When the Nazis occupied Paris, no Jew was safe from arrest and deportation. Few Parisians were willing to risk their own lives to help. Yet during that perilous time, many Jews found refuge in an unlikely place–the sprawling complex of the Grand Mosque of Paris. Not just a place of worship but a community center, this hive of activity was an ideal temporary hiding place for escaped prisoners of war and Jews of all ages, especially children.
The successful play is now a gripping novel. Knocked unconscious after explosions ring out during a field trip to an Anne Frank exhibit, boy-crazy Nicole Burns wakes to find herself living a parallel life as a Jew in 1942 Paris. This Nicole is dating the boy of her present-day dreams, but living under the Nazis gradually becomes a nightmare. Her family survives the Nazi occupation with the help of friends, but when her father is exposed as a resistant, their fate takes a dire turn. The shifts in Nicole’s lives — from a carefree, sophisticated Parisian girl to a wretch riding in a cattle car with Anne Frank; from a modern girl focused only on the drama of her high school life to a thoughtful observer of the potential of everyday injustices — will engage teens and change their views of history found in books and the history we’re making today.
It is 1939. Paula Becker, thirteen years old and deaf, lives with her family in a rural German town. As rumors swirl of disabled children quietly disappearing, a priest comes to her family’s door with an offer to shield Paula from an uncertain fate. When the sanctuary he offers is fleeting, Paula needs to call upon all her strength to stay one step ahead of the Nazis.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 3, Issue 2
Peter Liebig can’t wait for summer. He’s tired of classrooms, teachers, and the endless lectures about the horrible Nazis. The war has been over for ten years, and besides, his town of Rolfen, West Germany, has moved on nicely. Despite its bombed-out church, it looks just as calm and pretty as ever. There is money to be made at the beach, and there are whole days to spend with Father at his job. And, of course, there’s soccer. Plenty for a thirteen-year-old boy to look forward to. But when Peter stumbles across a letter he was never meant to see, he unravels a troubling secret. Soon he questions everything—the town’s peaceful nature, his parents’ stories about the war, and his own sense of belonging.
A Jewish girl from the Netherlands manages to live through the horrors that befall her family following the Nazi occupation in 1940.
As a teenage Jewish girl struggles with anorexia, her decisions about whether or not to live affect those close to her and are influenced by survivors of the Holocaust.
From July 1942 until August 1944, a young Jewish teenager living in Holland kept a diary. Published for all the world to read many years after Anne herself died in a concentration camp, it chronicled the two years she and her family spent hiding from the Nazis. Here is a sensitive and thoughtful biography about one of the best-known victims of the Holocaust.
A teenage girl recounts the suffering and persecution of her family under the Nazis–in a Polish ghetto, through deportation, and in concentration camps.
When her German hometown becomes part of Poland after World War I, Lene, a young German Jew, struggles to come to terms with the anti-Semitism and anti-German hatred that seems to be growing around her.
After the German occupation of the Netherlands, Benjamin leaves the Christian family with whom he had been living and reunites with his real parents who returned from hiding.