Witnesses to War: 8 True Life Stories of Nazi Persecution

Provides the true stories of Jewish children and others from all over Europe who managed to endure and survive the persecution of the Nazis during World War II.

Grade 5 Up-A book filled with black-and-white photographs that express the incomprehensible horror of war and its effect on children. One photo shows a young child standing with a group of boys. While they look forward, holding their few belongings, emotionless, he is crying and his face is turned away from the Nazi officer standing before them. The caption reads, simply, "Czech children selected for 'Germanization.'" More than any movie or play or book of atrocities, this image captures the nightmare of Nazi Germany. In his serviceable text, Leapman presents eight compelling accounts. Each one tells the story of a child from a different area of Europe. Most of the names are unfamiliar: gypsies held at Auschwitz, Jewish girls hidden in a French convent, the children of German Jews shipped to London for their own safety. The book ends with a look at "The Legacy of Anne Frank." An essential title for anyone studying this black period in our history.
Herman Sutter, Saint Pius X High School, Houston, TX
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Leapman, a British journalist, suggests the far reaches of Nazi terror by focusing on the experiences of eight children, each victimized during WWII. Anne Frank is here; so is Renee Roth-Hano, whose own book Touch Wood has already described her experiences as a Jewish girl hidden in a French convent. Another Jewish girl escapes Germany through the Kindertransport; a Jewish girl from Paris finds safety in the village of Le Chambon; other children narrowly escape the Warsaw ghetto. These subjects have been more solidly treated elsewhere (for example, the chapter involving Le Chambon does not indicate the heroic scope of its rescue mission nor name the pastors famously responsible for it). But this book is worthwhile nonetheless. A generous supply of unusually well-researched photos amplifies even the more familiar sections, conferring on them a chilling immediacy. Leapman also includes material rarely presented for this age group. He describes the sinister workings of a program that kidnapped Polish children for adoption by proper German families; elsewhere, he traces the fates of the children of Lidice, the Czech village razed to retaliate for the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich. While this book lacks the emotional charge of a work like No Pretty Pictures (reviewed above), it has firm educational value. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 8^-12. Many thousands of children in Europe during World War II were stolen from their parents, screened in racial tests, and then selected for "Germanization" and adoption by German families; many never saw their parents again. Their experiences make up a significant part of this powerful collective biography, written without sensationalism by a British journalist who directed a BBC film about the Nazis' selective breeding program. Also included is a harrowing story, one that is seldom told, about a Gypsy child in Auschwitz. Then there is the boy from Lidice, the Czech town where all the men and most of the children were massacred by the Nazis. Each chapter begins with general historical background and then describes what happened to one child, often based on Leapman's interview with the adult survivor. Some of the other chapters--about children in hiding, and about those on the Kindertransport--will be more familiar from other Holocaust memoirs. Their painful stories show that even for those who found their families after the war, the reunion was sometimes difficult, as in the case of the Jewish child who did not want to give up the faith of the Catholics who had kept her safe. Unfortunately, the book's typeface is small and cramped, with almost no margins, but black-and-white photos document the gripping text, and the family snapshots break your heart. Hazel Rochman