A vital look at one complicated man’s unwillingness to be complicit.
A straightforward and accessible Holocaust survivor’s memoir shows Oskar Schindler through the eyes of a young person he saved.
Before the Nazi invasion, Rena’s Jewish family members are patriotic Poles; her uncle had been a decorated war hero. After the occupation, the everyday anti-Semitism 10-year-old Rena has faced all her life is replaced with something terrifyingly worse. The anti-Jewish laws start small: curfews, forbidding bank accounts, requiring hard-to-obtain work permits, deportations. The local non-Jewish Poles ignore the horrible treatment of their neighbors, looking away during mass arrests. The Nazis’ crimes escalate until the Jews are locked in the Krakow ghetto, then eventually deported to concentration or death camps. Rena is nearly murdered as well—in fact, she is briefly taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau—but she manages to get herself and her mother on Oskar Schindler’s list. Rena credits the quiet heroism of Emilie and Oskar Schindler with saving herself and nearly 1,200 Jews from Nazi atrocities. She recounts that Oskar’s original goal in obtaining imprisoned Jewish workers for his munitions factory was saving money, but he and Emilie risked their lives and spent their fortune protecting their workers. Rena, now 90, is a Holocaust educator, and her matter-of-fact narration reflects this. She urges readers, “when you see a bully, do something. Go get help.”
A vital look at one complicated man’s unwillingness to be complicit. (photos) (Memoir. 11-14)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-59379-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
If Freedman wrote the history textbooks, we would have many more historians. Beginning with an engrossing description of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, he brings the reader the lives of the American colonists and the events leading up to the break with England. The narrative approach to history reads like a good story, yet Freedman tucks in the data that give depth to it. The inclusion of all the people who lived during those times and the roles they played, whether small or large are acknowledged with dignity. The story moves backwards from the Boston Tea Party to the beginning of the European settlement of what they called the New World, and then proceeds chronologically to the signing of the Declaration. “Your Rights and Mine” traces the influence of the document from its inception to the present ending with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The full text of the Declaration and a reproduction of the original are included. A chronology of events and an index are helpful to the young researcher. Another interesting feature is “Visiting the Declaration of Independence.” It contains a short review of what happened to the document in the years after it was written, a useful Web site, and a description of how it is displayed and protected today at the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. Illustrations from the period add interest and detail. An excellent addition to the American history collection and an engrossing read. (Nonfiction. 9-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8234-1448-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
Logically pointing out that the American cowboy archetype didn’t spring up from nowhere, Sandler, author of Cowboys (1994) and other volumes in the superficial, if luxuriously illustrated, “Library of Congress Book” series, looks back over 400 years of cattle tending in North America. His coverage ranges from the livestock carried on Columbus’s second voyage to today’s herding-by-helicopter operations. Here, too, the generous array of dramatic early prints, paintings, and photos are more likely to capture readers’ imaginations than the generality-ridden text. But among his vague comments about the characters, values, and culture passed by Mexican vaqueros to later arrivals from the Eastern US, Sadler intersperses nods to the gauchos, llaneros, and other South American “cowmen,” plus the paniolos of Hawaii, and the renowned African-American cowboys. He also decries the role film and popular literature have played in suppressing the vaqueros’ place in the history of the American West. He tackles an uncommon topic, and will broaden the historical perspective of many young cowboy fans, but his glance at modern vaqueros seems to stop at this country’s borders. Young readers will get a far more detailed, vivid picture of vaquero life and work from the cowboy classics in his annotated bibliography. (Notes, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6019-7
Page Count: 116
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
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