By Renee Hartman with Joshua M. Greene
4RBooks: 5/6, grades 5+ - 8+
Amazon rating: 4.7/5, grades 3-7
Good Reads: 4.04/5
Common Sense Media: 4/5, ages 10+
110 pages
Synopsis:
Renee and Herta are Jewish sisters living in Czechoslovakia during WWII. Renee is 10 and Herta 8. Herta and their mother and father are deaf, Renee is the only one who can hear and is the ears for the entire family.
The sisters escape the initial round-up of Jews in their city because their parents have paid a family for them to live on a farm in the country. When the payments stop, the family sends them back to their hometown where they discover they are now the only Jews left. With no where to go, and no one to take care of them, they turn themselves in, hoping they will be sent to the same camp as their parents.
They end up being sent to Bergen-Belsen, the same camp where Anne Frank died. They spend a year there before being liberated by the Allies. Not a day to soon for Renee as she had developed typhus. After a few years living with a family in Sweden, the sisters were reunited with members of their own family in America. Their parents had died in another camp. Eventually the girls make a return trip to their home city, and Renee revisits Bergen-Belsen.
Parental Guidance: medium for older readers, medium high for younger readers
The sisters have been called “dirty Jews” and had bricks thrown at them.
Though not graphically detailed, the horrors of the concentration
camps are detailed; experiments, malnutrition, disease, death, dead
bodies, mass graves, etc.
Recommendation:
This is a series of transcripts dictated from oral interviews the girls gave as adult women as part of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale. The details are presented alternately between them. That’s important to know to understand how to read the book.
I was originally expecting more of a story element, a Holocaust version along similar lines as the movie CODA. Instead, it comes across, to me, more as a historical account with a first-person narrative. It is short, 1-2 hour read, tops. The personal details are presented matter-of-factly with little elaboration or deep insight.
That doesn’t mean I was disappointed with the book. When you realize what it is, you appreciated it for what it is, a very good intro into the horrors of the Holocaust, especially for children. I think any 6-8 grader could handle this on their own, especially if they have some knowledge of the Holocaust. 4-5 might need some guidance, especially if they are more sensitive readers. This would be a great book to use in a classroom setting since the horrific details are not ignored, but not graphically detailed either.
Comments