After the War: From Auschwitz to Ambleside by Tom Palmer

Tom Palmer used to write books for kids about sports like rugby and football (soccer), but more recently he has turned his storytelling skills to historical fiction. Last year, I read D-Day Dog, a story I found to be very informative, as does the present-day protagonist Jack. This year, I was intrigued to read After the War after hearing about it for an event on World Book Day, March 4, 2021 in connection with the Anne Frank Trust. 

After the War is a fictionalized story based on true events that happened after the war ended. In 1945, 300 Jewish children who had survived life in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust were sent directly to the Lake District in England. 

It's summer 1945 when 15-year-old Yossi, and his two friends Mordecai and Leo arrive in England in one of 10 planes, each carrying 30 young Holocaust survivors. They have been told they are safe now, that they will all have enough to eat and a room of their own with a bed and electricity, and most importantly, there will be no guards. But after six years in a concentration camp, could they really trust that? 

Arriving at the Calgarth Estates on Lake Windmere, where they will live for the next few months, the children find it difficult to trust people and what they say, and to give up the survival habits that kept them alive in Auschwitz, especially when it comes to food. So despite there always being enough to eat, Yossi, Leo, and Mordedai stuff as much food as they can into their pockets to save for later - just in case there isn't enough food then. 

Slowly, however, they begin to gain weight, becoming healthier and stronger. They even begin to develop trust again, thanks to the the kindness of the people of the Lake District and those in charge of them at Lake Windmere. Soon, they are back in school and learning English, and since their stay is only temporary, they also need to start thinking about the future and what they will do. The Red Cross arrives visits to obtain information about the children's families in order to try to reunite them with relatives who might have also survived. Yossi hopes that they will find his father, whom he wants to believe is still alive, even though they were separated on a death march towards the end of the war. Yossi watched as his younger sisters and mother went to the gas chambers the night they arrived in Auschwitz, but he and his father were selected to work. 

Hoping against hope that the Red Cross will find his father, Yossi is unable to think about moving on. The three friends, who have become family to each other, want to stay together, but can't agree on how to do that. Mordecai, who is deeply religious, wants to join the Jewish community in Leeds after they reached out to the children at Lake Windmere, while Leo wants to go to Palestine, believing they would be safest there. 

But recovery and recuperation aren't as easy as clean sheets and enough to eat. Yossi, who is the main protagonist, is haunted by his memories of the things he witnessed before the war in Poland after the Nazis invaded and life first in the ghetto and later in Auschwitz. These memories are seamlessly woven into the story as incidents in Yossi's present ignite flashbacks in his past. Sensitive and caring, Yossi has a minor breakdown one day when he seems to have given up and, not seeing any point to it, refuses to get out of bed. Laying there, he recalls his father's words "...if we let ourselves go, the Germans will think they are right, that we are not human." His father believed that getting up and washing every morning in Auschwitz was an act of defiance, of resistance to the Nazis, and Yossi determines it is still true. Will the memory of his father give Yossi what he needs to be able to get up and move on?  

People sometimes forget that when a war ends, it isn't over, that there are always serious after effects. In this short, very readable novel, those after effects are clearly presented. Palmer depicts the children's survivor behavior in their present circumstances, relating it back to what happened in the concentration camps in the most heartbreakingly poignant way. And while he doesn't graphically describe the cruelty and the atrocities committed by the Nazis against Jewish men, women, and children, he gives enough detail that readers can get a clear picture of what happened then and the challenges the children now face.

After the War is a powerful book about courage, friendship, hope and resilience and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Be sure to visit Tom Palmer's After the War webpage for more information, including a link to read the first chapter, a link to hear about his researching and writing After the War and so much more.

Although After the War is fiction, you can find more information about the children who were brought to Lake Windmere at the The Lake District Holocaust Project HERE (BTW, 10% of author royalites are donated to The Lake District Holocaust Project). 

After the War is published by Barrington Stoke in a dyslexic friendly font, layout, spacing and page tint that makes it easier to read (and since I'm dyslexic, I can honestly say it does). 

