Hedy's Journey: The True Story of a Hungarian Girl Fleeing the Holocaust by Michelle Bisson, illustrated by El primo Ramón

In Hedy’s Journey, Michelle Bisson tells the true life story of her mother’s flight from the Nazis and her home in Hungary in 1941. 

Although Hungary was allied with the Axis powers, Germany and Italy, during the 1930s and early 1940s, Hungarian Jews were not rounded up and deported to concentrations camps until 1944, when Nazi Germany finally deposed the Prime Minister and occupied the country.

But that didn’t mean Hungary was a safe haven for Europe’s Jews. Far from it, as Hedy Engle learned when her cousin Marika, a Polish Jew who was visiting with Hedy’s family in Budapest, was ordered to report to the deportation office there in 1941. Sent to a concentration camp, Marika and her family were never heard from again. Hedy’s family knew that if the Nazi’s were going to round up Polish Jews in Hungary, it wouldn’t be long before they came for Hungarian Jews.  

As if to emphasize their precarious position, in the summer of 1941, Hedy’s father, a successful jeweler, was sent to a labor camp. Luckily, he was released in three months. And that was when the family decided it was definitely time to leave Hungary.  But even with visas to enter the United States in hand, only three train tickets could be found to take them to Lisbon, Portugal, and a ship across the Atlantic Ocean. It was decided that Hedy’s parents and younger brother Robert would be the first to leave Hungary, and Hedy would follow a week and a half later. Then, when they would reunited in Lisbon, they all would board a ship to America and freedom.

Imagine being a 16 year-old Jewish girl traveling alone through Nazi-occupied Austria. Hedy’s trip to Portugal was fraught with fear and caution. Although she didn’t look Jewish and most people treated her as though she weren’t, the sight of German soldiers in Vienna was still a frightening experience for the teenaged Hedy. When she finally arrived in Lisbon, her family breathed a sigh of relief. But then, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and the US entered World War II. 

As if they hadn’t already dealt with enough challenges and setbacks, the Engle family now found themselves stranded in Portugal with worthless tickets for a ship that was not longer available. Eventually, the family does secure passage on a ship that comes with its own setbacks and challenges, but ultimately, the family arrived in New York harbor and freedom.

Hedy’s Journey is a true story about courage and daring in the face of fear. It is based on the memories that Hedy shared with her daughter, author Michelle Bisson. There are photographs of the family at the end of the book, along with information about what happen to the family after arriving in the U.S. Readers will also find a map of the journey the Engle family undertook, as well as a timeline of events. 

Hedy’s Journey is an ideal book for introducing young readers to the Holocaust. It is done as an illustrated book. It is really in part graphic form, and in part a picture book for older readers. The story is told in narrative, though, rather than text bubbles. The illustrations are done in subtle sepia tones, giving it an old fashioned quality, with shades of gray, but Hedy’s clothes are highlighted in dusty pink. 

The journey of Hedy and her family may not sound like a terribly dangerous or distressing flight from the Nazis if compared to other similar accounts, but it is wise to remember that for Jews every moment that they lived under this regime was dangerous. Fleeing held it own dangers, but for many like Hedy and her family, they thought it was worth the risk.    

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an EARC received from NetGalley 

Escape in Time by Ronit Lowenstein-Malz

Living a comfortable life in Tel Aviv, Nessya, 12, is stunned to hear that her grandmother, Miri Malz, has been invited to speak at her school's Holocaust Remembrance Day program.  Nessya has never heard her happy, smiling grandmother speak being a Holocaust survivor, and besides, she doesn't even have at tattoo AND she has her family's old photo albums - items always destroyed by the Nazis.

When Nessya and her friend Rachel cook up a scheme to get into Grandma Miri's apartment to search for evidence while she is out to look for clues, the plan backfires.  But, is Grandma Miri really a survivor?  For almost two weeks, Grandma Miri keeps to herself, seeing no one but her husband.  When she finally does come to visit, she takes Nessya aside and begins to talk to her about her past.

Living in Munkács, Czechoslovakia, Miri Eneman was part of a large, loving family and life was pretty peaceful.  The family thought they were Hungarian and pretty safe from the Nazis, until one night in the spring of 1944 it all changed with a knocking on their door.  The family was being rounded up.  That night, Miri's father escaped out the back window, leaving everyone to think he had run off and deserted his family.  But in reality, that was just the beginning of his fight for their survival.

When she leaves, Grandma Miri gives Nessya a packet of letters written by her family members and tucked into their diaries, all of which her grandmother had spent two weeks translating for her granddaughter and including her own memories of her family during the Holocaust.  The story of her family's survival is her gift to Nessya for her upcoming bat mitzvah.

Miri's story is riveting.  The Eneman family is often on the run after escaping the Munkács Ghetto, in hiding and living in fear, separated from other family members and never knowing what is happening to them.  All the while, Miri's father manages to anticipate what to do and stay one step ahead of Nazi actions, even hiding in plain sight in Budapest.  At one point, they find themselves living in and caring for a grand apartment after the owner flees to Switzerland.  Here, they lived across the street from the virulent anti-Semitic Hungarian pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party's headquarters and under the nose to an equally anti-Semitic concierge.  But can their collective luck whole out until the end of the war?

Escape in Time is a truly apt name for this novel about one Jewish family's survival during the Holocaust.  It is a story of courage, daring, luck and survival doing whatever needs to be done.  Lowenstein-Malz based this story on actual memoirs giving it a real sense of authenticity.  The book is written in such a way that the reader reads Miri's story right along with Nessya, but there are occasional breaks where we see her reaction to what she is reading (don't be surprised if your reactions are similar to hers).

