Great Escapes #1: Nazi Prison Camp Escape by Michael Burgan, illustrated by James Bernardin

Nine-year-old Bill Ash knew he wanted to be a pilot even before the day in 1927 when he saw Charles Lindbergh in Dallas, Texas. But the Depression hit his family hard and left little time to think about flying. Then, in 1939, war was declared in Europe and, wanting to fight Hitler, Bill went to Canada to join the Royal Air Force there. Turns out, Bill was a natural in the air.

By 1942, he was flying missions from England to Europe in a Spitfire. And he was successful, that is, until March 24, 1942, when his plane was fired on. He crash landed in France, and with the help of some kind French people and the French resistance, almost made it back to England via Spain. But almost doesn't count - Bill was discovered and arrested by the Gestapo in Paris.

Bill was questioned and tortured to give up the names of the people who helped him in France. Thinking about the young girl named Marthe who had helped him, Bill was able resist the many beatings by the Gestapo. Eventually, he was sent by cattle car headed to Germany. There he was sent to a Nazi prison camp for POWs called Stalag Luft III. 

Once he reached Stalag Luft III, the urge to escape was great. But the first attempt failed and Bill found himself spending two weeks in solitary confinement a/k/a the Cooler. Undaunted, Bill and some of his fellow POWs kept trying to escape, followed by two weeks in the Cooler and nothing to eat but bread and water. 

When Stalag Luft III became crowded, Bill and others were sent to another POW camp in Poland via cattle car, which proved to be yet another failed escape attempt. In Poland, Bill and 24 other men decided to dig a tunnel from inside the latrine. They figured the smell of the latrine would keep the fastidious German soldiers away. Finally, in March 1943, thirty-three men were ready to escape. And Bill did make it to freedom, until he was caught...again. After even more escape attempts, Bill found himself back in Stalag Luft III, where he discovered he was known as the Cooler King.

Back where he began life as a POW, there were more escape attempts until finally in 1944 came the good news that the Allies had landed in France, and by 1945, they were in Belgium on their way to Germany. Bill and the other prisoners were forced to march from Stalag Luft III to Spremberg, Germany, where they were loaded on to cattle cars. By now, Bill and other POWs were ill, and taken to a military hospital outside Bremen, Germany. By the time he had recovered, the British were shelling the camp Bill was in, not realizing there were POWs there. Bill made one last escape attempt. This time he succeeded and was able to tell the approaching British tanks just were they Germans had positioned their tanks. 

Finally, after 13 attempted escapes, the war was over for Bill Ash and he was a free man.

Bill Ash in his Spitfire meeting the
Canadian Prime Minister

Great Escapes is a debut series and it is getting off to an exciting start with Nazi Prison Camp. Presenting Bill Ash's story in this short, but action-packed historical fiction novel is a great way to get reluctant readers reading as well as giving kids interested in WWII stories something different. After all, most kids know about Nazi concentration camps, but not much about what happened to POWs, and may have even just assumed they were immediately killed. 

There are sidebars to Bill's story in the first three chapters with information about The Depression, Concentration Camps, Spitfires and Other Aircraft of World War II, The Resistance to German Rule, andThe POWS of World War II. These are all topics readers will encounter throughout the novel. Sometimes I find sidebars intrusive in historical fiction. It was nice to read them at the beginning of Bill's story so that the exciting escapes weren't interrupted with information and readers already know what they need to know. And since it is a story about POWs, it is also a good way to introduce them to the Geneva Conventions that "spelled out how countries would treat prisoners of war."

There is a Selected Bibliography and an Author's Note in the back matter. A map is included at the beginning, but I wish it were a more detailed map to give young readers a sense of place and distance. Descriptions of Bill's escape attempts are detailed and riveting. Bill Ash's story is a survival story par excellence. 

This book is recommended for readers age 9+

This book was an EARC gratefully received from Edelweiss Plus

Bill Ash passed away in 2014 at the age of 96. You can read his informative obituary HERE 

A Time to be Brave by Joan Betty Stuchner

Ever since the Nazis invaded Denmark, David Nathan, 10, and his best friend Elsa Jensen have been hungry, despite the fact that his dad is the best baker in all of Copenhagen.  But the Nazis have been helping themselves to whatever they want since 1940, and that includes anything that they fancy in Nathan's Patisserie

Now, it is September, 1943 and David is looking forward to Rosh Hashanah and his mother's special honey cake all month long.  The Jewish New Year is always a family celebration shared with Elsa's family.   If only he thought his sister might be there, but university studies keep her at school more and more.