This book is recommended for readers age 10+

This book was purchased for my personal library

Maurice and His Dictionary: A True Story by Cary Fagan, illustrated by Enzo Lord Mariano

Maurice and His Dictionary: A True Story

written by Cary Fagan, illustrated by Enzo Lord Mariano

Owlkids Books, 2020, 56 pages

It's May 10, 1940 and the Nazis have just invaded Belgium. For 14-year-old Maurice Fajgenbaum and his family - parents Adéle and Max, older siblings Adeline and soccer-loving Henri - that means having to leave Brussels, the only home they had ever known, as quickly as possible, packing only what they could carry and leaving the rest of their possessions for the Nazis to pillage. And simply because they are Jewish.

Page 6

Luckily, father Max has business contacts in Paris and so the family heads there. Since there were warnings about the Nazi invasion, Max had already bought the train tickets his family would need. But after days on the train, the family is dropped off in a small village. Weeks later, father Max is almost rounded up with other refugees, and the family is quickly on the move again. This time, they find themselves in Pau, at the foothills of the Pyrenees in Vichy, France, the unoccupied so called free zone. 

In Pau, life is a little easier for the refugee family and Maurice even begins school again, hoping to fulfill his dream of becoming a lawyer one day, comforting himself with his father's conviction that "the law will make us all equal." But once again, the Nazis begin to round up Jews, sending them to camps in Poland and Germany, and the Fajgenbaum family is on the run. 

This time, they make it to port city Lisbon, Portugal, but only long enough to get the papers and passage on a ship that will take them to Jamaica. It is on the ship that they are separated from each other for the first time. Arriving in Jamaica, the Fajgenbaums, along with their fellow passengers, are taken to an internment camp indefinitely. Maurice, still dreaming of becoming a lawyer, finds teachers all over the camp willing to tutor him, including an English teacher who recommends he get permission to go to town to buy a dictionary.  

Safe from the Nazis, Maurice continues to study hard, improving his English with the help of his tutor and his new dictionary, graduating high school and going on to college and law school in Canada.  

Maurice and His Dictionary is a picture book for older readers told in graphic format, an homage based on the true story of the author's father's experience during the Holocaust. While this book may lack some of the hair-raising details of how Jews were treated by the Nazis and even the French, it is definitely a survival story, and the Fajgenbaum family proved to be very resourceful, especially Max, and they were lucky enough to meet enough kind people to help them escape the Nazis and Europe just in time. 

The story is also a homage to Maurice's perseverance. He never wavered in his desire get an education and become a lawyer. And despite all the setbacks Maurice faced, he always followed his father's motto "Solve one problem, then the next, and then the next" which is how he finally finished high school.

The stylized illustrations, in sepia tones giving them a feeling of age, are simple but if you look closely you will discover all kinds of interesting details. The illustrations and the wide white borders around each page provide readers with lots of space to extend the story.

This is such an inspiring story, all the more so because it is a true story. Be sure to read the Author's Note for more information about Maurice, including photographs (there's even one of his dictionary). 

And there is a Teacher's Guide that can be downloaded courtesy of the publisher, Owlkids Books. 

This book is recommended for readers age 8+

This book was borrowed from the NYPL

We Must Not Forget: Holocaust Stories of Survival and Resistance by Deborah Hopkinson

Exactly one year ago, I reviewed We Had To Be Brave: Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport by Deborah Hopkinson. In that book, Hopkinson used the Kindertransport stories of real children to show today's readers what life was like under Nazi oppression and the difficult choices parents had to make to keep their children safe. 

Hopkinson's newest book, We Must Not Forget, looks at the ways in which Jewish children and teens survived the Holocaust despite the Nazis best efforts to rid Europe of its Jewish population. The book is divided into three parts, each part covering a country that the Nazis invaded and occupied. Part One: "Fleeing from Evil, Hiding from Horror" includes stories from Germany and the Netherlands; Part Two: "Families Torn Apart" looks at stories from France; and Part Three: "Desperation and Defiance" are stories from Poland. Within each part is a short introduction to each person, followed by pertinent key dates and a photo album relating to each individual country. 

