To actively mark Holocaust Memorial Day - 27 January, there is a special reading list. Please encourage your child to get involved.
The Man who broke into Auschwitz by Denis Avey
The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz is the extraordinary true story of a British soldier who marched willingly into Buna-Monowitz, the concentration camp known as Auschwitz III. In the summer of 1944, Denis Avey was being held in a POW labour camp, E715, near Auschwitz III. He had heard of the brutality meted out to the prisoners there, and he was determined to witness what he could. He hatched a plan to swap places with a Jewish inmate and smuggled himself into his sector of the camp.
For decades he could not bring himself to revisit the past that haunted his dreams, but now Denis Avey feels able to tell the full story - a tale as gripping as it is moving.
What if they find Us by Kathy Clark
Guardian Angel House is a very personal undertaking from author Kathy Clarke.
Drawing on the memories of her mother and aunt, Kathy tells the true story of two young Jewish girls: Susan and Vera, who in German-occupied Hungary suddenly find themselves remove from the family home and sent to a convent to be kept "safe" from the Nazis. Here they discover the meaning of humanity as the nus valiantly risk their lives every day to save 120 Jewish children.
The Earth is Singing by Vanessa Curtis
My name is Hanna. I am 15, I am Latvian and I live with my mother and grandmother. My father is missing, taken by the Russians. I have a boyfriend, and I am training to be a dancer.
But none of that is important any more. Because the Nazis have arrived, and I am a Jew. And as far as they are concerned, that is all that matters.
This is my story.
Annexed by Sharon Dogar
Everyone knows about Anne Frank and her life hidden in the secret annex, but what about the boy who was also trapped there with her? What was it like to be forced into hiding with Anne Frank, first to hate her and then to find yourself falling in love with her? Especially with your parents and her parents all watching almost everything you do together. To know you're being written about in Anne's diary, day after day? What's it like to start questioning your religion, wondering why simply being Jewish inspires such hatred and persecution? Or to just sit and wait and watch while others die, and wish you were fighting. As Peter and Anne become closer and closer in their confined quarters, how can they make sense of what they see happening around them?
Nowhere to Run by Carol Drinkwater
Set in the south of France during WWII. A young girl gets involved in helping Jewish children escape to safety abroad. Becky Mortkowicz's family are Jewish refugees from Poland, while Claudette leads a happy carefree life in Paris. Two girls from very different backgrounds, but the horrors of the Nazi occupation will bring them dramatically together. Becky's family have been forced to flee Warsaw for France and are offered a home by Claudette's father. The friendship between the two girls blossoms, but Becky's safe haven is short lived as the Nazis edge ever nearer the French border. Her family are soon on the move again. But even in the so-called Free Zone there are murmurings that an invasion may be imminent. Will Becky survive the war to see Claudette again?
The Things we did for Love by Natasha Farrant
France: February, 1944 - Arianne knew Luc as a child, of course she did. Everyone in Samaroux knows each other. But he's been away, and five years really makes a difference to a boy. A young man.
As they fall headily into love - first love - their world starts to crumble around them. German forces are closing in, and the village is torn between cooperating to save themselves or putting up resistance and entering unknown danger.
Arianne will do anything to make Luc stay. Luc wants to prove he is a man. And Romy, who has loved Arianne all the time that Luc has been away, can see a way of removing his rival, at any cost.
How far will they go to protect what they believe in? And what will they do for love?
Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
'In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.' In July 1942, thirteen-year-old Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the occupation, went into hiding in an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years Anne vividly describes in her diary the frustrations of living in such close quarters, and her thoughts, feelings and longings as she grows up. Her diary ends abruptly when, in August 1944, they were all betrayed.
A deeply moving and unforgettable portrait of an ordinary and yet an extraordinary teenage girl. First published over sixty years ago, Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl has reached millions of young people throughout the world.
The Storm to Come by Yankev Glatshtevn
As the Holocaust begins to unfold from a brutal plan into a nightmare reality, two nine-year-old boys, one German, one Jewish, find themselves living in a hell on Earth.
An Earth where children come home from school to find their parents gone, where sometimes school is not even safe, and no one can be trusted.
Originally written in 1940, this book chillingly anticipates the terror of the storm to come.
Once by Morris Gleitzman
My name is Felix. This is my story.
Felix has been living in an orphanage for three years and eight months when the men in armbands arrive to burn the books. Going on the run in search of his parents, Felix soon learns that Poland in 1942 is not a safe place for Jewish boys. But can his gift for storytelling keep him one step ahead of the Nazis and help him find his parents?
After all, everybody deserves to have something good in their life at least once.
