Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Children in the Holocaust and World War II - Softcover

Holliday, Laurel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671520555 ISBN 13: 9780671520557

Publisher: Atria Books, 1996

Synopsis

Children in the Holocaust and World War II is an extraordinary, unprecedented anthology of diaries written by children all across Nazi-occupied Europe and in England.

Twenty-three young people, ages ten through eighteen, recount in vivid detail the horrors they lived through, day after day. As powerful as The Diary of Anne Frank and Zlata's Diary, here are children's experiences—all written with an unguarded eloquence that belies their years. The diarists include a Hungarian girl, selected by Mengele to be put in a line of prisoners who were tortured and murdered; a Danish Christian boy executed by the Nazis for his partisan work; and a twelve-year-old Dutch boy who lived through the Blitzkrieg in Rotterdam. In the Janowska death camp, eleven-year-old Pole Janina Heshele so inspired her fellow prisoners with the power of her poetry that they found a way to save her from the Nazi ovens. Mary Berg was imprisoned at sixteen in the Warsaw ghetto even though her mother was American and Christian. She left an eyewitness record of ghetto atrocities, a diary she was able to smuggle out of captivity. Moshe Flinker, a sixteen-year-old Netherlander, was betrayed by an informer who led the Gestapo to his family's door; Moshe and his parents died in Auschwitz in 1944. They come from Czechoslovakia, Austria, Israel, Poland, Holland, Belgium, Hungary, Lithuania, Russia, England, and Denmark. They write in spare, searing prose of life in ghettos and concentration camps, of bombings and Blitzkriegs, of fear and courage, tragedy and transcendence. Their voices and their vision ennoble us all.

About this title

About the Author

Laurel Holliday, formerly a college teacher, editor, and psychotherapist, now writes full time in Seattle. She is the award-winning author of the Children of Conflict series: Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries; Children of The Troubles: Our Lives in the Crossfire of Northern Ireland; and Children of Israel, Children of Palestine: Our Own True Stories. Those three volumes were collected and abridged in the Archway Paperback edition titled Why Do They Hate Me?: Young Lives Caught in War and Conflict. Dreaming in Color, Living in Black and White is an abridged edition of Holliday?s fourth title in the Children of Conflict series, Children of the Dream: Our Own Stories of Growing Up Black in America. Laurel Holliday is also the author of Heartsongs, an international collection of young girls' diaries, which won a Best Book for Young Adults Award from the American Library Association.

From School Library Journal

YA?Diary entries written by young people in ghettos, concentration camps, cities, and a Copenhagen prison camp offer insightful comments and glimpses of life during World War II. Each selection is introduced by a brief biography that includes the author's name, country, age, family circumstances before and during the war, and concludes with circumstances of death or postwar life. Nine girls and 14 boys, Jews and gentiles, aged 10 to 18, are featured. Teens should be interested in reading about the sexploits of Joan Wyndham, a 16-year-old London resident; her suburban neighbor, Colin Perry, 18, and his detailed recording of air raids; resistance fighter Hannah Senesh, 17; and Danish spy Kim Malthe-Brun, 18. A good selection for YAs interested in the experiences of their agemates from other times, the Holocaust, life during war, or those in need of a collective biography.?Barbara Hawkins, Oakton High School, Fairfax,
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0671520555
• ISBN 13: 9780671520557
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 440