Using personal testimonies, letters, oral histories, memoirs and archival photographs, Hopkinson has provided a wide variety of experiences and perspectives on what each person profiled lived through. Hopkinson skillfully weaves these personal stories of each Jewish family with information about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany, and their invasion and occupation in the Netherlands, France, and Poland needed to understand the desperate fight to survive that Jews in those countries were in.

And fight they did. German teenager Fred Angress, living in the Netherlands with his family, was able to get a position with the Jewish Council after his father was arrested, never to be seen again. His job not only delayed Fred's own deportation, but Fred found ways to help as many Jews as he could, including smuggling them out of the gathering place where deportation began.

In France, Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants or OSE homes where set up for Jewish children and teens where Alfred and Ernest Moritz went after a stranger told their mother to get them away from the registration line they were on where names and addresses of all Jews in their area were recorded and get them to safety. At the OSE home they went to, Alfred and Ernest were give false ID papers and ration cards. Ultimately, the brothers ended up living with a French peasant woman and passing for Christian until France was liberated.

Other children, like Ruth Oppenheimer and her older sister Hannah were sent to England on the Kindertransport. One brother was already living in South America, the other in the United States. Younger sibling Michael was rescued by a Quaker organization, and finally, younger sister Feo was taken to live in an OSE home. All six Oppenheimer siblings survived the Holocaust, but sadly their parents perished in Auschwitz.

Sisters Gertrud and Herta Michelsohn were deported from Germany to the Riga Ghetto in Latvia in 1941 with their parents. After their parents were sent to a death camp, the sisters found strength to go on with each other, even surviving a winter death march in 1944. Eventually, they ended up in Sweden, survivors of the Holocaust.

After her family was forced to move into the Nowogródek ghetto in what was then Poland, Paula Burger's mother made her promise to look after her little brother Isaac if anything happened to her parents. After they disappeared, Paula learned that her father had made arrangements to have his children smuggled out of the ghetto. One night, in the fall of 1942, that's exactly what happened. Paula and Isaac were taken to their father, where he was in hiding in the forest after joining the Bielski partisans. The Bielski's were a large family with 12 children. The partisan unit was formed after their parents and two brothers were killed by the Nazis. Led by eldest brother Tuvia Bielski, the partisans sabotaged the Nazis, blowing up trains and bridges, as well as going after collaborators and informers. Paula, Isaac, and their father remained in hiding with the Bielski partisans until July 1944 when the area was liberated by the Soviet army.   

These are just some of the survivors readers will meet in this fascinating, well-researched book. Each of the 12 people profiled have their own unique story of survival to tell, though each lost loved one, killed by the Nazis. It's sometimes hard to grasp the magnitude of the Holocaust and its victims, but reading these eyewitness personal accounts helps to bring what happened closer to us now that so many survivors are no longer living. And thanks to Hopkinson's in-depth knowledge of the Holocaust, she is able to make what can feel like a very complicated subject much more comprehensible. 

There are copious  photographs throughout each part, as well an invitation to "Look, Listen, Remember" at the end of each profile, where readers can listen to survivors tell their story. Extensive back matter includes a Glossary, a Timeline of WWII, a list of Museum Websites and Online Resources to explore, Oral Histories, Articles, and Interviews by and about the people in this book, an extensive Bibliography and of course, source notes (because Deborah is a truly consummate researcher).

And if you think these stories are just in the past, I would suggest you reconsider. After all, the past is never past. Nationalistic right wing extremism is on the rise in Europe and the United States and once again, Jews are being singled out. Let these stories serve an a reminder and a warning.