The Children of Willesden Lane by Mona Golabek
Fourteen-year-old Lisa Jura was a musical prodigy who hoped to become a concert pianist. But when Hitler's armies advanced on pre-war Vienna, Lisa's parents were forced to make a difficult decision. Able to secure passage for only one of their three daughters through the Kindertransport, they chose to send gifted Lisa to London for safety.
As she yearned to be reunited with her family while she lived in a home for refugee children on Willesden Lane, Lisa's music became a beacon of hope. A memoir of courage, survival and the power of music to uplift the human spirit.
Hannah Goslar Remembers by Alison Leslie Gold
The story of Hannah Goslar, who was friends with Anne Frank before she went into hiding, who also lived in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation.
A Jew herself, she was to meet Anne again in Bergen Belsen.
Schindlers Ark by Thomas Keneally
In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow (Krakow). He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker a bon viveur and a member of the Nazi Party but to the Jews of Cracow he became a saviour.
A stunning novel based on the extraordinary true story of German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler, who came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II.
The Boy who didn't want to Die by Peter Lantos
An extraordinary journey, made by Peter, a boy of five, through war-torn Europe in 1944 and 1945.
Peter and his parents set out from a small Hungarian town, travelling through Austria and then Germany together. Along the way, unforgettable images of adventure flash one after another: sleeping in a tent and then under the sky, discovering a disused brick factory, catching butterflies in the meadows - and as Peter realises that this adventure is really a nightmare - watching bombs falling from the blue sky outside Vienna, learning maths from his mother in Belsen.
All this is drawn against a background of terror, starvation, infection and, inevitably, death.
If this is a Man and The Truce by Primo Levi
On 22nd February 1944, 650 people were sent to Auschwitz in 12 goods trains. Only Primo Levi and two others survived.
If This Is a Man is Levi's most direct, non-fictional account of his time in Auschwitz,
The Truce describes his flight from the hell in which he had been incarcerated.
The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson
Leon Leyson (born Leib Lezjon) was only ten years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and his family was forced to relocate to the Krakow ghetto. With incredible luck, perseverance and grit, Leyson was able to survive the sadism of the Nazis, including that of the demonic Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszow, the concentration camp outside Krakow. Ultimately, it was the generosity and cunning of one man, a man named Oskar Schindler, who saved Leon Leyson's life, and the lives of his mother, his father and two of his four siblings, by adding their names to his list of workers in his factory - a list that became world renowned: Schindler's List.
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen often think of life before the war. It is now 1943, and their life in Copenhagen is filled with school, food shortages and the Nazi soldiers marching through town.
When the Jews of Denmark are "relocated", Ellen moves in with the Johansens and pretends to be one of the family.
Soon Annemarie is asked to go on a dangerous mission to save Ellen's life.
The Mozart Question by Michael Morpurgo
When Lesley is sent to Venice to interview world-renowned violinist Paulo Levi on his fiftieth birthday, she cannot believe her luck. She is told that she can ask him anything at all – except the Mozart question. But it is Paulo himself who decides that the time has come for the truth to be told. And so follows the story of his parents in a Jewish concentration camp, forced to play Mozart violin concerti for the enemy; how they watched fellow Jews being led off to their deaths and knew that they were playing for their lives. As the story unfolds, the journalist begins to understand the full horror of war – and how one group of musicians survived using the only weapon they had.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
Based on the true story of Lale and Gita Sokolov, two Slovakian Jews who survived Auschwitz and eventually made their home in Australia.
In that terrible place, Lale was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - literally scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust. Lale used the infinitesimal freedom of movement that this position awarded him to exchange jewels and money taken from murdered Jews for food to keep others alive. If he had been caught, he would have been killed; many owed him their survival.
Stones in Water by Donna Jo Napoli
When Roberto and his friend, Samuele, are captured and brought to Germany to work in the labor camps, their lives are forever changed as they confront great difficulties and near-death experiences in an attempt to survive their harsh environment.
Sisterland by Linda Newbery
Hilly's German grandmother, HeidiGran, comes to live with her family after she gets Alzheimer's disease; but as her mind becomes more muddled, secrets from her memories of life during the Second World War start to emerge.
Why does HeidiGran keep talking about a girl called Rachel? And why does she make racist remarks about Hilly's friend, Reuben? As Hilly struggles to cope with revelations about her family's past, she encounters racism and prejudice for herself when a friend becomes the victim of a mindless attack. She also falls in love for the first time.
White Bird by R J Palacio
Sara Blum lives an idyllic life. But her world comes crashing down when the Nazi occupation arrives in her small French town, separating her from her parents and forcing the young Jewish girl into hiding.
Sara's classmate Julien and his family will risk everything to ensure her survival and together, Sara and Julien manage to find beauty in a secret world of their creation.
