The Light In Hidden Places by Sharon Cameron

The Light In Hidden Places is a fictionalized account of the real-life story of  Stefania Podgorska, a Polish-Catholic who risked her life to save her Jewish friends and neighbours during World War II.

The story begins in 1936 with Stefania living on her family's farm outside of Przemysl in Poland. Stefania or Fusia as most call her, doesn't enjoy life on the farm, with its smells and with her large, noisy family. At age eleven, Fusia had made an unsuccessful attempt to leave the farm and move to Przemysl where her older sisters, Marysia and Angia were living. However, two years later, at age thirteen, and with a bit of planning, Fusia succeeds in leaving.  

In Przemysl, living with her sisters, Fusia begins working for a Jewish lady, Mrs. Diamant who owns a sweets shop on Mickiewicza Street. While Mrs. Diamant runs the shop, Mr. Diamant, who is not well,  remains at home convalescing. The Diamant's have four sons and a daughter. There is Chaim who is studying medicine in Italy, Izio who attends university, Max who is in an apprenticeship and a younger brother Henek. Their daughter is living in Lwow.

Fusia's job is to sweep the shop and wrap parcels but soon she is running errands to the market for Mrs. Diamant. Fusia becomes good friends with Izio. She begins spending more time at the Diamants, often eating supper with them in the evening, discussing politics and topics in medicine. When Angia moves to Krakow and Marysia moves to the far side of the city, Fusia is welcomed into the Diamant's home. Fuzia's friendship with Izio gradually blossoms into the beginnings of a romance.

Then in September of 1939, war comes to Poland when the Germans invade. While President Moscicki attempts to rally the young men of Poland, the Diamant brothers flee to Lwow.  Fusia realizes they are running because they are Jews. However, the Russians and the Germans carve up Poland, taking over their part of Poland. Jews in the east part of Przemysl are safe but the Jews in West Przemysl are forced to flee to the Russian controlled areas of the city. The Diamant brothers return home but they have no idea where their sister might be.

Life returns somewhat to normal. Henek and Izio return to school, while Chaim works in the hospital and Max works as a dental assistant in the village of Nizankowice. Fusia learns that her mother and younger siblings are safe at their farm, but her older family members are scattered throughout Poland. However, the respite is short. By June of 1941, their area of Poland is once again bombed by the Germans who take over Przemysl. While the Diamant boys flee, Fusia and Mr. and Mrs. Diamant travel to the village of Nizankowice where they stay with Mrs. Nowak, a Catholic who boarded Max. However, Fusia's belief they could safely stay in the village is shattered when she witnesses the hatred of the locals towards Jews. They quickly return to Przemysl where they discover their shop damaged and looted. The Diamants learn that their bank accounts no longer exist. The Diamant's sons return, revealing that the border with Russia has been closed.

In April of 1942, the Diamants along with all Jews in Przemysl are now ordered into the ghetto. Three weeks later, as they are preparing to move, the Gestapo storms into their apartment, removing all of the Diamant's possessions except what the family was able to hide in Fusia's room. As the Diamants walk to the ghetto, Fusia notes how people who once shopped at the Diamant's store, now abuse them.

Eventually a new tenant, twenty-three-year-old Emilika, a Catholic, moves into the room on the first floor. She soon becomes a constant fixture in Fusia's apartment. Then one morning, Fusia is stunned to see Max Diamant marching in the street with other Jewish men. Risking her life, she walks alongside him and learns that he is being sent to work and that they desperately need food in the ghetto, that there are eight families to an apartment. Fusia manages to sell a silk scarf and buy eggs, butter, flour and a chicken. She is able to sneak into the ghetto and is horrified at the number of people crammed into buildings and the obviously starving children. The Diamant's are grateful for the food but warn her not to return to the ghetto. It is a promise Fusia will end up not keeping.

One night, Izio makes it out of the ghetto to visit Fusia and reveals to her that one thousand men are being sent to a labor camp in Lwow and that Max is on the list. But when Fusia next sees Max as he marches through Przemysl, he tells her that Izio went in his place. Devastated, Fusia sells as much as she can, travels by train to Lwow, and manages to get into the work camp to see Izio. He is starving and desperate to escape. He begs Fusia to help him and together they hatch a plan for his escape. But Fusia is unable to save Izio, after her train is delayed by German troops and Izio is discovered and executed.

