HILDE AND ELI

Hilde Rosenzweig and Eli Lax were two of the 1.5 million Jewish children who were victims of the Nazi's ``Final Solution.'' Hilde was not yet ten when Hitler came to power in Germany and her happy childhood was disrupted as she and her family attempted to escape from Nazi persecution. Her brother managed to get away; he went to the United States and fought with the US Army from 1943 to 1946. Hilde and her mother, however, were not permitted to leave Germany. They were gassed on a train when Hilde was 18. Eli was born nine years after Hilde in a village called Zarich, Czechoslovakia. He hoped one day to follow his eldest sister to America, but in 1944 he was taken first to a ghetto and then to Auschwitz, where he died with his father and brother. Eli's sisters survived to tell his story. Adler (A Picture Book of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1991, etc.; A Picture Book of Jackie Robinson, below) provides a surprising amount of information in his brief history. Ritz's washed pictures evoke first a happier then a harrowing time. A sensitive but unsentimental account. (Nonfiction/Picture book. 8-12)