We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter

Reviewed by Brenda G.

While in her teens, Georgia Hunter learned her grandfather, his siblings, and her great- grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Against all odds in far-flung locations, this nuclear family of Polish Jews lived through Hitler’s worst. This book presents a fictionalized account of the trials endured by the family.

The story begins with Addy, given name, ironically, Adolf, working in France as an engineer and wondering should he go home. In 1939 as Hitler’s march through Europe gains strength, Addy muses about what might be happening in Radom, the Polish city where the Kurc family lives. When he attempts to acquire travel documents to Poland, he is denied and told of the dangers he would face, with “Jew” clearly stamped on his passport. A trip home would require travel through German-controlled territory. 

Chapter by chapter, the focus moves to one or more family members and chronicles the miseries they face and the horrors they witness.  The horrors of a packed railroad car, watching others die around them. Months in a Gestapo jail.  Deportation to Siberia from Soviet-controlled Poland.  Starvation.  A special offer of transportation that turns into a death train from which less than a handful of Polish Jews walk away, including Addy’s sister Mila and her daughter. An infant born in the Siberian winter whose eyes are frozen shut every morning. Entombment in the basement of a bombed out convent. Scurvy. Attempts to rescue extended family and in-laws who refuse to accept help in the face of certain death. Work in the Underground. Securing false papers and passing as non-Jewish Poles. Disappearances without explanation.  Harsh working conditions; harsher living conditions; while constantly subjected to the whims of military and political forces.

The book is well-written and researched. Members of the Kurc family are hard-working, intelligent, and resourceful. Despite this, they are unprepared for the horrors unleashed upon them, their neighbors, and Europe as a whole. This is truly a remarkable tale of survival.

Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Reviewed by Ambrea

“So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read.  Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found.”

Liesel Meminger is an orphan.  At the graveside of her younger brother, as she is traveling to the home of her new foster family, she finds a single book:  The Grave Digger’s Handbook.  It becomes the impetus for a great adventure for young Liesel for, although she doesn’t understand the words, she understands the desire to read—the desire for words—and she seeks to learn more.  As she learns to read, as becomes friends with energetic Rudy Steiner and Jewish fist-fighter Max Vandenburg, she sees her world in a new light and, more importantly, struggles with the new political dynamics of Nazi-occupied Germany.

The Book Thief is equal parts heart-wrenching and endearing.  It’s an unusual book, considering Death acts as the narrator of Liesel Meminger’s story, but it’s laced with beautiful and intriguing language, a type of lingual synesthesia in which colors are linked to experience and emotion.

Moreover, Death makes an unexpectedly competent narrator:  he’s very precise, very measured in recounting Liesel’s story, providing ample amounts of detail and description, but he’s also thorough and thoughtful.  Although I found him—or it, whatever Death is considered—slightly unnerving in his depictions of life (and lack thereof), I enjoyed every last morsel of his narrative.

I will also note that The Book Thief is a novel that builds slowly, taking its time to work on the reader; however, it gives the reader ample time to form attachments.  Honestly, I didn’t even notice how important these characters became to me, how attached I became to them, until, suddenly, I find them take away.  When tragedy strikes, it’s quick, explosive, heart-rending—and it’s like suffering along with Liesel.

And, as much as those final pages hurt, as much as they wounded me in the reading, I was glad I picked up The Book Thief.  I mean, Markus Zusak’s novel left me in tears when I reached the conclusion, but I don’t regret reading it and, truthfully, I feel as if I would have missed out on something truly wonderful if I had let it pass me.

As part of the final blurb on the cover, I read:  “In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markas Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.”  I couldn’t agree more.  I was completely in love with every chapter, every page of The Book Thief with its wonderful characters and its beautiful language.  It was truly a magnificent story.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Reviewed by Meygan

Before I begin my book review, I want to explain why I chose to reread this book. At the Bristol Public Library, we skim through the pages to make sure no important documents are left behind before we reshelf the books. One day, in my hand I held a copy of Anne Frank’s diary. It was a required reading when I was in school, but that was many years ago and I couldn’t remember how the book impacted my reading when I was a child. I told myself that I would eventually reread it one day. Just as I was about to shelve the book, I notice there was a small piece of paper in the front pages. It read,

Dear Reader,

Though I have never seen or met you, I suppose there is a fairly good chance that this book was imposed upon you by a school teacher. Even if you despise reading, I think you will find this book to be highly interesting, and a beautiful and rare portrait of a young girl.

Once you have completed the book, tuck a note of your own inside the pages. Tell the next reader what you thought of the book, and instruct them to do the same. Enjoy the book!

-The Doctor (Excuse my atrocious handwriting)

I didn’t want The Diary of a Young Girl to become a book that I read once and filled it away forever. So I checked it out that day and I am so glad I did.