Having lost the man she loved, Fusia decides to return to her family's home in the country. She finds their farmhouse in ruins and her younger sister, Helena abandoned and starving. Her sister had been left in the care of an elderly neighbour Mrs. Zielinski, but when she died, Helena was left with the father and son who beat her. With her sister Helena in tow, Fusia returns to Przemysl hoping to just survive the war. But soon she realizes that it is up to her to save those she cares for even though it may cost her everything she holds dear.

Discussion

Sharon Cameron's The Light In Hidden Places brings to young readers the story of Stefania Podgorska's heroic actions during the German occupation of Poland. Stefani or Fusia as she was called, was a young Catholic girl who was living with a Jewish family, the Diamants, at the beginning of World War II. The Diamants became a second family to Fusia. She also found herself falling in love with Izio Diamant. As the war progressed and it became apparent the Diamants, as Jews, were in grave danger, Fusia began helping them in any way she could. But while the Diamants seemed to be aware of the danger they were in, Fusia initially did not understand what was really happening. However, Fusia was soon to be educated in the ways of the world during the war.

Fusia's education begins with her learning about Jews. Because of her friendship with the Diamants and their kindness and generosity towards her, Fusia viewed the Jewish Diamants as simply people like herself. At Mass with her sister Angia one Sunday she "...thanked God for the Diamants. Moses was in my Bible, too, after all, and I felt certain that God liked him." She eats dinner with the Diamants, works in their shop, and eventually moves in with them when her sisters move away. This is the first part of her education in Przemysl.

The second part of her education in Przemysl teaches Fusia that sometimes there is only yourself to take action. While leading Mr. and Mrs. Diamant out of Przemysl to Nizankowice and hopefully to safety, Fusia begins to believe the entire situation is ridiculous. "Mr. and Mrs. Diamant had to stop and rest about every forty-five minutes, even though I was carrying all our supplies in the knapsack...What was I doing? How could I take care of two people old enough to be my grandparents? Someone else should have been doing this job. Making these decisions. Only there was no one else. There was only me."

Unlike many of her neighbours, Fusia is able to see the Diamants, not as Jews but simply as people like herself, for whom she has a responsibility towards. After learning about the conditions in the Jewish ghetto and how they need food Fusia decides to act. "...How was anyone in the ghetto supposed to live? Were the Nazis planning to starve every Jew in Przemysl? I put my clean feet into some socks and tied my shoes. Maybe they were. But they weren't going to starve mine."

After the first Aktion which claims the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Diamant and many Jews, the rumour of a second one makes Fusia act. When she tells Emilika that she is thinking of doing something to help Izio's brothers who are now in danger by hiding them, Emilika is critical. "Do you want to die? Do you think you've lived long enough....I won't throw my life away for some Jew I've never even heard of!" Emilika tells her, "These people, Fusia. It's awful. It's sad. But you didn't make these things happen, and it's not something you can fix. They're not your responsibility..." Struggling with her inner conflict as to whether to act or not, Fusia enters the cathedral to think and wonders, "If I live through this war, can I live with having done nothing, or will my life be poisoned with regret?....But who else is there to save them but me? Oh Great God. Lady Mary. Give me the answer."  When so many people were like Emilika and did nothing, Fusia knows she must act, even if she is the only one to do so.

But deciding to act is not without fear and conflict. The Light In Hidden Places certainly captures the danger and inner conflict Fusia experienced in deciding to help the Diamants. What starts off as bringing food to the Diamants in the Jewish ghetto soon sees Fusia unsuccessfully attempting to rescue her fiancé, Izio Diamant from a death camp. But even this heartrending failure doesn't stop Fusia. She ends up hiding thirteen Jews in the attic of the house she's living in while four Nazi's live on the ground floor, and the neighbour in the front apartment has  her son, an SS officer visiting. Their house is situated across the street from a German hospital!

