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries Of Teenagers Who Died In The Holocaust - Softcover

Boas, Jacob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 059084475X ISBN 13: 9780590844758

Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks, 1996

Synopsis

World War II Jewish teens David, Yitzhak, Moshe, Eva, and Anne tell their tragic stories as victims at Hitler's death camps through journal entries that introduce the horrors of the Holocaust to present-day readers. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author

Jacob Boas has a Ph.D. in modern European history and is the director of the Oregon Holocaust Research Center. He lives with his wife and three children in Beaverton, Oregon.

From Publishers Weekly

Born in 1943 in the Westerbork concentration camp in Holland, Boas here brilliantly unfolds the history of the Holocaust through poignant excerpts from five teenagers' wartime diaries, enhanced with skillful commentary. Predictably, Anne Frank turns up, in the final section, but, as Boas points out, "alongside the other four diaries, Anne's looks different than when you read it by itself as the sole voice of the Holocaust." By the time readers encounter Anne Frank, they will have met Jewish teenagers trapped in equally tragic but even more violent circumstances in various parts of Europe, from a small Polish village to the Vilna ghetto to Brussels and Hungary. The young writers relay their hopes and fears even as they chronicle the disintegration of their daily lives. One is religious, another politically active, others wrapped up in their families-Boas points out each writer's sensitivities as he explains the terrible traps into which the individual teenagers fall. In exploring their fates, he impresses upon the reader their vitality, and, by extension, implies the enormity of the Holocaust's losses. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 059084475X
• ISBN 13: 9780590844758
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 208