I am going to assume that everyone knows that Anne and her family lived in a secret annex for over two years, hidden away from the Nazis during WWII. Some people may remember Anne and her family for being found and killed in the concentration camps. But what some people may not remember Anne for is living. Anne Frank was wise beyond her years. I can’t imagine being 13 years old and having to hide from the world. Puberty is difficult for a young girl anyways, but not being to surround yourself with your peers and having to put on a “mask” to please 8 other people you live with would make anyone feel like they are going insane. 

The family dynamics can be surprising. Even though Anne respected her mother, they didn’t have a close bond. She was much closer to her father and absolutely adored him, even when she could feel them drifting apart. Another part you may find fascinating is Anne’s optimism. Sure, she vents about fights between the families and how she wishes to go outside and to school again, but she remains hopeful that the war will end soon and she and her family will be free. Unfortunately, Anne died of typhus just two months prior to the end of WWII. 

As I previously mentioned, Anne was highly intelligent. She loved reading about mythology and of course, she loved to write. “Who would ever think that so much can go on in the soul of a young girl?” Anne wrote in her diary. Anne’s diary provided us fun details such as her getting to have another dinner with her family and how she oh so badly wanted to become a young woman! Readers also get to experience the moments of horror when burglars break into the building they are hiding in and the families think they have been found. Thanks to her diary, Anne proved that a lot of information takes place in the mind of a young girl. Actually, Anne’s father cut many passages out about Anne’s mother and Anne becoming very familiar with her teenage hormones and body. But the passages were later on added to the diary for publication, especially after additional pages of her diary were found. 

Anne also wrote, “I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me.” Anne did just that. Her diary has forever impacted the world and has taught us the true terror of the holocaust. Because of her diary, her voice will never die out. 

If you have already read The Diary of a Young Girl, I urge you to read it again. It is not a satisfying read. We know that Anne did not survive the concentration camps, but we still can’t help to feel hope that Anne will be recused. Even though I knew her ending, I felt like someone stabbed me in the heart when I read about Anne’s death. I am glad I read it now that I am older so I can truly appreciate her remarkable memoir. I have a different perspective when I reread this book as an adult. I believe as a child, I focused more on Anne’s tragic ending and how devastating it was that she was found. But when I reread her diary, I felt a deeper appreciation for Anne because I can remember dealing with my 13 year old feelings, and how difficult it was to be a teenage girl at times when all I wanted to do was grow up and become an adult.  

I will leave you with the most perfect words I have ever read about Anne’s diary, said by Ernst Schnable: “Her voice was preserved out of the millions that were silenced, this voice no louder than a child’s whisper… It has outlasted the shouts of the murderers and has soared above the voices of time.”

Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale and Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman

Reviewed by Meygan

“No, darling! To die, it’s easy. But you have to struggle to live! Until the last moment we must struggle together! I need you! And you’ll see that together we’ll survive. This always I told to her.”

In his autobiographical book, Maus, Art Spiegelman uses his relationship with his father and his father’s past to create an amazing work.  Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, is a holocaust survivor and that experience has deeply affected his life and that of his son. Vladek is quite the character and the book’s comic relief comes in the form of father and son bickering about everything: when Vladek should take his medicines, how often Art should come to visit his father, Vladek’s new wife, and the list goes on and on.  The book flashes back and forth between past and present but is done smoothly and with perfect timing. Vladek begins by telling Art about how he met Anya, Art’s mother, and how profound their love was. Anya’s parents were extremely wealthy, so Art and Anya were under the impression that they would be well taken care of. However, even the wealthiest people couldn’t escape the Nazi’s clutches. Vladek and Anya both escape the ghetto they were forced to live in, frightened about what their next move will be. They endure starvation, harsh weather conditions, and constantly have to watch their every move so they are not spotted for being Polish Jews. While book one does not end well for Vladek and Anya, book two takes on a more sinister twist. 

So what made me read this? Well, Maus was a required reading when I was an undergraduate student. I read the first one, but not the second.  I admit I was a little surprised with I first picked it up because it was in a graphic novel format. That ended up being one of my favorite parts about the book, the unusual way he uses to tell his father’s story.   He uses different animals to represent races (Jews are mice, Nazi’s are cats, French are frogs, Pollocks are pigs, and gypsies are moths). I was curious as to why Spiegelman did this, assuming that perhaps he used animals so his father’s tale wouldn’t appear as distressing to readers (after all, the book had to sell). But I found a better opinion on Shmoop.com. Spiegelman used mice to represent how Jews were viewed as pests, how cats/Nazis were the predators, and the pigs were used because Nazi’s often referred to Pollocks as pigs. 

Spiegelman does a superb job of establishing the emotional attachment from the reader to the characters. The book can be quite grueling, but there is some humor to make it easier. I appreciate Spiegelman’s honesty about how difficult it is to be a child of a holocaust survivor and how difficult it is to be a father of a child who doesn’t know the first thing about being a holocaust survivor.  The two different aspects complement one another in Maus.  After reading both books, without hesitation I would place Maus in my top 20 of all time. I was disappointed to see that there isn’t a book three because I did have questions that weren’t answered, but perhaps Vladek’s story was better left as is.