The third part of her education begins when leaving the ghetto Fusia witnesses a girl being beaten to death with the butt of a rifle. "But the SS man smiled while he did it, then left her body and her blood on the street." With this Fusia experiences "...the joy of hate. The happiness of causing another person's death and pain."  She finally understands now the evil she is facing and that some people enjoy evil. Just prior to witnessing this brutal murder, after having taken a great personal risk by sneaking into the ghetto, Fusia was warned by Mrs. Diamant about the evil they were all dealing with and she urged Fusia to be careful, not to underestimate it. "You are a good girl, ketzele,' she whispered. 'But you do not understand. How could you, when I did not understand? But you listen to me now.' She held my face and looked me in the eyes. 'They will kill you. And they will like killing you. Do not give them the chance.' "

The fourth part of Fusia education occurs when she is bringing Helena back to Przemysl to live with her. Helena faints due to malnutrition and exhaustion in the street. They are picked up by German soldiers and Helena is treated kindly by a German doctor, Dr. Becker who comes to the apartment the next day with food and medicine. Fusia realizes that one cannot categorize people. "It was wrong to paint all men the same color. Whether they be Jewish or Polish. Or even German. " It is a lesson she will have to keep in mind in the coming months and years, in order to survive.

Fusia states that ultimately her education in Przemysl had taught her "...that people like to divvy up one another with names. Jew. Catholic. German. Pole. But these were the wrong names. They were the wrong dividing lines. Kindness. Cruelty. Love and hate. Those were the borders that mattered."

Cameron watched Stefania Podgorska's oral history interview when it was aired on PBS in the early 1990's. It was something that she would remember. In 2017, Cameron, who never forgot Podgorska's story, found her full interview on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website and wanted to tell her story. She was able to contact Stefania and Max's son Joe Burzminski (Max took on the new name of Ed Burzminski after the war) and was given access to Stefania's unpublished memoir.

Cameron portrays Fusia's intelligence, ingenuity and courage as she meets one challenge after the next. Her younger sister, Helena is no less resourceful and quick thinking. And despite tragedy amidst so much evil, Cameron at times infuses her story with touches of humour. Stefania and Helena, by the grace of God and their own determination were able to save thirteen Jews.

The Light In Hidden Places is a magnificent testament to the human spirit's ability to overcome great evil. Stefania's story reminds us that we all have a responsibility to fight hatred, division and cruelty. Her story is timeless and for our time. Cameron has included an extensive Author's Note complete with photographs, that tell what happened to Stefania and Max and Helena after the war as well as the Jews who survived with them.

Book Details:

The Light In Hidden Places by Sharon Cameron
New York: Scholastic Press    2020
 377 pp.

Almost Autumn by Marianne Kaurin

"Everything starts this autumn, she suddenly thinks. So stupid. Does anything ever start with autumn, really? Autumn brings darkness, quiet, rest, death, trees lose their leaves and the earth grows hard."

Almost Autumn is a story about the plight of a Jewish family in German occupied Norway during the Second World War.

Fifteen-year-old Ilse Stern is completely infatuated with Hermann Rod. Hermann and Ilse have lived next door to each other all their lives, in apartments with their respective families, on the third floor of a tenement building, number ten Biermanns gate, in Grunerlokka, Norway. In the summer, Ilse would sit on the bench beneath the lilac tree in the back yard in the summer waiting for Hermann to emerge from the their tenement building. They would often sit together, laughing and talking. One day Hermann reveals to Ilse that he is beginning an apprenticeship with an artist.

In autumn, October 1942, Ilse manages to sneak out of her home after the noon meal, without her parents knowing. Her sisters, eighteen-year-old Sonja and five-year-old Miriam are at Torshovdalen Park. Ilse plans to meet Hermann to go to the movies. A few days earlier in the stairwell of their tenement building, Hermann showed her two tickets and asked her to meet him "at the pictures on Saturday, five o'clock... Row seven, seats eight and nine."

Wanting to impress Hermann, Ilse wears her light summer dress, "the white one with red polka dots that Sonja sewed for her" to the theatre. She waits with great anticipation for Hermann but he doesn't show. Her neighbour from the fourth floor, Ole Rustad sees her and questions her. Ilse waits through two shows and returns home, upset that Hermann did not come.

