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.

#tbt: Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy

Image: Author's Website

Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy. 234 p. Marshall Cavendish, 2006. 9780761452775. (Own.)

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. #tbt features Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy. This first-person verse novel tells the story of Syvia Perimutter, the author's aunt, who was four when she and her family were relocated to the Lodz Ghetto in Warsaw, Poland in 1939. She lived there until she was ten and the ghetto was liberated. Of the 270,000 people who were forced into the ghetto, only 800 survived and just 12 of those survivors were children. She and her siblings were hidden in cellars when the children were to be deported to concentration camps.

The author chose to tell her aunt's story in free verse as a work of historical fiction instead of a more distant informational voice. While it is fiction, every word is true. It's a short, but powerful book. Suspense is high and there will be tears. An extensive author's note in the back matter details the lives of the survivors in the post-war period.

Yellow Star was published in 2006. It was named a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, a Sydney Taylor Honor, an ALA Notable Book, and an SLJ Best Book. It's audio version won a "Headphones Award." I read this one with my ears, but don't recommend listening while driving. I had to pull my car over to cry.

Middle Grade Monday: Once by Morris Gleitzman

Image: Penguin Random House UK

Once by Morris Gleitzman. Once/ Then/ Now/ After series. 160 p. Puffin/ Penguin Random House, February, 2006. (Own)

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Middle Grade Monday features Once by Australian author Morris Gleitzman. Felix is our naive, young and unreliable narrator. He believes he has been living in a Catholic orphanage, though he is Jewish, while his parents are away at a bookseller's convention. He runs away to try and find them just as the Nazis arrive to round up the occupants. Suspense builds as he encounters the horrors of Nazi occupation and slowly comes to realize the danger he is in. Each chapter begins with the word, "Once." They are short and pack an emotion wallop.

Once was published in 2006. It was followed by Then in 2009. In Now, published in 2010, Felix is a grandfather living in Australia, but Gleitzman returned to the 1940s in After (2012) and Soon (2015). While researching information for this post, I discovered that in 2018, Felix's story was continued in Maybe and that a final volume, Always, is in the works. Every students who reads Once, continues the series. I have some ordering and reading to do!

Non-Fiction Monday: His Name was Raoul Wallenberg: courage, rescue and mystery during World War II

by Louise Borden. 136 p. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, January, 2012. 9780618507559. (Purchased.)

Raoul Wallenberg may not be the first name that comes to mind when contemplating righteous gentiles of the Holocaust, but students of the Holocaust would do well to learn about him and this gorgeously designed biography introduces the man memorably. 

Mr. Wallenberg was born into a wealthy family in Sweden. He never knew his father, who died of cancer three months before he was born. His fraternal grandfather Gustaf Oscar Wallenberg, who was at one time Sweden's minister to Japan, influenced Raoul's life immensely. It was he who arranged for Raoul to become a "citizen of the world." It was Raoul, with his insatiable curiosity, appreciation for the arts and intense interest in history and people who fulfilled his grandfather's wishes. 

The pace of this verse biography is leisurely in the beginning, and accompanied by many photographs of family and places. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of the "verse." It seemed to me to be more chopped up and artfully arranged sentences. I did a lot of rereading before I adjusted. 

At times, I also wished for more detail, like more than one line about his father dying of cancer or the one line about his step-father, Frederik von Dardel. But this is a minor and purely personal quibble. 

Tension definitely ratchets during the last half as Borden describes Sweden's role during World War II and the plan to send Mr. Wallenberg to Hungary. This reader was awed by the audacity of Mr. Wallenberg as well as his courage and commitment to rescuing Jews. 

Several pages of back matter provide more information about Mr. Wallenberg and the family he left behind. The author got to visit Sweden and interview family and friends. She provides a two-page bibliography, recommends several video recordings.

This unusual biography may take a little hand-selling to students, but should be recommended for any social studies unit on the Holocaust or the subject of righteous gentiles.

Other blog reviews:
The Children's War
Nonfiction Detectives
Ms. Yingling Reads

Non-Fiction Monday is hosted this week by Anastasia at Booktalking#Kidlit.