Or so David's mother tells him whenever he asks about Rachel.  But on their way home from school one afternoon, Elsa tells David her secret - Rachel and Elsa's cousin Arne are in the Resistance, doing whatever they can to sabotage the Nazis.

That very afternoon, when he arrives at his father's bakery, David is asked to deliver 6 éclairs to Arne's house and to make sure all 6 get there.  But no sooner does David leave the shop, when he is stopped by two Nazi soldiers who insist on seeing what he has in his bakery box.  Seeing the éclairs, each soldier helps himself to one.

Finally, David is able to deliver the remaining four éclairs to Arne, who immediately dips his finger into each, finally pulling out a piece of paper from the last one.  All David can make out is the word train.  A few days later, David's father tells him that a train has been sabotaged by the Resistance, and David proudly realizes he had actually played a role in that.

And at last Rosh Hashanah arrives.  The longed for honey cake has been made, but when David and his father are sitting in the synagogue, the Rabbi announces that the Nazis are planning to round up Denmark's Jews that very night and advises everyone to go home and prepare for their escape.

Well, we know the end of this story because we know that Denmark's citizens did not allow the Nazis to capture most of that nation's Jewish citizens, and so we know that David and his parents escape to Sweden with the help of their friends the Jensens.  But, of course, young readers may not know this.

A Time to be Brave is a nice easy reader chapter book that provides a good introduction to what happened in Denmark in World War II.  It is the perfect book for a young reader who is not quite ready for Number the Stars.

The writing is simple. never condescending, the story is straightforward and the characters well-drawn. There is nice back matter, too, including a map of Denmark and Sweden, a World War II timeline, explanations of who Victor Borge is (yes, he in mentioned in the novel), the Resistance, King Christian X (an important figure to the Danish people during the war), and a recipe for honey cake (that I may have to try making).

If A Time to be Brave sounds vaguely familiar, it is because it was originally published in 2008 under the title Honey Cake.  I suspect it has been reissued under the new title because it now has "updated content that emphasizes Common Core and renewed interest in nonfiction" even though the story is fiction.  It is, however, based on a true story.

This book is recommended for readers age 7+
This book was provided by the publisher

Black Radishes by Susan Lynn Meyer

 Black Radishes is another book that is based on the experiences of someone in the author's family during World War II.  This kind of reality-based historical fiction often makes for an exciting, suspenseful story and Black Radishes is no exception.  According to the author's note, Susan Lynn Meyer's father, grandmother and aunt were able to escape from France after its occupation by the Nazis, so she had lots of first hand material to create this stirring novel.

Black Radishes story begins in Paris in March 1940.  As the German army gets closer to France, Gustave Becker, 11, and his parents, French Jews, firmly believe that the Maginot Line, the pride of France's border defense, will be able to hold them as bay.  But even in Paris things are changing and now Gustave is beginning to experience some anti-Semitic feelings among the people there.

But when his parents tell him that they are going to leave Paris while they wait for American visas, moving to a village called Saint-Georges in the Loire Valley, Gustave doesn't want to leave despite the anti-Jewish graffiti and the Nazi's rapid advance in Europe.  And he especially doesn't want to leave his friend Marcel Landeau and his cousin Jean-Paul.

Life in Saint-Georges is dull for Gustave, compared to Paris, with one exception.  On their first Shabbat in Saint-Georges, Gustav is pushed into a fountain by a boy his age when he goes to buy the bread for that important meal, ruining the bread, his pride and any sense of safety Gustav may have felt there.
Meanwhile, the Nazis are rapaciously invading the country and country that spring of 1940 until they finally begin their invasion of France in June.  Gustave's parents decide to leave Saint-Georges and head for the Spanish border.

But even in his father's truck, traveling is slow and difficult, the roads are clogged with so many people heading to the border.  After traveling a few days and not making much progress, the crowd was attacked by Nazi planes machine gunning them.  Gustave's parents decide to return to Saint-Georges.  As luck would have it, when France was divided in occupied and unoccupied territory in the Armistice signed between France and Germany, Saint-Georges was right on the border of the unoccupied area, meaning that Gustave and his family could live in relative safety at least for the present.

In September life settles down, somewhat.  Gustave starts school and discovers that his Shabbat tormentor is in his class.  But he also meets and makes friends with Nicole.  At home, there is nothing much eat because the Nazis take what they want from shops, homes and gardens, leaving little for anyone else.  Gustave's father decides they will cross the border in his truck into occupied France and barter for some food, using the supplies he brought with him from Paris and his own Swiss ID papers.  This works out well for them and they continue to cross the border for the next year and whenever they can, they make sure there a black radishes in view.  They use they as a way to distract the German border guards, who like to eat them with their beer.

