Review By: Stacey Marsh
Author: Steve Sheinkin
Published: 2023, Roaring Brook Press
Genre: Narrative Nonfiction, Holocaust, WWII, Biography, Historical, Survival, War
Audience: 9, 10, 11, 12
Triggers: None
Summary: A true story of two Jewish teenagers racing against time during the Holocaust—one in hiding in Hungary, and the other in Auschwitz, plotting escape. It is 1944. A teenager named Rudolph (Rudi) Vrba has made up his mind. After barely surviving nearly two years in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, he knows he must escape. Even if death is more likely.
Rudi has learned the terrible secret hidden behind the heavily guarded fences of concentration camps across Nazi-occupied Europe: the methodical mass killing of Jewish prisoners. As trains full of people arrive daily, Rudi knows that the murders won’t stop until he reveals the truth to the world—and that each day that passes means more lives are lost. Lives like Rudi’s schoolmate Gerta Sidonová. Gerta’s family fled from Slovakia to Hungary, where they live under assumed names to hide their Jewish identity. But Hungary is beginning to cave under pressure from German Nazis. Her chances of survival become slimmer by the day. The clock is ticking. As Gerta inches closer to capture, Rudi and his friend Alfred Wetzler begin their crucial steps towards an impossible escape. This is the true story of one of the most famous whistleblowers in the world, and how his death-defying escape helped save over 100,000 lives.
Review: This historical nonfiction book takes place during WWII. The story goes back and forth between the realities of two teenagers and their experiences during this time. One teen is struggling to survive in concentration camps, and the other is trying to avoid the camps by staying hidden in plain sight with her family. The power of this story comes from the details of the camps combined with specific historical events at this time. The reader gets an emotional picture of what families felt and went through, as well as what was happening with leaders and the war at this time. It is one thing to know the events, but when they are coupled with emotional stories and vivid examples, the realities of horror shed light on this grim era. It is easy to root for both characters throughout the novel and given the nature of the story where people are fighting for their lives, the suspense throughout the novel is heightened. A major theme in this book is hope. The stories within this novel are graphic and don’t hide the details of the Holocaust, but at the same time, people are driven by the hope to stay with their families, see their families again, or in the main character’s case, save more people from dying. Another theme is survival. The description of the camps and tasks that prisoners were made to do outlined the tragedies of this time. I think the worst descriptions were that of the showers and how a team of prisoners had to untangle, move, and cremate their people. The numbers provided in the book of the overall deaths is shocking, but the way the story is laid out with the themes of hope and survival through the eyes of teenagers, young adults can access the brutal events in this time period in a way that makes sense to them.