Hermann has told both Ilse and his father that he is apprenticing as a painter in Frogner. Ilse seemed excited but his father was angry. On the day Hermann planned to go to the movies with Ilse, he walked all the way to Frogner to the apartment of Einar Vindju. However, Einar is not just an artist. He is working with the resistance, forging papers and helping Jews to escape to Sweden. Together they listen to the English broadcast on the wireless and take notes. After each visit to Einar's apartment, Hermann takes home a painting that Einar has prepared so that his story about learning to paint appears to be valid.

Over the summer Ilse has been working for her father Isak, helping him in his tailor shop on Osterhaus' gate. Isak's father was a tailor like his father, grand-father and ancestors had been. Her older sister Sonja also works in the shop. Business is bad and they have very little stock to use. Every day Isak arrives at his shop early to scrub the shop windows of the racist graffiti written on them each night so his daughters will not know how bad things have become. Although he tries to be friendly, fewer and fewer customers come to the shop. He is losing money and eventually will have to close. Other Jews in Oslo are also experiencing the same things; customers who have left and articles in the newspapers blaming the Jews for everything. This situation led Isak to go to the bank in the summer and withdraw all his money and empty the safety deposit box.

Sonja has been staying late at the shop to work on a project. She intends to get hired as a seamstress at the National Theater. Her friend Helene who works there, has suggested that Sonja apply and bring a sample costume. If she gets hired, she will be able to afford her own apartment and earn her own money. Her meeting with Mr. Ostli goes well and she is hired for December 1st. However, Sonja decides to keep this a secret from her parents for now.

While Sonja is planning for her future, and her father is simply trying to keep his business going, Ilse is trying to figure out her relationship with Hermann who has apologized for standing her up and who invites her to go skiing. But when their father is taken away by the police, their shop closed and their mother required to report each day to the police station, Ilse's life is forever changed.

Discussion

Almost Autumn tells the story of a Jewish family living in Grunerlokka, a district in Oslo during the autumn of 1942. At this time Norway is under German occupation and life for Jews is becoming increasingly restrictive.  Kaurin tells her story from several points of view; that of Ilse Stern, her father Isak, her older sister Sonja, her boyfriend Hermann and the taxi-driver, Ole.

Although the novel is about two specific events, the rounding up of Jewish males over the age of fifteen on October 26, 1942  and the rounding up of Jewish women and children exactly a month later and the deportation of Norwegian Jews to Auschwitz, it is also a story that explores the role of chance in life.

Isak Stern has been thinking about escaping to Sweden with his family, yet he delays, a decision that will cost him and most of his family their lives. He withdraws all their money and valuables from the bank in the summer and he begins to consider leaving for Sweden. Yet he hesitates. "How would Hannah react to such a suggestions? Would she consider it, putting the girls through it; would he, for that matter? He doesn't know how to go about it, where to begin, who to contact...He needs to think it through, properly evaluate the situation before he involves Hanna in his plans."  When the police come for Isak, he thinks, "He was too late. It is the only thought that runs through his head. Too late. If only he had made a decision, if only he had known just how little time he had at his disposal, he would have done what was needed. The could have crossed the border to neutral Sweden by now, if only he had followed through on his plans. He even had a name; for days he had contemplated contacting a man by the name of E. Vindju in Frogner. But he hadn't, and now it was too late, they had gotten to him first."
Isak's decision results in their family being arrested, placed on a boat and then taken by train to Auschwitz where his wife and daughters are gassed and he works in the camp. He never returns. A decision, delayed becomes fatal.

Sonja goes to visit a friend and learns from a neighbour that it is likely they have fled to Sweden. Sonja mulls this over but doesn't act on it. "What should she say when she gets back in, should she tell the others that Marie and her mother have fled to Sweden, what would they make of it all, would they start considering doing the same thing?...Sonja decides to tell the others that Marie and her mother weren't at home when she called. It is the truth, after all. She will mull over the Sweden thing itself, maybe mention it to Ilse. They can take some time to consider it, look into it again in a little while." Delaying just as her father did turns out to be fatal for Sonja and her sister and mother.

