| Booktalk
#1
Many of us have heard about World War II and the Holocaust. In this story
Surviving Hitler we meet young Jack Mandelbaum. As we follow Jack through
the next four years we learn about the hardships inside the Nazi concentration
camps. Although you may have read some of this history in your textbooks
this book will open your eyes to the people who either died or survived
this horrible time in our recent history.
Would you have the strength and courage to be like Jack? Read his memorable
story. (Roberta Dwelley, gilliegirl@earthlink.net,
Murray LaSaine Elementary)
Booktalk #2
Growing up
with a rather idyllic childhood in a close, loving family with a mother
whom he adored and wealth enough for his family to live an easy life, Jack
Mandelbaum had no idea of what World War II and Hitler’s invasion of Gydnia
,Poland , his home town, would bring into his life. His initial conception
of war as “thrilling” quickly changed when his father had to send his family
away to his father’s home three hundred miles away where he felt they would
be safe. Though twelve-year-old Jack protested leaving his father behind,
he took seriously the charge to take care of the family in his father’s
absence. As the war escalated and the Nazis passed more and more laws to
restrict the freedoms of the Jews, Jack’s family had a harder time of surviving,
even with the help of relatives, living in lice-infested, unsanitary conditions
and often going hungry because of the increasing difficulty of obtaining
food. To help earn a little money, Jack made himself a “substitute” for
those who were supposed to go with forced day-labor crews to clear roads
and do other backbreaking jobs that the Nazis considered beneath them.
Before long, Jack and his family were rounded up and deported. When Jack
realized that the Nazis were separating the weaker from the able-bodied
people, he stepped up to a guard, identified himself as an electrician’s
assistant and asked that he and his mother and brother be put in the other
line to work. “It was the worst moment of my life,” Jack said. “It never
entered my mind they would take me away from them.” But they did. Through
his three years in not one but several concentration camps, Jack experienced
unspeakable hardships, but he also made some important friends who made
it possible for Jack to learn survival skills. He also thought constantly
of his family and told himself early on, “Whatever this place was, whatever
was going to happen, I would somehow stay strong and I would get back to
them.” He also promised himself not allow himself to hate. These two commitments
stayed with Jack throughout his ordeal and stood him in good stead when
he realized three years later, an 80- lb. 18-year-old, that the Nazis had
abandoned the concentration camp and that the war had ended. Andrea Warren
includes excellent documentary photographs that help readers visualize
the events of Jack’s life although Mandelbaum had few visual artifacts
to contribute to the book from his shattered childhood. Warren also shapes
Jack’s story so skillfully that it reads much more like fiction than like
history, and accordingly, she waits until the end of the book to reveal
what happened to Jack’s closest relatives. Well worth reading and an excellent
companion to other books about the Holocaust, Surviving Hitler offers
a glimpse into the strength of the human spirit.
Prepared by:
Michelle H. Martin for The
South Carolina Children's Book Award nominees 2005 |
