Fact Friday: The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs by Chana Stiefel

Image: Scholastic Inc.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Fact Friday features The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs by Chana Stiefel and illustrated by Susan Gal. This powerful picture book tells the story of Yaffa Eliach, who grew up in a shtetl in Poland called Eishyshok. The small Jewish community was tight-knit and committed to keeping their religion and culture alive. Yaffa loved to help one grandmother sell candles at the marketplace and the other grandmother in her photography studio. The villagers visited the photography studio to pose for portraits marking weddings, births and bar mitzvahs, then they sent the photos to family members who moved away each Jewish New Year.

Yaffa was six when Germany invaded Poland and nearly all the villagers were rounded up and killed. Yaffa's father helped the family escape with just the clothing they wore, but Yaffa was able to tuck a few family photos into her shoes. The family survived by living in underground shelters, pig sties and potato sheds. Her mother taught her to read and her father told stories of the town's holidays. She took comfort in looking at the photos.

When the war finally ended, the family could not return to Eishyshok. It was not safe. Instead, they wandered across Europe to Jerusalem. Eventually, Yaffa moved to the U.S. Thirty five years after the war, President Carter asked her for help planning the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Yaffa had an idea that would celebrate life instead of reflecting solely on "death and darkness." Over the next 17 years, she traveled the world to meet with survivors from the village to collect family photos. The result is the permanent exhibit at the museum in Washington D.C. called the "Tower of Life."

The ink, watercolor and digital artwork is stunning, ranging from joyful to dark. Two photographs of Yaffa as a six-year-old are reproduced and the depiction of the "Tower of Life" requires turning the book vertically for its full effect. The Tower of Life belongs in every kind of library. Highly recommended. Never forget.