Even Hermann is affected by a sort of paralysis. Einar wants him to speak to Ilse about leaving Norway. But somehow Hermann can't seem to. "...he would have loved to have said yes, that he had spoken to her, that they were ready, that all there was left to do was to set things in motion. He wished he were more efficient, that he spoke with clarity and conviction, but the walls here, the walls at home, the air outside, he couldn't breathe, there was something there, pressing in on him all the time..." Later on when he and Ilse go for a walk through Birkelunden Park, he still can't bring himself to suggest to her that she and her family need to leave, that they might have to leave everything behind.

Hermann's determination to take Ilse skiing and their impulsive decision to stay overnight in a cabin in the woods ends up saving her life. When the Nazis arrive to take her family, Ilse is not there. This one event, totally by chance, gives Ilse the opportunity to escape and as it also turns out Hermann happens to work for the resistance which means she is able to flee immediately to a safe house.

Kaurin makes her readers consider the possibilities if some of the characters had acted sooner. What if Isak had reached out earlier in the summer and found Einar's name then? What if Sonja had come home that night and told her mother that her friend had escaped to Sweden and pushed her to consider this option. What if Ilse had been home when the Nazi's came for her family? What if Hermann had spoken to Ilse earlier in the fall?

The overarching theme of the novel is autumn and its characteristic as a season of change or transition from the beauty of summer to the bleakness of winter. Each character feels this in their own way. For Hermann he feels he can't possibly become involved with Ilse because of his dangerous work with the resistance: "But now, now it is autumn and everything has changed. It won't work, not now, he has enough to keep on top of..."

Ilse thinks too about autumn. She feels autumn spells a change but when what she expects - her relationship with Hermann blossoming- doesn't happen she wonders if winter will bring the change, a foreshadowing of the terrible events to come. "Everything starts this autumn, she suddenly thinks. So stupid. Does anything ever start with autumn, really? Autumn brings darkness, quiet, rest, death, trees lose their leaves and the earth grows hard. In a week it will be November...Maybe the snow will come soon...And maybe, just maybe, things are different from what she had thought. Maybe everything starts with the first snow."

Kaurin uses foreshadowing in her novel. In autumn, Ilse is convinced that something is about to change. While waiting for Hermann at the beginning of the novel Ilse thinks, "Everything starts this autumn. Something is waiting for her; someone is waiting for her. " Later on she has a dream in which she is standing knee-deep in snow, cold. "She can see the others; soft and blurred, vague figures in the white landscape, wrapped up well against the weather. Mum, Dad, Sonja, and Miriam. She calls out to them, tells them to stop, to wait for her. They can't hear her, they don't turn around. They continue to walk away from her, toward a faint, yellowish light that looks like a fire in the process of dying. She watches them walk away, until she can no longer see them and they vanish into a thick, steamy smog."  Ilse's dream is a foreshadowing of her family's deportation to Auschwitz and their deaths.

Kaurin truly captures the terror and confusion Ilse and her family feel in occupied Norway and she also very realistically portrays the horror of the deportation of Ilse's family along with hundreds of other Norwegian Jews. Sonja's narratives are especially heartbreaking as she does not know that she and her family are being taken to their deaths in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. From Isak's perspective he too doesn't know that his family has been murdered and that he will die.

Almost Autumn is a heartbreaking story of one girl's coming of age during the holocaust and the loss she endures. Beautifully written, capturing the paralyzing fear under Nazi occupation, the novel ends with the hopeful message that love endures. 

Book Details:

Almost Autumn by Marianne Kaurin (translated from the Norwegian by Rosie Hedger)
New York: Arthur A. Levine Books     2017
278 pp.

The Boy On The Wooden Box by Leon Leyson

"During the next week, some workers, my brother David among them, had to exhume hundreds of bodies from the mass graves where they had been thrown and burn them.
When he returned to the barracks, David was in a state of shock. He struggled to find the words to describe what he had been. He wept as he told us that he literally had to reach down into the graves, lift out and carry the decomposing bodies to the burning pyres. We tried our best to comfort him, but we couldn't make the memory of what he had seen or the stench of death he carried on his clothes and skin go away. David was barely seventeen."

These poignant heartbreaking passages remind us about the evil flourished during the Second World War.  But The Boy On The Wooden Box also reminds us that during dark times, goodness can also be present when people decide to confront evil. This short biography tells the story of a young boy's family who was saved by the courage and street smarts of Oskar Schindler.

