Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps - Hardcover

Warren, Andrea

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688174973 ISBN 13: 9780688174972

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2001

Synopsis

What was the secret to surviving the death camps? How did you keep from dying of heartbreak in a place of broken hearts and broken bodies? "Think of it as a game, Jack," an older prisoner tells him. "Play the game right and you might outlast the Nazis."

Caught up in Hitler's Final Solution to annihilate Europe's Jews, fifteen-year-old Jack is torn from his family and thrown into the nightmarish world of the concentration camps.

Despite intolerable conditions, Jack resolves not to hate his captors, and vows to see his family again. He forges friendships with other prisoners, and together they struggle to make it one more hour, one more day. But even with his strong will to live, can Jack survive the life-and-death game he is forced to play with his Nazi captors?

Award-winning author Andrea Warren has crafted an unforgettable true a story of courage, friendship, family love, and a boy becoming a man in the shadow of the Third Reich.

About this title

About the Author

Andrea Warren says, "I'm always looking behind facts and dates in search of how extraordinary times impact ordinary people. I think the most engaging way to study history is by seeing it through the eyes of participants. Each of us wants to know, If that had been me at that time, in that place, what would I have done? What would have happened to me?"

Among Warren's honors are the prestigious Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story, which was also selected as an ALA Notable Book. She won the Midland Authors Award for Pioneer Girl. Growing Up on the Prairie. A former teacher and journalist, Warren writes from her home in the Kansas City suburb of Prairie Village, Kansas.

From the Back Cover

What was the secret to surviving the death camps? How did you keep from dying of heartbreak in a place of broken hearts and broken bodies? "Think of it as a game, Jack," an older prisoner tells him. "Play the game right and you might outlast the Nazis."

Caught up in Hitler's Final Solution to annihilate Europe's Jews, fifteen-year-old Jack is torn from his family and thrown into the nightmarish world of the concentration camps.

Despite intolerable conditions, Jack resolves not to hate his captors, and vows to see his family again. He forges friendships with other prisoners, and together they struggle to make it one more hour, one more day. But even with his strong will to live, can Jack survive the life-and-death game he is forced to play with his Nazi captors?

Award-winning author Andrea Warren has crafted an unforgettable true a story of courage, friendship, family love, and a boy becoming a man in the shadow of the Third Reich.

Reviews

Grade 5-8-Through the words and memories of Jack Mandelbaum, Warren presents a harrowing account of a Jewish boy's experience in Nazi prison camps. Mandelbaum had lived a comfortable life with his family in Gdynia, Poland, until the German invasion forced them to flee to a relative's village in 1939. Later, when the Jews were sent to concentration camps, the 12-year-old became separated from the rest of his family and wound up in the Blechhammer camp. By describing events through the boy's voice, the author does an excellent job of letting his words carry the power of the story. She avoids historical analysis, sticking to Mandelbaum's experiences, and brings readers into the nightmarish world of the concentration camp with a strong feeling of immediacy. As with many stories of great suffering, some of the minor details, such as risking death to steal a jar of marmalade, deliver the most impact. Besides the physical hardship, Warren conveys how frustrating and confusing it was for a child in such an environment. Once liberated, the young man learned the sad fate of his family and as he ironically observed, had he known his parents and siblings would not survive, he might not have struggled so hard to live himself. Black-and-white contemporary photographs illustrate the book. This story works as an introduction to the Holocaust and will also interest readers of Lila Perl's Four Perfect Pebbles (Greenwillow, 1996), Anne Frank's diary, and other works on the period.
Steven Engelfried, Deschutes County Library, Bend, OR
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 5-10. Simply told, Warren's powerful story blends the personal testimony of Holocaust survivor Jack Mandelbaum with the history of his time, documented by stirring photos from the archives of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Mandelbaum was 12 when the Nazis came to Poland in 1939. At first the thought of war was "thrilling." Then he saw his prosperous, happy home torn apart, and he spent three years as a teenager in the death camps in Germany, where he survived by a combination of courage, friendship, and luck. Warren, who never knew any Jews when she was growing up in a small Nebraska town, brings both passion and the distance of the outsider to the story. True to Mandelbaum's youthful viewpoint, she lets the story unfold slowly so readers don't know until the end what happened to Jack's mother and brother after they were separated, or whether his friends survived. The combination of Mandelbaum's experience and Warren's reporting of the whole picture makes this an excellent introduction for readers who don't know much about the history. There's only one false note. Unlike Anita Lobel's No Pretty Pictures (1998) and many other personal accounts, there's a radiant innocence here: everything "before" was blissful ("It was a lovely life"), and, even in the camps, Jack never has an ugly thought. The design is open and inviting with clear type, many photos, and an excellent multimedia bibliography. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688174973
• ISBN 13: 9780688174972
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160