Tag Archives: holocaust

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS (SPOILER) BY JOHN BOYNE

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Imagine moving to a new home where everything feels strange, and no one will tell you why. That’s what happens to Bruno, a curious nine-year-old boy, in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. One day, while exploring, he meets a boy named Shmuel sitting on the other side of a barbed-wire fence. Even though they come from different worlds, they become friends—but Bruno doesn’t realize the terrible truth about where Shmuel lives. This is a powerful and emotional story about friendship, innocence, and the horrors of the Holocaust.

One of my favorite parts of the book was Bruno’s friendship with Shmuel. Even though they live very different lives, they understand each other in a way no one else does. Bruno is curious and doesn’t see why the fence should keep them apart, while Shmuel knows more than he can say. Their friendship feels real and makes you care about both of them.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by Boyne, John (2006) Hardcover

Bruno’s family also plays an important role in the story. His father is a strict Nazi officer in charge of the camp, his mother starts to realize something is wrong, and his older sister, Gretel, slowly changes as she begins believing in the ideas of the adults around her. Then there’s Lieutenant Kotler, a young soldier who is always at Bruno’s house. He is cruel and harsh, especially to the people on the other side of the fence, showing just how unfair and dangerous the world around Bruno really is.

As the story unfolds, we learn that Shmuel is a prisoner in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, a time when millions of Jewish people were taken from their homes and sent to camps where they were treated terribly. Bruno, who doesn’t understand what’s happening, thinks the people in striped pajamas are just living another kind of life. The fence between him and Shmuel is a symbol of the way the world separates them.

One of the most intense parts of the book is the ending, which is both shocking and heartbreaking. It makes you think about how unfair and cruel the Holocaust was, especially for innocent people like Shmuel. The story stays with you long after you finish reading.

What I liked most about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was how it showed the world through a child’s eyes. Bruno doesn’t see enemies or differences—he just sees a friend. This makes the story even sadder, but also more powerful. If you like books that make you think and feel deeply, I highly recommend The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It can also be downloaded from Libby. 

White Bird

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White Bird: A Wonder Story (A Graphic Novel): Palacio, R. J.: 9780525645535: Amazon.com: Books

White Bird, is a book by R.J Palacio that I read about three years ago that tells the story of a young Jewish girl called Sara Blum who lives in a small village in France. Soon the Nazi Party, which was a movement under the direction of Adolf Hitler that believed that Jewish people had no right to live in Germany, defeated France and caused France to surrender which split the country in two regions, The Occupied Zone, and the Free Zone, Sara was placed in the Free Zone. However, even living in the Free Zone, the Nazis arrive and rounded-up many Jews to bring them to camp, Sara is brought to the woods for safety and meets a boy who invites her to live with his family and him in the meantime.

This book has really captivated me, and has overall become one of my favorite graphic novel books. The drawings, illustrations, and movements created in this book really add a whole level of contrast and emotions that really capture the reader’s attention. There is one part in this book, that really grabbed my attention due to the combination of the writing and the illustrations. It is when Sara Blum has a dream of herself flying up above the woods with a flock of birds, allowing herself to express and feel the sense of freedom while flying, this parts really brings a sense of emotions to the reader.

I would really recommend reading this book, as it is a great read and is really informative. The live-action movie is currently streaming and is available to watch on Youtube, Apple TV, and Amazon. I have not yet watched it yet, but is definitely on my watch list currently. White Bird is currently available to checkout from the Mission Viejo Library today!

Anne Frank–The Diary of a Young Girl

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On a spring day in May, in the year 1940, German Nazis stormed the Netherlands. The persecution of Jews quickly escalated, forcing many Jews to evacuate or go underground. One family, the Franks, went into hiding like thousands of others. Anne Frank is known for writing a diary that captured the horrors of World War II and her experience underground.

Reading this book, or diary, was exceedingly somber. In her diary, Anne highlights the constant fear, boredom, hunger, and threat of living life as a Jew. Despite the seriousness of the situation Anne is in, readers notice how cheerful and clever she is. Although she is put in the worst situation possible, Anne continues her fight for life in her ambitions to learn and become a writer. Even though she died as a young woman, she is a significant symbol of life, dreams, and the future. After reading this novel, I’ll admit that I was humbled to take everyday life for granted. Anne Frank’s Dairy is a wonderful commentary that is filled with her amusing, inspirational, and courageous thoughts that touched the hearts of millions.