Leon Leyson, born Leib Lejson in Narewka, a rural village in northeastern Poland enjoyed a good life during the 1930's. He was the youngest of five children, born to his mother Chanah and father, Moshe. His father was determined to provide a good life for his family and so he worked as an apprentice machinist in a bottle factory, eventually moving to Krakow when the owner expanded the business. His father decided he would relocate Leib's family when he had enough money saved. This meant Leib's mother was left to raise four boys, Hershel, Tsalig, David and Lieb and their sister Pesza. His father would often visit and the family would be reunited over dinners. Eventually Lieb's father saved enough money to move the family to Krakow in the spring of 1938. Lieb and his sister and brothers loved the city exploring the historic Old Town, Wawel Castle, St. Mary's Basilica and the parks and department stores.

Leyson writes that Krakow contained 60,000 Jews - a quarter of the city's population in 1938. Like most of his fellow Jews, Leib and his family felt that they were integrated into the city's life, but in retrospect, he now realizes that this was not really true. In October 1938, the situation in Germany is worsening under Hitler. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria  and then occupied the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia in October.  By this time Jews in Germany were becoming more and more marginalized with Hitler now ordering thousands of Polish Jews out of Germany and into Poland. This was followed by Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass on November 9-10 in Germany and Austria. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and life for Leib and his family was forever changed.

First like many other Jews and also non-Jews, Leib's father and his older brother, Hershel fled the Nazi's into the east to avoid conscription. However, Leib's father returned after reconsidering abandoning his family, while Hershel was sent on to their home village of Narewka. In Krakow and throughout Poland, more and more restrictions were placed on Jews, while German soldiers looted Jewish businesses and evicted Jewish families from their apartments. Jewish workers were fired from their jobs, although Leib's father retained his job in the glass factory because he could speak German. One night Leib's father was beaten and taken away to prison. Although he was eventually released he had lost his job at the glass factory.

Eventually he was hired off the books, to work for another glass company. One day Leib's father was asked to crack open a safe in an adjacent enamelware factory by the Nazi owner. That Nazi businessman was Oskar Schindler and he offered Leyson's father a job. Working for Schindler meant no wages earned but a permit that afforded him special protection from being picked up and sent away by to labour camps.

From this point on, Leyson describes his family's attempts to survive the next five years including the "cleansing" of Krakow of its Jewish population in May, 1940, the formation of the Jewish ghetto in Podgorze, the southern area of Krakow which was crammed with over 15,000 Jewish souls, and the transport of Jews from the ghetto to the death camps in the east. During this time, working in Schindler's factory saved all the Leyson family except Tsalig. He was on a transport train with his girlfriend, Miriam, who did not work for Schindler and who therefore could not be saved. Tsalig refused Schindler's offer to get off.

In 1943, the Podgorze ghetto was liquidated and the remaining Jews sent to the Plaszow labour camp. Leib almost never made it as he was repeatedly pulled from the line by soldiers. He eventually slipped onto the transport with his parents, sister Pesza and brother David. The hellish conditions in the labour camp caused Leib to believe he would never leave Plaszow alive. However Leib, his father and mother and brother, David, were moved to a subcamp Schindler had built next to his factory in Krakow while Pesza was moved to another subcamp. Although Leib's name was taken off the list of Jewish transfers, he managed to get the German officer in charge of the transfer to let him rejoin those going to Krakow. It was at this factory that Leib, who was so small, "had to stand on an overturned wooden box to reach the controls of the machine".

With the defeat by the Soviet troops of the German Sixth Army in February, 1943, Leib and his family knew Germany would probably lose the war. It was only a matter of when. Leib and his family just needed to hold on.

Discussion

Leyson's story is told in a simple, honest way that not only portrays the reality of what life was like for Jews in Europe during the war but also attempts to explain how he was particularly baffled at how his fellow Polish citizens simply accepted the Nazi propaganda spread throughout Poland.

"As the Nazis tightened their grip on Krakow, Jews were barraged with all kinds of insulting caricatures. Demeaning posters appeared in both Polish and German, depicting us as grotesque, filthy creatures, with large crooked noses. Nothing about these pictures made any sense to me....I found myself studying all our noses. None was particularly big. I couldn't understand why the Germans would want to make us look like something we were not."

