Twenty and Ten


Claire Huchet Bishop - 1952
    Will the children be able to withstand the interrogation and harassment?

Somewhere There Is Still a Sun: A Memoir of the Holocaust


Michael Gruenbaum - 2015
    All of that changed forever when the Nazis invaded Prague. The Gruenbaum family was forced to move into the Jewish Ghetto in Prague. Then, after a devastating loss, Michael, his mother and sister were deported to the Terezin concentration camp.At Terezin, Misha roomed with forty other boys who became like brothers to him. Life in Terezin was a bizarre, surreal balance - some days were filled with friendship and soccer matches, while others brought mortal terror as the boys waited to hear the names on each new list of who was being sent 'to the East.'Those trains were going to Auschwitz. When the day came that his family's name appeared on a transport list, their survival called for a miracle - one that tied Michael's fate to a carefully sewn teddy bear, and to his mother's unshakeable determination to keep her children safe.Collaborating with acclaimed author Todd Hasak-Lowy, Michael Gruenbaum shares his inspiring story of hope in an unforgettable memoir that recreates his experiences with stunning immediacy. Michael's story, and the many original documents and photos included alongside it, offer an essential contribution to Holocaust literature.The book is now available in 12 languages: English (Simon and Schuster), German (Rowohlt), French (Didier Jeunesse), Spanish (Edelvives) , Greek (Papadopoulos Publishing), Russian (Samokat), Turkish, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Czech, Burmese (Myanmar) and Sinhala (Sri Lanka); Bulgarian and Khmer (Cambodia) are scheduled later this year. Publishers in China, Israel, The Netherland, Brazil, Italy, Tanzania (Swahili and Kinyarwanda), Romania, Japan and others are also close to signing up. Our goal is still the same - to have the book be added to the curricula of all middle schools around the world.. Simon and Schuster, together with Scholastic, sold 75,000 copies of the book in the USA last year.

The Devil's Arithmetic


Jane Yolen - 1988
    But this year she will be mysteriously transported into the past. Only she knows the horrors that await.

Two Rings: A Story of Love and War


Millie Werber - 2012
    Born in central Poland in the town of Radom, she found herself trapped in the ghetto at the age of fourteen, a slave laborer in an armaments factory in the summer of 1942, transported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944, before being marched to a second armaments factory. She faced death many times; indeed she was certain that she would not survive. But she did. Many years later, when she began to share her past with Eve Keller, the two women rediscovered the world of the teenage girl Millie had been during the war. Most important, Millie revealed her most precious private memory: of a man to whom she was married for a few brief months. He was -- if not the love of her life -- her first great unconditional passion. He died, leaving Millie with a single photograph taken on their wedding day, and two rings of gold that affirm the presence of a great passion in the bleakest imaginable time.

Anne Frank: Her life in words and pictures from the archives of The Anne Frank House


Menno Metselaar - 1999
    Produced in association with The Anne Frank House and filled with never-before-published snapshots, school pictures, and photos of the diary and the Secret Annex, this elegantly designed album is both a stand-alone introduction to Anne's life and a photographic companion to a classic of Holocaust literature.

The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey


Louise Borden - 2005
    They began their harrowing journey on bicycles, pedaling to Southern France with children's book manuscripts among their few possessions.Louise Borden combed primary resources, including Hans Rey's pocket diaries, to tell this dramatic true story. Archival materials introduce readers to the world of Hans and Margret Rey while Allan Drummond dramatically and colorfully illustrates their wartime trek to a new home.Follow the Rey's amazing story in this unique large format book that resembles a travel journal and includes full-color illustrations, original photos, actual ticket stubs and more. A perfect book for Curious George fans of all ages.

Stones in Water


Donna Jo Napoli - 1997
    German soldiers raid the theater, round up the boys in the audience, and pack them onto a train. After a terrifying journey, Roberto and his best friend Samuele find themselves in a brutal work camp, where food is scarce and horror is everywhere. The boys vow to stay together no matter what. But Samuele has a dangerous secret, which, if discovered, could get them both killed. Lovers of historical fiction will be captivated by this tragic, triumphant, and deeply moving novel.

Four Girls from Berlin: A True Story of a Friendship that Defied the Holocaust


Marianne Meyerhoff - 2007
    The Holocaust had left Lotte the lone survivor of her family, and these precious objects gave her back a crucial piece of her past. Four Girls from Berlin vividly recreates that past and tells the story of Lotte and her courageous non-Jewish friends Ilonka, Erica, and Ursula as they lived under the shadow of Hitler in Berlin.Written by Lotte's daughter, Marianne, this powerful memoir celebrates the unseverable bonds of friendship and a rich family legacy the Holocaust could not destroy.