November 1, 1944, was Anne’s last journal entry; the reason for the discovery of her family is kept as a long-lost mystery. One of her lasting passages reads, “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart,” showing the depth of her optimism regardless of her circumstances (Frank). 

Anne Frank’s Diary is a masterpiece that everyone should read once in their lifetime.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank is available to checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.

All The Light We Cannot See By: Anthony Doerr

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Anthony Doerr All the Light We Cannot ...

This novel is told from the perspective of two young children during World War II. The first is Marie-Laurie, a blind girl from the center of Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. The other Werner Pfennig an orphan, from a mining town in Germany who learned how to build and fix technical instruments by tinkering with a broken radio that he found.

When Marie-Laurie was twelve, the Nazi Regime began to occupy Paris, she and her father fleed to Saint-Malo and met her reclusive great-uncle, Etienne. The Museum of Natural History was rumored to own a diamond called the Sea of Flames, under the threat of occupation the museum director created 4 copies of the diamond. He then distributed these to 3 employees and hid one in the museum, but none knew if they had the real diamond. Soon after arriving in Saint-Malo Marie-Laurie’s father is called back to Paris and is arrested by Germans.

As the Nazi Regime, took power over Germany Werner’s talents for technology attracted certain local attention, and at fourteen was recruited to a specialized training program. He sees it as an opportunity to grow and get out of the orphanage that he’s lived in his entire life but his sister worries that he will be corrupted by Nazi propaganda. After 2 years of training at his technical school, he’s documents are falsified to make him seem like eighteen so that he’s able to fight on the front. After 2 years of rising through the ranks, Werner is assigned to Saint-Malo looking for radios, used by the resistance to broadcast their messages.

Marie-Laurie’s uncle begins engaging with in resistance work with the other French townspeople, but he’s agoraphobic so he’s unable to leave the house without intense anxiety. So Marie-Laurie works with her uncle by gathering messages from the resistance for him to transmit from his radio tower in his attic. Werner and Marie-Laurie’s lives begin to further intertwine.

I liked this book, I thought it had a good mix of suspense and historical fiction. I also really liked that one of the main characters has a disability, that is rarely seen in historical fiction. I think if you like historical fiction and has blind representation then this book is for you.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is available to check out from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.

Night by Elie Wiesel

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I must confess that when I first learned that we would be reading Elie Wiesel’s Night for my English class, I felt a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. But what can I say? It’s a requirement, so I read it with little to expect. I was wrong in many ways. Just a warning: this review contains spoilers.

It is a memoir that speaks about Wiesel’s experiences as a young Jewish boy during the Holocaust. Wiesel doesn’t just recount events; he invites us to walk beside him through the labyrinth of his memories, where each step is heavy with the burden of the past as he recounts his life in the small Transylvanian town of Sighet.

In the tranquil streets of Sighet, we glimpse the idyllic innocence of Eliezer’s childhood; young Eliezer’s world is filled with the simple joys of family, friendship, and the pursuit of knowledge.

He studies the Torah and the Kabbalah, taught by Moishe the Beadle. His studies are cut short when his teacher is deported. Months later, Moishe comes back, saying that the Gestapo took charge of his train, led everyone into the woods, and butchered them. Nobody believed him and called him insane. Then in the spring of 1944, the Nazis take over Hungary. The Jews of Eliezer’s town are forced into small ghettos within Sighet. They are herded onto cattle cars and forced to spend days and nights crammed into the car, exhausted and near starvation, until they arrive at Birkenau.

Wiesel recounts his journey through the terror of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, where he experiences the brutality of the concentration camps firsthand. Wiesel sees many horrible things that scar him for life, recounting his and the experiences of many who had tried to hide whatever happened. Wiesel doesn’t hold back and tells everything, all the terrible things he went through during the Holocaust. He doesn’t sugarcoat it or leave anything out. This honest account of his experiences helps us understand how awful it was and how much it hurt him and everyone else who went through this dark time in history. I found myself transported there with him as he struggled to survive.