In fact as Leyson points out later on in his memoir, the Polish Jews often looked just like the much touted Aryans.

"To Nazi eyes, we Jews were a single, detested group, the exact opposite of the blond, blue-eyed, pure 'Aryans'. In reality we were not their opposites at all. Plenty of Jews had blue eyes and blond hair, and many Germans and Austrians, including Adolf Hitler, had dark eyes and hair....It made no sense to me, and I even wondered how Nazis could believe such contradictions themselves. Had they taken the time to really look at us....They would have seen families just like their own: sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, craftsmen, and tailors, individuals from all walks of life."

Leyson also states that most gentiles in Krakow had to have known what was going on in the ghetto but chose to simply ignore the situation. They did nothing.

"As I walked out of the ghetto with its tombstone-crowned walls and along the streets of Krakow, I was dumbfounded to see that life seemed just as it had been before I entered the ghetto...I stared at the clean, well-dressed people, busily moving from place to place...Had they not known what we had been suffering just a few blocks away? How could they not have known? How could they not have done something to help us?...They showed absolutely no interest in who we were, where we were going, or why."

As for Oskar Schindler, Leyson has great respect. He was initially frightened of this man who was a Nazi and who had the power of life and death over him and his family. Yet Leib noticed that Schindler seemed to genuinely care about his Jewish workers, taking the time to learn their names and to help them through small acts of kindness. Years later, Schindler still remembered Leib's name, when the two met in the United States.

Leyson also tackles what life was like after the war. In the displaced persons camp in Wetzlar, Germany Leyson was tutored by a German engineer so he could catch up on his schooling.  Unlike many German's, Dr. Neu listened to Leyson when he told him what happened to him during the war. He did not accept the stock answer most gave that "they did not know."

"After my experiences with Oskar Schindler, I felt I could tell the difference between those Germans who had been true Nazis and those who had retained some humanity, even if they had joined the Nazi Party. I found that the true believers would look down at their shoes or wind their watches when someone mentioned the war. When someone spoke of what the Jews had gone through, their stock response was "We didn't know."

It's hard to accept that the German people and other non-Jews in other countries did not know what was happening; those living near the concentration camps could smell the smoke and knew they were crematoriums, they saw the Jews beaten and arrested, their property confiscated, their children removed from school, their neighbours who disappeared never to return, and many actively participated in the crimes against them. They stole property often after promising to hold it for safekeeping. In a way though, much of the Western world is responsible for what happened in World War II. Antisemitism was rife throughout Western countries for centuries with frequent pogroms against the Jews well into the early 1900s. Leyson himself states that although the Jewish population in Poland thought they were a part of the society, in reality they were not. Hidden beneath the surface of civility was a burning racism that as Leyson relates often showed itself  every Easter, when Jews were pelted with stones or yelled at by Catholics and other Christians. The Nazi's simply capitalized on that racism to secure power and retain it.

Immigrants from Europe brought their antisemitism to Canada and the United States, countries that stood by and did nothing to help the Jewish people when the Germans turned against them. Canada and America were reluctant to issue the visas that would have saved thousands of lives, worse, they did nothing as Hitler and his Nazi government enacted restrictions that gradually subjugated the Jewish population and stripped them of their most basic human rights. The US even turned a boat, the SS. St. Louis filled with Jewish refugees away as did Canada.

Leyson rounds out his memoir with an album of pictures of his family, notably absent are Hershel and Tsalig both of whom did not survive the war. As Leon Leyson passed away in January 2013, before the memoir was printed, there are afterwords written by his daughter and son. Leyson had put his war experiences behind him and lived a full life. But eventually he came to realize the importance of sharing with people, what happened to him and his family. It was the release of the movie, Schindler's List which caused Leyson to rethink his reluctance.

The openness and honesty of this memoir is strengthened by the magnanimous tone of Leyson's writing. He demonstrates a noble and generous attitude of forgiveness throughout the book towards those who did his family great harm. Besides the story of fortitude, perservance and the struggle against evil, it is greatest feature of The Boy On The Wooden Box.