There aren't many good middle grade books about the fate of Hungarian Jews in WWII so this is a welcome additon to the body of Holocaust literature.  For so long, they, like the Eneman family, thought they were safe, but it was just a question of time and politics and it all changed.  It is one of the reasons that I found myself so drawn into Miri's memories, and her family's letters and diary entries.  This is a slightly different Holocaust story in that, interestingly, no one in Grandma Miri's immediate family spends any time in a concentration camp, though extended family were sent there from the ghetto in 1944.  Young readers will not only meet this courageous family, but they will also meet some really good people willing to help the Enemen family as well as some really hateful people who would turn them in in the blink of an eye.

Escape in Time was originally written in Hebrew and I found the translation to be a very smooth one.  Having done some translating myself, I know it is often hard to get together all the elements that make a book great, but that wasn't a problem here.

Throughout this novel, there are realistic sepia-toned portrait illustrations that enhance the narration about the Eneman family.

Miri and her older sister Magda

Escape in Time is a well-written book with well drawn, realistic characters for young readers interested in the Holocaust or historical fiction, and since it is a story of survival against great odds, don't be surprised if you shed a few tears along with Nessya.  I did.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This was an EARC recieved from Net Galley

The Bear Makers by Andrea Cheng

                                             *This review contains spoilers*

During the war, young Kata Steiner and her older brother Bela were sent to live on their aunt's farm in the Hungarian countryside under different names so no one would know they were Jewish.  When the war ended, the Steiner family were reunited in Budapest.  Their father, who had lost his factory under the Nazis, got it back and the family hoped  that life would now get better.

But the Steiners hoped in vain!

The end of war brought a very short period of calm but now in 1948, Hungary has been taken over by the communists and once again, there is fear of the secret police.  Now, instead of the Gestapo, it is the AVO (Allamvedelmi Osztaly) questioning people's loyalty to the Hungarian Worker's Party but with similar tactics.

And once again Mr. Steiner lost his factory, where he is now an employee, and his pay has been cut so much that he can no longer support his family.  Depressed, he takes to his bed for days at a time and even refuses to attend required party meetings, unless forced to by his boss.

Bela, who always used to play with Kata, is never home and when he is, he has no time for her.  Eventually, he goes in "an excursion" from which he doesn't return.  Instead, he and two friend escape over the border to Austria and freedom.

Despite the danger, Mrs. Steiner sits at her sewing machine all day and much of the night sewing teddy bears, and later purses, to sell on the black market and help support the family with the money she makes.  Any indication of capitalism, even just making bears and selling them, is a subversive undertaking, so it was imperative that no one finds out about it.

Kata, now 11, is  a smart, but immature girl, though she does well in school, and even begins attending Young Pioneer meetings with her friend and neighbor, Eva, despite being too young.  But Kata has been warned not to tell Eva anything about the Steiners, especially not about Bela's escape and her mother's sewing teddy bears.   The Steiners are convinced, correctly it turns out, that they are being watched by Eva's father, a staunch supporter of the Hungarian Workers' Party who would love to turn them into the oppressive AVO.

The Bear Makers is a story that disappointed a lot of readers because they felt there was not real story and no real denouement.  I read it as an interesting coming of age story set in a basically unexplored place and period in children's literature.   And while the ending wasn't all neatly tied up, there most definitely was an ending.

Kata is an extremely immature girl at the beginning of the story, but as events happen, she seems to develop more of an understanding about the danger of her family's actions under another oppressive regime.  That was evident when Kata was tempted to tell Eva what was going on in her family because she felt sorry for Eva, who had just opened up to her about her volatile home life and being forced to report to her father about anything she discovers in the Steiner household.  Torn between wanting to be Eva's friend and telling her what was going on in her home, in the end, Kata chose not to confide in Eva, sensing the danger if her did.

For me, though, the coming of age turning point begins when Kata makes the first name tag for one of the bears, much to her mother's chagrin, but later much to the delight of the buyer.  From than on, each bear leaves with a name tag giving it an identity.

The coming of age turning point culminated the night the AVO took her father for questioning and Kata finished a teddy bear for her mother, who simply went to bed in despair.  Up til now, Kata was innocent of any subversive behavior, but now, as a bear maker, she has crossed that threshold.

As for the denouement, the fact that Bela is going to America gives the family hope that he will send for them, and for the first time, Kata and her parents actually have a happy, hopeful evening together as they begin to learn English.

The idea for The Bear Makers was based on Andrea Cheng's grandmother's illegal bear making activity after WWII in postwar Hungary, also done to help support the family.  The picture of the bear on the cover is of a real bear she had sewn in postwar Hungary.  And each  chapter of The Bear Makers is headed by a piece of pattern used for making the bears.   These pieces of pattern seem to give the story its overall meaning: the fragmentation of the Steiner's both as a family and an individuals experienced under the Nazis.  As the pieces are sewn together to form the bears, the Steiners, too, are trying to piece their own lives back together again.

Or maybe I am overreaching.

Either way, I actually liked The Bear Makers very much, especially the historical background regarding Hungary.  I did knew that Hungarian Jews suffered devastating losses during WWII, but didn't know much about the post war years.  I think it would have been helpful to have an Author's Note at the end, to help put the story in context for its readers.  Cheng is, after all, a very prolific writer and people would naturally be drawn to her work.

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

This is book 5 of my 2013 European Reading Challenge hosted by Rose City Reader
This is book 9 of my 2013 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by Historical Fiction