In the Fall of 1941, Gustave's mother finally hears from her sister in Paris, who tells them in coded language that things are getting bad for Jews there, that Gustave's friend Marcel and his mother are missing and they want to get away.   Meanwhile, Nicole invites Gustave along for a bike ride to see the famous Chateau de Chenonceau, where her father works.  It is a strange day out for Gustave, but it is the beginning of the part he will play in the French Resistance, along with his father.
How will they ever get Jean-Paul and his family out of Nazi-occupied France and to safety?

Meyer's realistic novel is an interesting coming of age story set in a time when coming of age happened quickly and young.  The reader sees Gustave transformed from a boy who needs to carry his toy Monkey around in his pocket to see safe to a boy who takes dangerous action to do what is right.  I liked that Black Radishes is set in the unoccupied part of France.  So often, stories a set in the occupied part where there was so much more danger, but it is good to see that life wasn't easy in unoccupied France.  Yet, Meyers depicts a very measured amount of violence and anti-Semitism as well as the fear, tension, cold and hunger that people suffered every single day in both parts of France throughout the novel making it an excellent choice for introducing Holocaust topics to young readers.  Word is that Susan Lynn Meyer is writing a companion book which continues Gustave's adventures.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was borrowed from the Webster Branch of the NYPL

Black Radishes has been give the following well deserved honors:

2011 Sydney Taylor Honor Award
2011 Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book
2011 Boston Author's Club Highly Recommended Book
2011 Massachusetts Book Award Must Read Finalist
2011 Pennsylvania School Librarians Association Young Adult Top 40 Book
2013 Shortlisted for the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Award

The Chateau de Chenonceau that plays an important part in Black Radishes

This is book 12 of my Historical Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by Historical Tapestry.

The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier

O to be in England…now.

The Imperial War Museum is running an exhibition until October 2011 called "Once Upon A Wartime: Classic War Stories for Children." It spotlights five works altogether: War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden, The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall, The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier, and Little Soldier by Bernard Ashley.

One of the books used for this exhibit is the classic story The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier. It is the story of the Balicki family, Joseph and his Swiss wife Margrit and his daughter Ruth, 13, and Bronia, 3, and son, Edek, 11. In 1940, they are living in a Warsaw suburb in Poland during the Nazi occupation of that country, where Joseph is the headmaster in a primary school.

One day while teaching, Joseph turns a picture of Hitler so it faced the wall. His action is reported to the Nazi authorities by a student. Joseph is arrested and sent to a prison camp in Zakyna. He spends two years in the prison camp, ill but determined to escape, which he finally does manage to accomplish. Joseph spends 4½ weeks walking back to Warsaw, but when he arrives he discovers that his house has been destroyed, his wife has been arrested and sent to a work camp in Germany, and his children have survived but are no where to be found.

At the ruins of his home, Joseph finds a silver letter opener in the shape of a small sword. He also meets a young boy there carrying a wood box. Eventually he befriends the boy, Jan, who shows Joseph how and where to safely jump a train to Switzerland. Before he leaves, he gives the silver sword/letter opener to Jan and asks him to tell his children, should he run into them, that their father has gone to their grandparents in Switzerland to find their mother, and to follow him there. Jan puts the sword in his wooden box for safekeeping.

When their mother was arrested, Edek had secretly shot at one of the officers with a rifle, hitting him in the arm. Scared, the children decided to run away that night, over the rooftops of the adjoining buildings and just in the nick of time. As the children are running away, their house explodes – Nazi retaliation for the rifle shot. The children hide in a wood, surviving on the kindness of peasants and on Edek’s ability to smuggle. But one day Edek is caught and arrested. They hear nothing about him for two years, continuing to survive in the woods in summer and in Warsaw in winter.

In the summer of 1944, Ruth, now 15, and Bronia, now 5, hear that the Russians are pushing westward and are not far from Warsaw. This rumor turns out to be true and by January 1945, the Nazis are gone from Warsaw, but because of the fighting to regain it, so is Warsaw. At their former home, they find a very ill Jan. They nurse him back to health and are helped to survive by a kind Russian soldier, who also traces the whereabouts of Edek in Posen. But when they arrived in Posen, they learned Edek has TB and is in isolation. At the makeshift hospital for TB patients, they are told that he has just run away. Tired and hungry, they go to a refugee camp for food and rest, but when a brawl breaks out, the hand the pulls Ruth away from the fray is that of Edek. Together, the four children begin their journey to Switzerland in earnest by first taking a train to Berlin. By now, it is May, 1945 and the war over in Europe.