In the end, Night is more than just a memoir; it is an essential memory of one of the darkest chapters in human history, the Holocaust, and what many had to go through during that tragic time. It’s also a reminder that even in our darkest moments, there’s hope to be found. The memoir is exceptionally well-written and retells an authentic and meaningful story. Through his assertive storytelling and unflinching honesty, Elie Wiesel ensures that Holocaust victims will never be silenced. If you want to experience this memoir, it is available at Mission Viejo Library.

Here’s to a new reading experience!
Bella H

Night by Elie Wiesel is available to check out from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.

Authors We Love: Ruta Sepetys

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Ruts Sepetys is one of the most well known young adult historical fiction authors ever! With historical fiction being my favorite genre, I consider myself proud to say that Ruta Sepetys is my favorite author of all time. I have read all of the books she has written and I consider every single one of them to be some of my favorite books. 

Unlike many historical fiction authors, she doesn’t exclusively write about one event in history. With a setting like New Orleans, Barcelona, and Siberia, Sepetys takes us into a plethora of historical events, with different time periods, people, and settings. 

One specific thing I love about historical fiction is you learn something along the way, and all of Ruta Sepetys writes about overlooked events in history. These aren’t things you learn from your history textbook, they’re much more than that. Her books take you on a journey through events like the Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship that took 10 times the lives the Titanic did, and is the biggest maritime disaster of all time. But for some unknown reason, nobody talks about it, except for Sepetys.

Not only does she shed these huge historical events to light, but she does also these events justice. Although what she writes is fiction, the historical events they’re based on are all too real. Sepetys does an amazing job of research. In her most recent novel, The Fountains of Silence, the back of the book offered more details about her writing and research process, as well as pages of her notes. Sepetys do years and years of research for just one novel, and by reading the books you can tell how much effort was put into them. 

As for her World War Il novels, she has interviewed countless figures, both strangers and family, that were involved in those events, and based some of her books off of real events her family has gone through. 

Another part that I really love about her books is her writing style. With short and quick chapters, the writing allows you to be constantly engaged. The constant point of view switches keep you on your toes and makes every single one of her books a page-turner.

Between Shades of Gray (2011): Not your everyday World War 2 novel, Between Shades of Gray shows the dark side of Polish deportation and labor camps. With a knowledgeable protagonist and a family trying not to fall apart in the face of war, this brutal novel is a must-read. My Rating: 9/10

Out of the Easy (2013): Out of the Easy is a novel describing the life of the daughter of a prostitute longing to be free and live her own life outside of the bustling city of New Orleans. When a customer at her bookstore is found dead, she finally finds the escape she’s been looking for. My Rating: 7/10

Salt to the Sea (2016): The biggest maritime disaster, and the long path refugees are forced to take to flee Germany, this story tells the tale no one wishes to tell about World War 2.  In this novel, everyone has a secret to tell, and with them come guaranteed tears. My Rating: 10/10

The Fountains of Silence (2019): the Fountains of Silence tells the unknown story of how the Spanish people recovered after their own civil war. Told through the eyes of a photographer tourist from Texas, and a hotel employee who works hard for every penny she earns. This novel shows the trials and tribulations of most families during the reconstruction, but the star of this novel is truly the romance. Greatest of all, you get to learn about what’s really happening with the Spanish government behind closed doors. My Rating: 9/10

-Asli B. 

The works of Ruta Sepetys are available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. They can also be downloaded for free from Overdrive. 

Book Review: Ravelstein by Saul Bellow

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Ravelstein (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century): Bellow, Saul ...

The first two parts of Ravelstein, a biographical novel, are mainly about the last and most important stage of Ravelstein’s life. He was terminally ill, but he fought against the disease until his death. The latter part is mainly about the narrator, Chick himself is on the verge of death due to food poisoning, but he has deep thoughts about life and death at this time. Ravelstein was born in a small city and had a very unhappy childhood. His father had been poor all his life and was a tyrant in the family. Ravelstein, who grew up in the shadow of his father, came into contact with society at an early age and went out on his own. After struggling hard for many years, he finally got rid of the poor people’s life being a famous university professor. He taught students from all walks of life, many of them in important positions, including students who played an important role in the Gulf War. He maintained close contact and frequent intercourse with them. Taking advice from his good friend Chick, he turned his teaching research into a best-selling book attacking the theory of relativity, the American education system, and its declining international status and influence, and became a guest of the president of the United States and the prime minister of Britain. From then on, he became a successful member of the upper class of the affluent society in the United States and lived a luxurious and decadent life. While he was enjoying a life of fame and fortune, he found himself terminally ill. Towards the end of his life, he asked Chick to write an autobiography for him.

