From award-winning author Kathy Kacer - Gabi, our heroine, recounts how as a young Jewish girl she lived on a family farm in Eastern Europe during the Second World War. She describes her community before the Nazi occupation and the events that unfolded afterwards. When the Nazis conducted house searches for Jewish children, Gabi successfully hid in the dining-room dresser. The only thing retrieved from the home after the war was the dresser that saved...
Yellow Star, Red Star asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled-ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated-throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those lands that most of the extermination campaign occurred. As part of accession to the European Union, Jelena Subotić shows, East European states were required to adopt, participate in, and contribute to the established Western narrative of the Holocaust. This requirement created...
The true story of Edith Schwalb, a young Jewish girl who was saved from the Nazis by the courage of the entire French village of Moissac.
Edith's story is remarkable not only for her own bravery, but for the bravery of those that helped her: an entire village, including its mayor and citizenry, heroically conspired to conceal the presence of hundreds of Jewish children who lived in the safe house. The children went to the local school, roamed the...
From award-winning author Kathy Kacer - It's already a dangerous time for thirteen-year-old Clara and her family. They have just been imprisoned in Terezin (Terezinstadt), a ghetto in a medieval town near Prague - which was built to show the world how "w
During World War II, Hendrik, the son of a fisherman, notices his Jewish friends being ostracized. When he realizes the danger that Hitler's policies ultimately mean for his friends and their families, he hatches a plan to smuggle them out of the country by boat.
Laura has just three weeks to go before her Jewish "coming of age" ceremony, called a Bat Mitzvah, when she is assigned a special project. She is to read the diary of Sara Gittler, a young girl her own age who was imprisoned by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. Sara never had the chance to celebrate her coming of age, so Laura is to learn about Sara's life and then share her Bat Mitzvah with her "twin" by speaking of her at the...
Based on real events and real characters!
It is the middle of World War II, and Gabi and her mother have been lucky so far, eluding the grasp of Nazi soldiers who are sending Jewish people away to unknown fates. But she, her mother and her young cousin, Max, realize that they will never be safe in their town. With the help of a trusted friend, a kind-hearted priest and a poor yet brave farming family, they go into hiding in a tiny mountain village.
It...
Thirteen-year-old Jakob's family has hidden their true identity as Jews and are living as Catholics in Budapest during WWII. One day, in a burst of loyalty, Jakob decides to reveal that he is Jewish, a choice that will put his whole family in danger.
Jakob hopes his best friend Ivan, a Christian with a high-ranking military father, will help keep his family safe, but he comes to believe that Ivan has abandoned them. Sent as a prisoner to Auschwitz,...
Based on the true story of two sisters sheltered from the Nazis by a group of Catholic nuns during World War II. Mama had always told twelve-year-old Susan that there was no safe place for a Jew, especially in German-occupied Hungary in 1944. Susan is skeptical and afraid when she and her little sister, Vera, are sent to a convent to be kept "safe" from the Nazis. Susan and Vera find their lives transformed and soon discover the true nature of courage...
It is 1939 in Berlin, Germany, and twelve-year-old Lillian and her Papa are on the run from Nazi soldiers. Because they are Jewish, they are in danger of being arrested and put in prison. Lillian's father is blind and it seems no one is willing to help them, until they meet Otto Weidt. Mr. Weidt runs a factory that makes brushes for the Nazi army, and his secret is that he employs blind Jewish workers. Lillian learns that Otto Weidt is determined...
The remarkable true story of a young girl named Edith and the French village of Moissac that helped her and many other children during the Holocaust. The town's mayor and citizens concealed the presence of hundreds of Jewish children who lived in a safe house, risking their own safety by hiding the children from the Nazis in plain site, saving them from being captured and detained and most certainly saving their lives.
Lily Toufar and her family arrive in Shanghai in 1938, having fled from Nazi-occupied Vienna and the persecution of Jewish families like theirs. Shanghai is a strange place for a young European girl, but it is one of the few places in the world to offer Jews refuge from the Holocaust. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and under pressure from Hitler, the Japanese government in Shanghai orders Jewish refugees to move into a ghetto in an area of Shanghai...
In Budejovice, a quiet village in Czechoslovakia, laws and rules were introduced to restrict the freedom of Jewish people during the dark days of World War II. A small plot of land by the river was allocated to the village's Jewish youth. While almost all areas of the village were off limits to the children, here they were able to meet and play. A small shack on this land became the community center--a place to escape from persecution and discrimination....
In the spring of 2000, Fumiko Ishioka, the curator of a small Holocaust education centre for children in Tokyo, received a special shipment of artifacts from the Auschwitz museum. Among the items was an empty suitcase. From the moment she saw it, Fumiko was captivated by the writing on the outside that identified its owner — Hana Brady, May 16, 1931, Waisenkind (the German word for orphan). Children visiting the centre were full of questions. Who...
Walter is a young child when his parents decide to leave their home in Germany and start a new life in the Netherlands. As Jews, they know they are not safe under the Nazi regime. From one day to the next, Walter's world goes from safe and predictable to full of uncertainty. Walter is at first too young to appreciate the danger that he is in, and everything seems like a great adventure. But as the years pass and the war progresses, his family is forced...
Do young people today find meaning in the Holocaust? That's the question that prompted a writing project across North America, Italy, and Australia asking young people to share their ideas about this time in history. Some students wrote short stories. Some discussed the impact of books they had read and wrote about the messages that they understood from these books. Several interviewed survivors and recorded their impressions. Many talked about how...
On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia. Filled with a sense of adventure and national pride, they left their parents' homes wearing their best clothes and confidently waving good-bye. Believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months, they were eager to report for government service. Instead, the young women-many of them teenagers-were sent to Auschwitz. Their government...
Nonna Bannister carried a secret almost to her Tennessee grave: the diaries she kept as a young girl experiencing the horrors of the Holocaust while learning compassion and love for her fellow human beings. Nonna's writings tell the remarkable tale of how a Russian girl, born into a family that had known wealth and privileges, was exposed to the concentration camps and learned the value of human life and the importance of forgiveness.