Their journey to Switzerland takes Ruth, Edek, Bronia and Jan isn’t easy. Edek’s TB gets progressively worse. Then Edek and Jan are caught stealing from the American troops in Germany, and Jan must do a week of detention. The children are taken in and cared for by a kindly farmer and his wife, but when they hear that all Polish people will be sent back to Poland, they are forced to make a middle of the night escape in some old canoes the farmer owns. All through their journey, the silver sword has been an inspiration to carry on and find their parents. But in their hasty escape, the silver sword gets left behind at the farm. It was their talisman and as long as they had it, they had good luck overcoming the obstacles they faced. Now it seems that their luck has run out. The canoe trip, which should have been easy, is not without hazards: Ruth and Bronia are shot at and one of the other canoes is destroyed. Later, they face a terrible storm while crossing Lake Constance, located in both Germany and Switzerland. Will they ever be reunited with their parents without the sword?

At the heart of this novel stands is the idea of family. The Balicki’s are is a warm, loving, supportive family, reason enough to motivate the children to find their parents. And the reason that the homeless, parentless Jan decides to stick with them. Like many people who lived through the war, the children find strength in themselves to endure, discovering that they can deal with all kinds of difficulties and hardships.

Throughout the novel, Serraillier juxtaposes the hatred and destructive nature of Nazism and the people who supported it against the kind and helpful people who rejected it, people who were willing to take a chance, even risking of arrest and death, to help the children

The Silver Sword was published in the United States under the name Escape from Warsaw, and is still available from Scholastic by that name. I prefer the original name, The Silver Sword since it has so much meaning the central characters in the story.

Although the novel was published in 1956, it remains a very exciting adventure for young readers and I highly recommend it.

The book is recommended from readers aged 12 and up.
This book was borrowed from the Juvenile Collection of the Hunter College Library.

Zoe at Playing by the Book has written an in-depth two part review with pictures of the exhibit "Once Upon A Wartime: Classic War Stories for Children." Be sure to take a look at it.


And if you are in London and get to the exhibit at the Imperial War Museum, you might want to also see the Winston Churchill’s Britain at War Experience. Not as fancy as the IWM, but a real experience. Simply take the Northern line from Elephant and Castle to London Bridge. The museum is located at 64-66 Tooley Street.
It is one among many of my favorite places in London (along with Pollock’s Toy Museum.)

This is book 10 of my British Books Challenge hosted by The Bookette

This is book 11 of my Forgotten Treasures Challenge hosted by Retroreduxs Reviews 

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli

Milkweed is Jerry Spinelli’s first historical novel and he has produced a work that, in its simplicity, sent chills through me as I read. It is a novel about life in the Warsaw Ghetto through the eyes of a young boy, around 8 years old, who has no real identity and who does not possess any real social skills or knowledge of the world around him. Lacking these frames of reference, the boy misunderstands or draws incorrect conclusions about what he sees going on. He recalls nothing about his past, only knowing that he was given the yellow stone he wears around his neck by his father and that he is a gypsy. Because he is very small and very fast, he survives by stealing what he wants and running away with it.

The story begins in the summer of 1939 just before the invasion of Poland. The protagonist is running through the streets of Warsaw, clutching a loaf of bread he has just stolen, snatching it right out from under the hand of an older boy who was about to steal it for himself.

The older boy, Uri, chases him, and catching hold of him, breaks the bread in two, keeping half and giving half to the boy. Uri takes him to meet the other boys he hangs out with in a stable. Uri, however, lives in the cellar of an abandoned barbershop and brings the young boy back there with him, taking him under his wing. Eventually, Uri makes up an identity with a history for him, calling him Misha Pilsudski, a gypsy separated from his family when a bomb fell on their caravan. Uri and Misha live the good life in the cellar, with plenty of stolen food and a comfortable shelter.

When autumn 1939 comes, so do the Jackboots. Taken in by their massive procession into Warsaw and their shiny black boots, Misha decides he wants to be a Jackboot. In October, he meets Janina Milgrom after eating the last two tomatoes on her father’s plants. She invites him to her birthday, but not understanding what a birthday is, he thinks they are burning the cake when they light the candles. Misha steals the birthday cake and runs off it. After Uri explains birthdays, Misha steals the best cake he can find and leaves it for Janina at her back door.

