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From Horn Book , August 19, 1998 |
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Anita Lobel's memoir of her traumatic years in Poland spent under the threat of
annihilation by the Nazis is notable both as an account of survival and as a
revelation of a remarkable human being. But what makes the book truly haunting
is the perspective from which it is told-that of a child who does not fully
comprehend what she is witnessing. The prologue, clearly distinguishing between
child and adult emotions, augments this effect. As the author notes: "I was
barely five years old when the war began. Only when I was much older did the
horrors and terrible losses of fully conscious people during all those years of
terror dawn on me." In the beginning, war is a bloodstain on the pavement,
the removal of valuables from one's apartment, and unfamiliar words such as
concentration camp and liquidation. Then, as the years pass, war means
separation from parents and hiding-in the country with her brother and their
devoted nanny Niania, in the Krakow ghetto, and finally in a Benedictine
convent-before Anita and her brother are discovered by the Nazis and sent to the
first of a series of camps.
Benedictine convent-before Anita and her brother are discovered by the Nazis and sent to the first of a series of camps. Conditions on the transports and in the camps, designed for destroying health and self-respect, become a way of life to be endured until the German defeat. Sent by the Red Cross to Sweden to recuperate from tuberculosis, and joined eventually by her parents, Anita gradually re‰nters the ordinary world of school and friends, and the tense, clenched tone of the book becomes noticeably more relaxed. True, there are no pretty pictures, but there are moments of description that are intensely visual and vivid, and will not be easily forgotten. -- Copyright © 1998 The Horn Book, Inc. All rights reserved. |
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