Hidden by Marcel Prins
Everyone reads the compelling story of Anne Frank and wants to know more. How many others were hidden away during the war? How and where? Were they separated from their families? Did they ever find each other again?
Hidden tells the stories of 14 young people who were hidden throughout the Netherlands during World War Two. Their stories create a wider picture of what it meant to be Jewish in Europe during World War Two and what it took to survive.
Friedrich by Hans Richter
Friedrich and his best friend were growing up in Germany in the early 1930s. At first, Friedrich seemed to be the more fortunate, but when Hitler came to power, things began to change. Friedrich was expelled from school and became an orphan when his mother died and his father was arrested and deported.
This is a terrifying story of the destruction of a single Jewish family.
The Missing by Michael Rosen
By turns charming, shocking and heart-breaking, this is the true story of Michael Rosen’s search for his relatives who “went missing” during the Second World War – told through prose, poetry, maps and pictures. When Michael was growing up, stories often hung in the air about his great-uncles: one was a clock-mender and the other a dentist. They were there before the war, his dad would say, and weren’t after. Over many years, Michael tried to find out exactly what happened: he interviewed family members, scoured the internet, pored over books and traveled to America and France. The story he uncovered was one of terrible persecution – and it has inspired his poetry for years since. Here, poems old and new are balanced against an immensely readable narrative; both an extraordinary account and a powerful tool for talking to children about the Holocaust.
Kindertransport by Diane Samuels
Since it was first staged by the Soho Theatre Company in London in 1993, Diane Samuels' Kindertransport has enjoyed huge success around the world, has been revived numerous times, and is widely studied in schools.
The play tells the story of how nine-year-old Eva, a German Jewish girl, is sent by her parents on the Kindertransport to start a new life in Britain just before the outbreak of World War Two; how she changes her name and begins the process of denying her roots; and how, when her own daughter discovers some old letters in the attic, she is forced to confront the truth about her past.
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Michael Berg, a 15 year old boy who falls ill on his way home from school and is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age, they become lovers but she dissappears. When Michael next see her, he is a young law student and she is on trial for a hideous crime.
This novel explores themes of love, secret, horror and compassion set against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.
It is also a story of coming to terms with the past.
The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Approaching the unspeakable through the diminutive (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father.
Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits, studying the bloody pawprints of history and tracking its meaning for those who come next.
Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli
He's a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Runt. Happy. Fast. Filthy son of Abraham.
He's a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He's a boy who steals food for himself and the other orphans. He's a boy who believes in bread and mothers and angels. He's a boy who wants to be a Nazi someday, with tall, shiny jackboots and a gleaming Eagle hat of his own. Until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind. And when the trains come to empty the Jews from the ghetto of the damned, he's a boy who realizes it's safest of all to be nobody.
Sophie's Choice by William Styron
Stingo, an inexperienced twenty two year old Southerner, takes us back to the summer of 1947 and a boarding house in a leafy Brooklyn suburb. There he meets Nathan, a fiery Jewish intellectual; and Sophie, a beautiful and fragile Polish Catholic.
Stingo is drawn into the heart of their passionate and destructive relationship as witness, confidant and supplicant. Ultimately, he arrives at the dark core of Sophie's past: her memories of pre-war Poland, the concentration camp and - the essence of her terrible secret - her choice.
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
As the Nazi madness swept across Europe, a quiet watchmaker's family in Holland risked everything for the sake of others, and for the love of Christ.
Despite the danger and threat of discovery, the ten Boom family courageously offered shelter to persecuted Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Then a trap brought about the family's arrest.
Could God's love shine through, even in Ravensbruck?
Hitler's Canary by Sandi Toksvig
Ten-year-old Bamse Skovlund and his best friend Anton have been ordered to stay out of trouble. It soon becomes clear that trouble isn't just going to pass any of them by.
Jewish Danes are subject to appalling treatment by the German occupiers, and every day are at risk of being taken away to concentration camps in mainland Europe.
The Skovlund family are determined to fight against Nazi occupation and if this means participating in one of history's most dramatic rescue missions, then it's time to take a stand.
Last Train from Kummersdorf by Leslie Wilson
Set in Germany in 1945, this is the story of a boy, Hanno, and a girl, Effi. Hanno is on the run, having just seen his twin brother killed. Effi is streetwise. She has learned the hard way that she must keep her secrets to herself - and she's even less keen to trust Hanno when she finds out he is a policeman's son. But there are far more dangerous people on the road, Russian soldiers, German deserters - and Major Otto, who likes to play games with people before he kills them.
This exceptional tale of courage, ingenuity, and the remarkable bonds formed during wartime will keep you gripped right up to the very last page.
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Nicky Raddon - January 2024