Uri and Misha continued to live in the cellar of the barbershop, stealing what they need, until they were driven out in the winter of 1939-40. After that, they sleep in a different place every night, but continued to steal food and now coal, which Uri brings to the orphan home run by Dr. Janusz Korczak (the only real life person in this otherwise historical novel.) After seeing Uri do this, Misha starts to leave stolen bread and coal at Janina’s back door.

The following autumn of 1940, Misha witnesses another massive procession. This time it is Jews walking to the ghetto the Jackboots have created. In the midst of them, Misha finds Janina and her family.

Misha continues to steal, though by now everything is scarce, and discovers that he can slip undetected into and out of the ghetto. He begins to divide whatever food and coal he steals between Janina’s family and Dr. Korczak, also in the ghetto with his orphans. No longer with Uri, Misha starts to sleep in the Milgrom’s room, and in time Janina father begins to think of Misha as a son, and he becomes Misha Milgrom. Meanwhile, Janina has discovered how Misha sneaks in and out of the ghetto and she begins to go with him.

When deportations begin in the ghetto, everyone is transferred to concentration camps, including Janina and her father. Misha follows her, but is stopped before he can climb into the cattle car after her by a Jackboot who turns out to be Uri.

In the summer of 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto was completely liquidated, but this is far from the end of Misha’s story.

In an interview for TeacherVision, Spinelli says that he used Misha’s character as a way to retell a known story in a new way, while at the same time it presumes that the reader has some knowledge of Holocaust events. Misha’s lack of understanding allows him to give a unique perspective to what is going on around him. For one thing, it shows how easy it was to be sucked into the outward glitz and glamour of the Nazis without any real understanding of what they were attempting to accomplish. The shiny black boots worn by them blind Misha to their actions – he wants to be one to have the boots, not really understanding that they want to annihilate an entire race of people. It makes me wonder how many children this happened to. When he sees Jackboots cutting the beard and peyos, or sideburns, of an orthodox Jew, he suggests they bring him to the barbershop where he lives with Uri to do it; he has no understanding that an orthodox Jewish man is forbidden to cut his facial hair according to the Torah and what is being done to him is a humiliation and an insult to his religion. Consequently, it is not the action in this novel that makes it so powerful, but rather the imagery that Misha’s words create that really tells the reader the story of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw and life in the ghetto.

It is an excellent novel for students studying the Holocaust. Most of the story is divided by seasons, starting in the summer of 1939 through to the summer of 1942, in other words the length of the existence of the Warsaw Ghetto, making it ideal for creating a timeline of events.

Milkweed also explores several important universal themes, particularly about identity and friendship, two ideas that young readers are beginning to think about in their own lives. And while it is also a very disturbing novel, some of the descriptions are quite graphic, yet it is also a compelling work and I would highly recommend it.
This book is recommended for readers age 11 and up.
This book was purchased for my personal library.

Streets are often mentioned in the novel and I found this map from the Florida Holocaust Museum's Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust was an excellent way of following Misha’s travels:



Read Jerry Spinelli's interview on Milkweed at Teacher Vision
Teacher Vision also provides links to excellent Holocaust Resources for teachers.Random House has a PDF Teacher's Guide for Milkweed.

If you are wondering about the wall of that surrounded the Warsaw Ghetto that Misha and Janina were able to slip in and out of, Wikipedia has this photo from the back yard of Sienna Street 55:

In Defiance of Hitler: the Secret Mission of Varian Fry by Carla Killough McClafferty

Most people have heard of Oskar Schindler, the ethnic German who saved 1,200 Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis by employing them in his enamelware/ammunition factory, thanks to Thomas Keneally’s book Schindler’s List and Steven Spielberg’s movie based on the book. But not many have heard of Varian Fry, the 32 year old American who went to Marseilles, France in August 1940 to help rescue refugees stranded there after France fell to the Nazis. Many of these refugees had fled to France from Hitler’s Germany during the 1930s.

McClafferty details Fry’s mission beginning with a mob attack on Jews that he had witnessed on 15 July 1935 in Berlin, Germany. This left a deeply disturbing impression of Fry, and in 1940, three days after the armistice was signed between Germany and France, he attended a luncheon in NY about the situation of refugees. A collection was made at the luncheon that raised $3,000 and a private organization called the Emergency Rescue Committee or ERC was formed. Its purpose was to rescue Jews and non-Jews who were enemies of the German state and who were also well-known artists, scientists, musicians, and politicians. The list of almost 200 names included people like Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Lion Feuchtwanger. Feuchtwanger was a German writer who had written the first book about the life of a Jewish family in Berlin under the Nazis in 1933 called The Oppermanns (Die Geschwister Oppermann).