On the Horizon


Lois Lowry - 2020
    With black-and-white illustrations by Kenard Pak. Lois Lowry looks back at history through a personal lens as she draws from her own memories as a child in Hawaii and Japan, as well as from historical research, in this work in verse for young readers.On the Horizon tells the story of people whose lives were lost or forever altered by the twin tragedies of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.  Composed of poems about individual sailors who lost their lives on the Arizona and about the citizens of Hiroshima who experienced unfathomable horror.

The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club


Phillip Hoose - 2015
    Deeply ashamed of his nation's leaders, fifteen-year-old Knud Pedersen resolved with his brother and a handful of schoolmates to take action against the Nazis if the adults would not. Naming their secret club after the fiery British leader, the young patriots in the Churchill Club committed countless acts of sabotage, infuriating the Germans, who eventually had the boys tracked down and arrested. But their efforts were not in vain: the boys' exploits and eventual imprisonment helped spark a full-blown Danish resistance. Interweaving his own narrative with the recollections of Knud himself, here is Phillip Hoose's inspiring story of these young war heroes.This thoroughly-researched and documented book can be worked into multiple aspects of the common core curriculum.

The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow


Krystyna Chiger - 2008
    The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, shares one of the most intimate, harrowing and ultimately triumphant tales of survival to emerge from the Holocaust. The Girl in the Green Sweater is Chiger's harrowing first-person account of the fourteen months she spent with her family in the fetid, underground sewers of Lvov.The Girl in the Green Sweater is also the story of Leopold Socha, the group's unlikely savior. A Polish Catholic and former thief, Socha risked his life to help Chiger's underground family survive, bringing them food, medicine, and supplies. A moving memoir of a desperate escape and life under unimaginable circumstances, The Girl in the Green Sweater is ultimately a tale of intimate survival, friendship, and redemption.

The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness


Simon Wiesenthal - 1969
    Haunted by the crimes in which he'd participated, the soldier wanted to confess to--& obtain absolution from--a Jew. Faced with the choice between compassion & justice, silence & truth, Wiesenthal said nothing. But even years after the war had ended, he wondered: Had he done the right thing? What would you have done in his place?In this important book, 53 distinguished men & women respond to Wiesenthal's questions. They are theologians, political leaders, writers, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors & victims of attempted genocides in Bosnia, Cambodia, China & Tibet. Their responses, as varied as their experiences of the world, remind us that Wiesenthal's questions are not limited to events of the past. Often surprising, always thought provoking, The Sunflower will challenge you to define your beliefs about justice, compassion & responsibility.

Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered


Ruth Klüger - 1992
    Some of the lessons she imparts are surprising, as when she argues, against other historians, that the female camp guards were far more humane than their male counterparts, and when she admits that she has difficulty today queuing in line, a constant of camp life, "out of revulsion for the bovine activity of simply standing." Her memories of her youth are punctuated by sharp reflections on the meaning of the Shoah, and how it should best be memorialized in a time when ever fewer survivors are left to act as witnesses. Those reflections are often angry -- "Absolutely nothing good came out of the concentration camps," she writes, recalling an argument with a naive German graduate student, "and he expects catharsis, purgation, the sort of thing you go to the theatre for?"But they are constantly provocative, too. Though readers will doubtless take issue with some of her conclusions, Kluger's insistent memoir merits a wide audience. --Gregory McNamee

Hitler's Daughter


Jackie French - 1999
    It began on a rainy morning in Australia, as part of a game played by Mark and his friends. It was a storytelling game, and the four friends took turns weaving tales about fairies and mermaids and horses. But Anna's story was different this time: it was not a fairy tale or an adventure story. The story was about a young girl who lived during World War II. Her name was Heidi, and she was Hitler's daughter.As Anna's story unfolds, Mark is haunted by the image of Hitler's daughter. He wonders what he would have done in her place if he had known his father was an evil man leading the world into a war that was destroying millions of lives. And if Mark had known, would he have had the power and determination to stop him?

Underground in Berlin: A Young Woman's Extraordinary Tale of Survival in the Heart of Nazi Germany


Marie Jalowicz Simon - 2014
    In 1941, Marie Jalowicz Simon, a nineteen-year-old Berliner, made an extraordinary decision. All around her, Jews were being rounded up for deportation, forced labor, and extermination. Marie took off her yellow star, turned her back on the Jewish community, and vanished into the city.In the years that followed, Marie lived under an assumed identity, forced to accept shelter wherever she found it. Always on the run, never certain whom she could trust, Marie moved between almost twenty different safe-houses, living with foreign workers, staunch communists, and even committed Nazis. Only her quick-witted determination and the most hair-raising strokes of luck allowed her to survive.