Fireflies in the Dark: The Story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the Children of Terezin - Hardcover

Rubin, Susan Goldman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823414612 ISBN 13: 9780823414611

Publisher: Holiday House, 2000

Synopsis

In December 1942 Freidl Dicker-Brandeis packed her suitcase for the last time. What did she fill it with? Art supplies. Brushes, paints, and paper were her luggage when she was forced by Nazi soldiers to move to the Terezin concentration camp. An artist and art instructor, Freidl used her limited supplies to bring a world of beauty and fantasy to children in the camp—most of whom would die tragically at Auschwitz. This story reveals how flashes of kindness can bring joy and relief—like fireflies in the dark.
The story is enhanced with photographs and reproductions of the amazing artwork completed by Freidl Dicker-Brandeis, her students, and her colleagues during their time at Terezin.

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Goldman Rubin is the author of more than fifty-five books for children. She has written extensively on human rights in books such as Fireflies in the Dark: the Story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the Children of Terezin, which was a Sydney Taylor Award Honor Book and a SCBWI Golden Kite Honor Book, and Freedom Summer: The 1964 Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi, which was an ALA Notable Book, a Booklist Editors' Choice and A Golden Kite Honor Book. Many of her books focus on the arts, with an emphasis on the visual arts. She lives in Malibu, California.

From Booklist:

"Of the 15,000 children who passed through Terezin, only 100 survived. But their artwork and writings live on as testimony to their lives and spirits." This heartbreaking picture book tells the children's story by focusing on their remarkable art teacher, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, a Jewish artist from Czechoslovakia, who took art supplies and books with her to the concentration camp and ran secret classes for the children. She and nearly all her pupils perished at Auschwitz, but after the war, 5,000 of the children's drawings, paintings, and collages were discovered hidden in two suitcases. The pictures are now exhibited around the world, and many of them are beautifully reproduced on the pages of this book. Some of the work is naive in style; some is sophisticated. There are portraits, self-portraits, and pictures that show horrific camp conditions and dreams of home (for example, a family Passover supper). The facts, including the dates, in the brief captions make you return to the pictures ("Robert Bondy painted empty landscapes over and over again with his village in the distance"). Rubin interviewed several survivors, and she integrates their personal testimonies with the history of the camp. This is an excellent book to use across the curriculum in Holocaust studies, in art, history, and literature classes with middle-grade and older readers. Rubin's detailed references and sources include books, documentary films and videos, and Web sites to help students who want to know more. There's no sensationalism here. Everything is distanced, but the sense of loss is overwhelming. Hazel Rochman
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About this edition

• Publisher: Holiday House
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0823414612
• ISBN 13: 9780823414611
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48