Taking the list of names and the $3000 donation money, Fry volunteered to go see what he could do about getting these renowned refugees out of occupied France. The job proved to be more than anyone had thought it would be. First, there was the problem of finding the people on the list, who were more than likely living scattered around the south of France under assumed names or, like Feuchtwanger, were in a French concentration camp awaiting deportation. And there was the problem of everyone having the right papers at the same time. Each family member had to have exit and entrance visas with the same dates, as well as travel visas to go through other countries. A valid passport was required everywhere and since all German Jews had become stateless with the passage of the Nuremburg Laws in 1935, they did not have and could not obtain a valid passport.

McClafferty describes in a very clear easy to understand way the complex problems Fry faced when he arrived in Marseilles and his trials and errors as he learned how to work around all the difficulties, done mostly with the help of very clever people and a lot of deception. And she chronicles the deterioration of Fry’s marriage as he became more involved with what he was doing. Fry began to believe that he was indispensable to the rescue operation, and this led not only to more problems with his wife, but also with the ERC. Fry’s original mission was to last only for a month, but by the end of that time he was too involved with what he was doing, and delayed his departure. Eventually, word go around Marseilles that he was there to help rescue people, and other refugees, ordinary people not on the list, began to show up outside his hotel. These people could only be helped with day to day expenses, not gotten out of France. So many refugees came to Fry that he had to hire some help and ultimately set up a relief organization called the American Relief Center or ARC.

It is unfortunate but in the end Fry was fired by the ERC and finally escorted out of France by the police in 1941. Yet he had accomplished much, getting at least 2,000 people out of France and away from the Nazis. In 1967, Fry was awarded the Cross of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by France and was the first American named “Righteous among the Nations” in Israel in 1996, an honor give to non-Jews who helped Jews during the Holocaust.

This is an excellent look at a very courageous man, and McClafferty has done a commendable job detailing what is probably unfamiliar information to young readers. The story of Varian Fry and his refugees almost reads like a novel because of all the deceptions and clandestine exploits they were involved in to accomplish their job. McClafferty has included a detailed appendix and bibliography at the end for further exploration of this interesting man. She doesn’t say it, but her description of Fry when he returned home sounded very much like a man suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, understandably given some the things he witnessed and the fear and tension he lived with for so many months, as did everyone under Nazi domination.

This book is recommended for readers age 9-14.
This book was borrowed from the 67th Street Branch of the New York Public Library.

In Defiance of Hitler: the Secret Mission of Varian Fry received the following well deserved honors:
2008 Society of School Librarians International Book Award Honor Book
2009 Orbis Pictus Recommended Title
2009 CCBC Choice (University of Wisconsin)

More information about Varian Fry may be found at the following websites:
http://www.almondseed.com/vfry/
http://www.holocaust-trc.org/fry.htm

Non-Fiction Monday is hosted this week by Practically Paradise

From the Archives #3: The Chalet School in Exile by Elinor Brent-Dyer

Elinor Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School series is about an international school set on the fictitious lake Tiernsee in the Tyrolean Alps of Austria and narrates the adventures of students and staff. The series begins in 1925 with the novel The School at the Chalet. and The Chalet School in Exile is number 14 in the series. The Anschluß or annexation of Austria into the German Reich on 12 March 1938 provided Brent-Dyer with some new and exciting material with which to continue the series. Altogether, she managed to write six books in which the war forms a part of the story to a greater or lesser degree.

The Chalet School in Exile begins in February 1938. Concerned about the widespread attraction of Nazism among Austrian youth, Madge (Bettany) Russell, the founder of the Chalet School, and her husband, Dr. James ‘Jem’ Russell decide to move the school across the lake near his sanatorium on the Sonnalpe for safety.