This book is recommended for readers age 10+

This book was gratefully received from the author 

They Went Left by Monica Hesse

It's August 1945 and Zofia Lederman, 18, has been recently liberated from Gross Rosen Concentration Camp. She is recovering at a hospital, but is determined to return to her family's home to Sosnowiec, in what had been Poland before the Nazi invasion in 1939. After all the Jews there were rounded up, the Lederman were ultimately deported to Auschwitz. Only Zofia and her younger brother Abek, survived the selection process upon arrival, both ending up in Birkenau. Before they were separated, Zofia promised Abek she would find him at the end of the war.

Zofia is convinced that Abek is still alive and waiting for her at home. But home is no longer home, taken over by squatters and ransacked. And Abek isn't there, nor has he been seen in Sosnowiec since the war ended. Here, however, Zofia learns that prisoners from Auschwitz-Birkenau had been sent to either Bergen-Belsen or Dachau. And so early one morning, Zofia leaves Sosnowiec with some stolen money, a small suitcase and goes in search of Abek. 

Arriving in Munich, Germany in September, Zofia finds her way to Foehrenwald, an adults only displaced persons camp. Since Abek would only be 12 by now, there is no chance of finding him in there. But Zofia is give a bed in a cabin with two other girls - Breine and Esther. And she meets the reclusive, angry Josef, to whom she feels a compelling attraction, and who eventually becomes her lover.

Though at first standoffish, Zofia slowly begins to settle into life at Foehrenwald. Thanks to her family's prewar business making fashionable custom clothing for women, Zofia's is an experienced seamstress and finds a purpose in the camp altering clothing for the women there, including a wedding dress. And just as she begins to come to life again, a boy claiming to be Abek shows up at the camp looking for Zofia. 

There are several mysteries woven into Zofia's story, which begin to become apparent as she replays memories about her family, the roundup that ultimately brought them to Auschwitz, the selection process in which she and Abek were sent to the right, her dreams about the last time she saw him, her single-minded need to find him now and to finally be able to go home. This is all described in some of the most heartrending prose I've ever read:

"And when we got to Birkenau, there was another line dividing into two. In that line, the lucky people were sent to hard labor. The unlucky people - we could see the smoke. The smoke was the burning bodies of the unlucky people.
On this continent, I need to find only one person. I need to go home. I need to survive. I need to keep my brain working for only one person.
Because everyone else: Papa, Mama, Baba Rose, beautiful Aunt Maja - all of the, all of them, as the population of Sosnowiec was devastated - they went left." (pg. 14)

As Zofia begins to feel alive again in Foehrenwald, she also begins to unravel the mysteries hiding in her own memories, as well as truth hiding in the enigmatic Josef. Against this, Hesse provides the reader with a very realistic picture of what life was like in a displaced persons camp after the war ended. She has really captured the chaos of so many people looking for loved ones whom they had been separated from and now hoped had also survived life in concentration camps, like Miriam. She and her twin sister were victims of Nazi experiments, now she obsessively writes letters in the hope of finding her sister. And as Zofia discovers, anti-Semitism didn't stop just because the war ended. But Hesse also shows the kindness of people, like Sister Therese at Kloster Indersforg, a displaced persons camp for children, who gives Zofia just enough hope that Abek is alive to keep her going.

While Zofia looks for Abek, Hesse interrogates the idea of what home will be to people who have lost everything and almost everyone that they had identified as home before the war. Just before the Lederman family was rounded up, Zofia had embroidered the story of their family in alphabet form and sewn it into Abek's jacket, so he wouldn't forget. In one of her dreams, Zofia tells Abek: "When I find you again, we will fill our alphabet. And we will be whole, and everything will be fine. I promise I will find you." (pg. xiv) As Zofia rewrites this alphabet in a post war world, it looks very different, but will it become her way to find a new home and rebuild her family?     

That being said, no one was more surprised than I was when I got the the end of The Went Left and the mysteries were solved. I did not expect what I read. 

They Went Left is a book everyone should read.

You can find a great discussion guide provided by the publisher, LittleBrown, HERE

This book is recommended for readers age 13+
This book was an EARC gratefully received from Edelweiss+