Book Details:
The Boy On The Wooden Box by Leon Leyson with Maryily J. Harran and Elisabeth B. Leyson
Toronto: Atheneum Books for Young Readers      2013
231 pp.

Irena Sendler by Susan Goldman Rubin

Irena Sendler and the Children of the Warsaw Ghetto tells the story of a young Polish Catholic social worker who lived in Warsaw, Poland, in 1939. A petite woman, only 4 ft, 11inches, Irena watched in horror as the Nazis invaded her country and bombed beautiful Warsaw into ruins. When Poland surrendered on September 28, 1939, Irena joined the resistance movement of the Polish Socialist Party. Her goal was to save those whose lives were most endangered. When the Nazis began to focus on the Jews, Irena turned her attention to the Warsaw ghetto where thousands of Jews resided in horrible conditions.

In July 1942, the Nazis began transporting the Jews from the ghetto to Treblinka, a death camp. Irena knew that it might not be possible to save the adults, but she could try to save the children who were almost certain to die. She joined a new underground organization, Zegota, The Council for Aid to Jews, and working with the leader of the organization she organized and carried out the rescue many Jewish children. The young children were often secreted out of the ghetto in sacks, coffins or toolboxes.

Many of the rescued Jewish children  had to learn Catholic prayers and how to make the sign of the cross because they needed to be convincingly Catholic if stopped by Nazi patrols. Irena did not rescue the children in order to convert them to Catholicism, as some have claimed, but because "my heart told me to".

Irena Sendler

Eventually, Irena was captured by the Nazis and tortured but she refused to divulge any information. She was beaten so badly that both her legs and her feet were broken. Even when she was threatened with death, Irena did not waver.

It was always Irena's hope and intention to reunite the children rescued with their parents and so she kept a secret list of the children on a soft, transparent paper strip which was hidden inside a glass jar buried under an apple tree in Warsaw.

Irena Sendler and the Children of the Warsaw Ghetto is a beautifully crafted picture book telling the remarkable story of Irena and her work in saving Jewish children during the Holocaust. The book is richly illustrated with oil paintings on canvas, enhancing the overall drama of her story, which only came to be known after the fall of the Communist regime in Poland.

Irena Sendler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008. She passed away that year.

Book Details:
Irena Sendler and the Children of the Warsaw Ghetto by Susan Goldman Rubin.
New York: Holiday House      2011
40 pp.

A second book that was published in 2011, entitled Irena's Jars of Secrets also tells how Irena came to be involved in the rescuing of over 2500 Jewish children. Her father was a doctor who treated poor Jewish families in Warsaw, even if they could not pay. He impressed upon her the idea that one must always help those in need. When Irena entered the Warsaw Ghetto disguised as a nurse, she was overwhelmed by the suffering she saw and she became determined to help. When the Nazis began transporting the Jews to Treblinka, she knew that she must try to save as many children as possible.

In order to keep track of the children, Irena stored lists of their names in glass jars buried beneath an apple tree. After the war, the Jewish Congress attempted to reunited the rescued children with their parents, but sadly most were murdered in the death camps.

Irena Sendler's story remained untold throughout most of the 20th century but the Jewish people honoured her as Righteous Among the Nations in 1965. Finally with the fall of the communist government in Poland, her courage was rewarded with that country's highest honour, the Order of the White Eagle.

Irena Sendler never won a Nobel Prize although she was nominated in 2008. Sometimes, even the Nobel Prize committee gets it wrong. But to the many many people alive in 2008 directly as a result of the courage and sacrifice of Irena Sendler, it hardly matters. Their lives are a testament to her love, bravery and charity.

 Irena's Jars of Secrets is illustrated with the beautiful oil paintings of artist Ron Mazellan. Mazellan's piantings capture the fear and terror of the moment such as when the Jewish citizens were being rounded up and sent to the ghetto (above) or when they were fleeing the ghetto in secrecy (right).

This detailed picture book also contains an Afterword providing more details about Irena's life, a glossary, and a list of books and websites for further research.

Book Details:
Irena's Jars of Secrets by Marcia Vaughan
Illustrated by Ron Mazellan
New York: Lee & Low Books   2011