A plebiscite vote was supposed to be held in March to determine whether Austrians wished to remain independent or become part of the Reich, but it never happens. When the Nazis march in and take possession of Austria, parents start to make arrangements to remove their daughters from the school. Before anyone leaves, however, the students get together, form a peace league “and vowed themselves to a union of nations, whether they should ever meet again or not.” (55) The vow is signed by every girl at the Chalet School, but creates a problem of where to hide it, since it could put so many girls at risk should it somehow fall into the hands of the Gestapo:

“Many of the girls were well on in their teens, and, from all accounts, Hitler and his crew were perfectly capable of punishing them. Already there were whispers of concentration camps.” (56)

They decide to hide the paper in a cave and a picnic excursion to it is arranged, which includes Joey Bettany, Madge’s younger sister and former Chalet School student, Dr. Jack Maynrd from the sanatorium, and several students including Robin Humphries, the Russell’s ward. On the way, they meet Frau Eisen and her son Hermann, who gives them the Heil Hitler greeting instead of the traditional Tyrolean Grüss Gott. Hermann notices an envelope in Robin’s pocket and decides it might be important. After a while, Hilary and Robin decide to slip off to the cave. When they don’t return, the group begins to get very worried. Joey finds Hermann at the cave, who admits he had followed the two girls and had seen them enter it. Though they search the cave, they find no evidence of Hilary or Robin having been there. The Peace League Pledge was definitely not in the place they had intended to hide it in.

Once in the cave, Hilary and Robin realize that they have been followed, decide not to leave the Peace League Pledge there and find another way out of it. On their way back to the picnic area they meet Dr. Gottfried Mensch, who drives them home. Two hours later Joey is carried into the Russell’s home by Dr. Maynard and that night, they become engaged.

In late April a man from the Gestapo shows up with an arrest warrant to take everyone from the picnic to Innsbruck, where they have been accused of espionage against the Reich. Joey refuses to go and the British Consul is called in to deal with the Gestapo agent. Ultimately, only Jack Maynard goes to Innsbruck. The Consul, however, suggests that they close the school or move it elsewhere, and warns that it is only a matter of time until the sanatorium is closed by the Nazis.

The Gestapo detains Jack Maynard for a week and when he returns, Jem tells him of the plan to move the school again, advises him to marry Joey quickly and get her and Robin out of the country. Before leaving, a group of girls, including Joey and Robin, along with science mistress Nell Wilson decide to do some shopping in town. Everyone is careful about what they say and do after the incident with the Gestapo until late afternoon. While having coffee in a Gasthaus, Joey notices a skirmish out on the street and sees

“an old man with a long, grey beard, plainly running for his life. A shower of stones, rotten fruit and other missiles followed him. Stark terror was in his face, and already he was failing to outdistance his pursuers.” (119)

Robin, recognizing the man as Herr Goldmann, the Jewish jeweler, runs out of the Gasthaus, followed by Joey and the rest of the party. They surround Herr Goldmann,, but when Joey reminds the leader of the gang of the kindness he was shown by Goldmann and his wife in his time of need, he retorts

‘He’s a Jew! Jews have no right to live!’ declared Hans Bocher sullenly. ‘Give place, Fräulein Bethany, and hand over the old Jew to us! Better take care, or you’ll be in trouble for this. Let him go! We’ll see to him!’ (120)

Miss Wilson, meanwhile, drags Robin and Goldmann into the Gasthaus and persuades the owner to let Goldman escape through his back door. Then she pushes Robin at the owner and tells him to get her to the Sonnalpe at once. When Miss Wilson returns to the street, she sees the girls surrounded by an angry crowd, but the parish priest, Vater Johann, is also there and indicates that they should all to follow him into the church. Once inside with the door barred, they all know they are safe only for a moment. Vater Johann leads them to a hidden trapdoor, tells them to go down and follow the path which leads to the mountain-side. After wandering through the tunnel for hours, they finally come to what Joey recognizes as the cave that Robin had discovered. All are much relieved, but to everyone’s amazement, and as if to underscore the danger of the fearful situation they have all been in, Miss Wilson’s rich chestnut hair has turned snow white. It is decided that it is too dangerous for this group to stay at the Sonnalpe and that they, along with Jack Maynard and Gottried Mensch as guide, must flee Austria as soon as possible and the adventures continue from here.

The Chalet School in Exile is a novel full of adventure and surprises and accurately conveys the cruelty of Nazism and the Gestapo and the fear they could instill in people who opposed them. But it also sent a message of courage and solidarity in troubled times, in the form of strong friendships among the girls, pride in being Chalet School girls and the Peace League Pledge in defiance of Nazism.  After writing thirteen novels with such a beautiful, tranquil setting as the Austrian alps, it must have been terribly difficult for Brent-Dyer to have her idyllic if imaginary school setting ruined by the Nazis, but she went on to invent other settings almost as lovely.

Although it is part of a series, The Chalet School in Exile can be read as a standalone novel and is probably one of the best in the series, though I liked the next one, The Chalet School Goes to It just as much. The series was popular among adolescent girls when it was written and today still has a very large fan base of readers of all ages. The novel was first published in 1940, and there are lots reprints, some terribly abridged. Girls Gone By Publishers reissued the original text in 2003 and again in 2009 for the 70th Anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.

