Rescuers Defying the Nazis : Non-Jewish Teens Who Rescued Jews

Relates the stories of courageous non-Jewish teenagers who rescued Jews from the Nazis

Gr 5-8-Although these three books provide a somewhat fragmented description of how the Holocaust affected children and teenagers, they clearly document the courageous heroism of both young Jewish survivors and young gentiles who helped Jews hide from the Nazis. The texts also illustrate how rare this was because of the willing (and often enthusiastic) collaboration between the Nazis and civilians in Nazi-occupied countries such as France and Poland. In the Ghettos, the most cohesive of the three, relates harrowing accounts written by the courageous survivors of the Lodz, Theresienstadt, and Warsaw ghettos. Rescuers presents the stories of teenagers who were assisted by gentiles in Poland, Denmark, and Germany. The first-person narratives in Hidden Children are especially effective in personalizing the experiences of Jewish teens whose lives parallel Anne Frank's tragic story. The texts are complemented by remarkable, clear, and heartrending photo documentation of the genocide, and the layouts have a variety of fonts and black-and-white shading. The pictures alone will leave indelible impressions on young readers.-Jack Forman, Mesa College Library, San Diego

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