Books about the holocaust for young people (and others)

I recently read two books, aimed at "young people," but certainly worth reading by others. Both of them are about the holocaust, the execution of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis, in Germany, during World War II.

The two books, and their authors, have Wikipedia articles, which indicates their importance, and which you, the reader of this blog, can consult, if you wish to know more about the plots than I plan to give away.

Milkweed, by Jerry Spinelli, follows the life of a boy, perhaps eight years old, who doesn't know anything about his parents. However, Mischa befriends a girl, younger than he, and follows her, and her parents and uncle, into the Warsaw Ghetto. There are several interesting features of the book. They include the prevalence of children, orphan children. There are lots of them, and somehow some of them survive. Another feature is the ubiquitous lice that get on people in the ghetto, and leave their eggs in hair. Another is that the Nazis are called jackboots, and some of their marching is described. There are instances of deep villainy, and also of selfless generosity. A minor character decides that he will become a Lutheran, rather than a Jew, because he hopes that this will deliver him from the horrors visited upon the Jews. The title comes because Mischa and his friend, Janina, see a milkweed plant, growing in the stark, bare, ghetto. They come to associate the seeds, with their fibrous parachutes, floating on the wind, with angels.

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, is notable for several things. One of them is the narrator, who is the angel of death. He (I guess he, not she) is not intrusive, but has the power to be anywhere, especially where people are about to die. The story is about a girl of 8 or 9, Liesel Meminger. She is placed in foster care by the German authorities. She, nor her parents, are considered as Jews by the Nazis, but there are Jews around them, and the book is mostly about interactions of various kinds between Liesel and her foster parents, and Jews. Another is that the story begins before the second World War. Yet another notable feature is the effect of the bombing of German towns by the Allies. The book gets its name because Liesel picks up a book, a handbook for gravediggers, that was inadvertently dropped at a funeral. Eventually, her foster father teaches her to read from this book. In various ways, including theft, she obtains a few other books, and there are also two brief books, handwritten, and illustrated, by characters in the course of the novel. The author is trying to point out the importance of words -- Hitler's, or those of other people -- on those who read or hear them.

There are a some characters who surprised me by their good hearts, and self-sacrificial acts.

One warning -- there are a lot of German words for excrement in the book.

The Book Thief has been adapted as a film, which is supposed to be released this year.

Both books have a lot of wild running around by children, with some injuries, lots of defiance of authorities (some of which are illegitimate, but some not) and some narrow escapes.

For a recent post on another aspect of World War II in Germany, the (real) life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, see here.

Thanks for reading.

For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

I have previously read a couple of books by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Both were aimed at young people, probably more at girls than boys, and well written and interesting. The first one I read, Leap of Faith, as the title suggests, was about a girl finding faith in God, in spite of her parents.

For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy (New York: Delacorte Press, 2003) is the apparently true story of a girl, entering her teens, in France, as World War II develops. The girl's name was Suzanne David. (Wikipedia has a very brief article on her, which seems to be based on the book, not on any external source.)

Suzanne's goal is to become an opera singer, and she achieves that, singing lead roles with the local opera society of Cherbourg, France, before she is sixteen. But her world is collapsing around her. Suzanne and her best friend are at the harbor when the first attack by the Germans strikes their city, and their consciousness. The air bombardment damages buildings, kills people, including a pregnant woman that the two girls knew, and were talking to, who dies in front of them. The best friend draws into some sort of shell -- she never speaks again, throughout the rest of the book, in spite of efforts by doctors, her mother, and Suzanne, to bring her back to normalcy.

The Germans take over Suzanne's house, kicking them out into the street with almost no notice, and little opportunity to remove their belongings. But they, and apparently most of the city, have a strong Catholic faith, which shows in various ways throughout the book. Her father tells her:
". . . our lives belong to the Lord. The Nazis have not taken our work, Suzanne. They have not taken your voice. They have not taken our courage or our faith. We haven't lost anything of value." (p. 46)

Suzanne is recruited by the local doctor, who, it turns out, is in the French Resistance. She carries coded messages to various members of a Resistance cell, never knowing their names, nor they hers, for many months. Finally, she is caught, but, at just that time, the Germans leave for Normandy, to try to repel an anticipated Allied invasion. They have not obtained any information from Suzanne, in spite of over a day of non-violent interrogation. She, and others in the prison, simply walk out, with nothing to prevent them.

The book tells how Suzanne has a problem with her voice, while singing in Paris, before she is arrested by the Germans. She never sings in an opera again. It also says that Suzanne fell in love with an American soldier, and left France to live in Tennessee, where she was living at the time of the writing of the book.

An inspiring story. It should remind those of us who now live in comparative safety and security that these conditions are not guaranteed to be permanent, and we may have to decide what to give up, or whether we should be committed to a fight against some powerful enemy. It is no wonder that this book was named a 2005-6 Junior Book Award winner.

Thanks for reading.