Just A Girl tells of Lia Levi's war-time experiences as a Jewish girl growing up in Italy.
Six-year-old Lia lives in Turin, Italy with her parents and her two younger sisters, Gabriella and Vera. Lia is terribly shy, so shy that her voice sounds like the peep, peep, peep that a baby bird might make. On a trip to the beach, her parents send Lia to buy a newspaper, even though she is so young. They hope to force her to talk to other people.But when she gets to the stand, Lia finds her voice is simply too quiet and the man behind the counter at the newsstand doesn't hear her. So she leaves the money on the counter and runs off with a newspaper. But when she shows up without the change, her parents take her back to the newsstand. There the man makes her father pay again, claiming he never saw any money.
Then Lia's parents announce that she will be able to attend a new Jewish school close to their synagogue. Also attending is Lia's older cousin Annarosa who helps protect shy Lia from being bullied. At the Jewish school the students and their families celebrate the Passover dinner. To help her overcome her shyness, Lia is taken by Maestra Ginetta to where the rabbi is seated and made to sing the answers to the four questions recited on Passover. By singing them, Lia finds her voice and never loses it!
Eventually, Lia's papa loses his job. This is worrisome for Lia's family but her mother tells her that they have savings to help them get by. Then war comes to Italy. One day while in the public gardens in Piazza Carlo Felice with Maria, Lia and her sisters hear Mussolini on speakers declaring war. After that, Turin is bombed, a very frightening thing for Lia and her family.
Lia and her family leave Turin when their savings run out and her father finds a job in Milan This will be another stop on what will turn out to be several more stops as her family struggles to stay safe and free during the war. Their travels will take them from Milan to Rome and then to a Catholic boarding school outside of Rome, in the countryside. Through it all, Lia keeps her sense of humour and begins to mature into a strong, intelligent young girl.
Discussion
Just A Girl: A True Story of World War II is based on the experiences of journalist and author, Lisa Levi during World War II. In 1994, Levi published a memoir for adults about her experiences as a child in Italy during the war: Just A Girl is an adaptation for younger readers.
Just A Girl is one of the few books written for very young readers, introducing them to the Holocaust in a gentle and informative manner. Along the way Lia Levi explains events and cultural practices that her younger readers might not know or understand. For example, she explains what being Jewish means and what Passover is. Levi explains concepts that young children might take literally, such as "losing" your job. The author also explains in simple terms about the war. "On one side there were the Germans (commanded by a very bad man named Hitler, who hated Jews even more than Mussolini did), and on the other side there were the French, the British, and others, who had joined the war to make the bad people lose." Later on, Levi adds an explanation to help children understand that not all people are bad. "First of all, I need to tell you something important. In the war that I'm telling you about, the Germans were the bad guys. But you must not thing that being German makes someone a 'bad guy'. Like all the people in the world, there are kind and very kind Germans and bad and very bad Germans. At the time of our story, the German soldiers were under the orders of the very evil Hitler, and they willingly carried out the bad things they were ordered to do."
Levi's experience is a good starting point to introduce young people to the Holocaust because as she mentions the last chapter, A Letter From The Other Side Of The Ocean, she was one of the lucky ones who escaped both deportation and death. She writes that although her childhood was "difficult, and sometimes stormy" it was not an unhappy one. Although Lia had to move many times, was separated from her parents and eventually had to hide as a Catholic student in a Catholic convent, she and her sisters were relatively very well of compared to Jewish citizens in other countries.
The title of the book comes from something Lia's mother told her after the war. Lia had written a letter to the radio station in the hopes of winning a prize. Her letter opened with "Dear radio, ...I am a Jewish girl..." When her mother read Lia's letter, she tore it up. Lia's mother tells her, "You're not a Jewish girl....You're a girl. Just a girl....You're Jewish, but that's something personal. It doesn't need to be a label you wear on your forehead." Her mother tells Lia that being Jewish is just one of many facts about herself, ones that she does not have to divulge to anyone, and that she has the same rights as everyone else. In her note at the back, Lia tells her young readers that the Nazis turned religion into race.
Just A Girl is a wonderful starting point to introduce younger readers to the Holocaust. In this regard, it is a very important book, given that approximately thirty percent of young people today have no knowledge of the Holocaust. In some respects, this is not surprising since it was eighty-three years ago that World War II began - almost three generations ago. Young people have no parents (like myself) or grandparents (like my children) to talk to about the war or the Holocaust. Books like Just A Girl, museum exhibits and memorials are all we have left to remind today's young people that hate can lead people to do to terrible things.
Book Details:
Just A Girl: A True Story of World War II by Lia Levi
New York: HarperCollins 2022
135 pp.
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