This book was purchased for my personal library.

The Grand Mosque of Paris. A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews during the Holocaust by Karen Gray Ruelle and Deborah Durland DeDaix

The Grand Mosque of Paris is a little known but important story, just like the The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square was; a book about people helping others in a time of great peril. The central theme of The Grand Mosque can be summed up in the Islamic hadith* and a Jewish proverb quoted by Ruelle and DeDaix:

“Save one life, and it is as if you’ve saved all of humanity.”

The Grand Mosque of Paris was opened in 1926 on land donated by the French government in tribute to the many Muslims of her North African colonies who fought and died for France in World War I. At the time, most of the mosque’s members were Kabyle Muslims, Berbers from Kabylia in Algeria. It is a large place with both religious and social areas, including living accommodations, so that many people can be within it’s walls at any given time. When the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940 and began their roundups of Jews for deportation, it did not take long for the rector of the mosque, Si Kaddour Bengharrit, to realize that the Muslim community could do something to help the Jews – they had both the space and the means to do this. And so the Muslims of the Grand Mosque began to rescue Jews, and within three months of the Nazi occupation of Paris, the rector and his congregation were suspected of and warned against helping anyone escape to safety.

The story is well done and well researched but the authors also write that attempts to verify much of what they found for this book were not terribly successful:

Writing about clandestine events that took place at a time of turmoil involving people who had an oral rather than a written tradition, and with many of the participants having now passed away, presents many difficulties.” (pg34)

Yet, there is enough evidence to prove that it happened and Ruell and DeDaix present the story in part by using examples of people who had been helped. One such person was Salim Halali, a Berber Jew from Algeria, studying in Paris to become a singer. Salim found refuge in the mosque and received a “Certificate of Conversion” from the rector. The rector even had a stonecutter called in to carve a false gravestone with Salim’s family name on it for authenticity. Although Salim remained at the mosque until the war was over, most of the people who received help did not stay as long. In fact, only those Jews who also looked North African were able to stay in the mosque for more than a few days, since it was easy for them to pass as Muslims. Those who did not look North African had to be guided out to safety as quickly as possible.

According to Ruell and DeDaix, the Muslims had a real advantage as far as the Nazis were concerned. Though the mosque was suspected of helping Jews, the Nazis didn’t target its members for it because they feared an uprising of Muslims in Northern Africa and the Germans were already fighting the Allies there. And on the occasions when the Nazis did show up to search the mosque, the members had various ways of delaying their entrance, giving the people inside time to hide. In addition, though the authors do not indicate whether or not they were actually sick or orphans, many of the Jewish children brought to the mosque were sent to Muslim clinics outside Paris to protect them from the Nazis. These clinics were run by a Tunisian Dr. named Ahmed Somia. There, they administered to the children as well as Allied pilots, parachutists and even spies who found themselves injured and trapped in France.

The Muslim helpers had many ways of doing what they needed to do in order to help the Jews. Ruell and DeDaix explain that as members of the French Resistance, the Kabyles could safely carry messages and instructions written in their native language which was difficult and understood only by other Kabyles. As businessmen, they were also able to sneak people into the mosque with the help of their deliverymen using a three-wheeled bicycle with a large bin in front. Once inside the mosque, the members could provide the escapees with whatever they needed until they could be secreted out through a complicated series of tunnels. These tunnels, sometimes compared to the American Underground Railroad, were the result of stones quarried underground for constructing the buildings in Paris centuries ago. The Jews would then be led through the tunnels to the River Seine and put on to barges. There, the Jews were hidden in the large barrels that were used for delivering wine to Paris.

The authors also did the illustrations for this book and they are simply lovely, providing a real sense of the story. The Grand Mosque is, in reality, a truly beautiful place and the illustrations capture much of the artistry of the North African craftsmen who built the mosque. The illustrations give the sense of an oasis of peace and calm and safety in a world gone mad.

This is a highly recommendable book, containing a lot in this interesting and touching information. I think it would be a wonderful addition to a class learning about the Holocaust. There is an excellent teacher’s guide provided by the publisher, Holiday House, for use with this book at

http://www.holidayhouse.com/docs/TheGrandMosqueEdGuideFINAL.Web.pdf

*A hadith is a saying attributed in some way to the Prophet Muhammad.

Non-Fiction Monday is hosted this week by  http://blog.wrappedinfoil.com/2010/09/nonfiction-monday-for-september-20-2010/