Ravelstein is a charming and paradoxical Jewish intellectual. he embraced life with the indulgence and intoxication of Dionysus and the dream and aspiration of the god of the sun. He questioned the contemporary American social value and education system but highly praised the classical culture of ancient Greece and Rome and loved classical music. He fell in love with Armani suits, Cuban cigars, pure gold Montblanc gold pens, and so on. He was an advanced intellectual in American society, but his manner was vulgar. When attending various celebrity social occasions, he would often splash coffee or other drinks on expensive clothes and drink them directly from a coke bottle, which even made T.S. Eliot stunned. He is a conservative who does not worship the free market, but uses his talent to produce valuable goods and become rich overnight. He advocates aesthetic, free love, but has gay friends; he grew up trying to escape his Jewish father, the tyrannical king of his family, but in his life he played his father’s role to his students and friends. The unique historical background, social situation and ethnic characteristics of the Jewish people make Jewish writers in the American culture face embarrassment in their creation. Jews in America (especially the upper-class intelligentsia), reluctant to abandon their traditional religion and unable to resist the American way of life floundered in this confusion, searching for their identity with both desire and disappointment.

-Coreen C.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is one of my favorite books ever written. It was published in 2006, by John Boyne, and is set during World War II, at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland. It is narrated by Bruno, the 9-year-old son of a Nazi Commandant. Bruno’s innocent perspective makes the novel absolutely gut-wrenching, as he has no idea what exactly is happening beyond the fence surrounding Auschwitz.

Bruno’s father has a high station in the Nazi hierarchy, and he is on very close terms with Fuhrer Hitler. In fact, Hitler has Bruno’s father move out of Berlin and to Poland so he can oversee tings at Auschwitz, much to Bruno’s dismay. The new house at Auschwitz is old and gloomy, not at all like his previous home in Berlin. With nothing to do except explore, Bruno makes a number of startling discoveries that, in turn, lead to a massive turn of events.

Overall, this book is a roller-coaster of emotions. Readers will laugh at Bruno’s adorable perceptions of things that we understand with ease, cry at the mistakes he makes because he doesn’t know any better. John Boyne expertly wraps the reader up in the plot, writing complex, dynamic characters that the reader can sympathize with. This book is just an amazing read, and if you’re looking for a novel that will enrich and educate as well as entertain you, your search has met its end.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It can also be downloaded from Libby. 

Night by Elie Wiesel

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Night by Elie Wiesel is a terrifying story of the Holocaust during World War 2. Elie was born in Sighet, Transylvania. He lived a normal age until the day that he and his family were taken to a concentration camp formerly called Auschwitz. There he is separated from his mother and sisters. He is told to lie about his age and job in order to survive.

After he tells a guard about his age, he is led away with his father. Some days after, they are taken to Buna, a work camp. They work long hours and are very malnourished. Due to the harsh conditions, the Jews must look after one another. This behavior doesn’t last long, and soon all the Jews care about is that they survive. This pushes many of them to commit horrific crimes for extra rations of bread. They quickly lose faith in God and no longer pray. This brings on a worse despair. After some months of labor, the prisoners are soon to be liberated by the Russians. Because of this, the Germans decide to move the prisoners. They are forced to march through a snowstorm to another concentration camp called Gleiwitz. Once at Gleiwitz, they are crammed into cattle cars. All 100 prisoners that hadn’t died were tightly packed against one another. Most cannot take anymore pain and die on the train. Once the train stops at Buchenwald, only 12 prisoners get off of the train. Soon after arriving, Elie’s father dies of dysentery on April 11, 1945. After experiencing so much, this breaks Elie and he is transformed into only a skeleton of a man.

-E. Vargas

Night by Elie Wiesel is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It can also be downloaded from Overdrive. 

Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz

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Prisoner B-3087 is a true story of Jack Gruener. Alan Gratz was the person who made Gruener’s story into a novel. The novel tells a tale of Yanek, a boy who was put in a concentration camp.

I choose this book because I needed something to read. When I found it I saw that it was about the Holocaust. I thought that it would be very interesting and it was.

I haven’t read every Holocaust story but this one was very deep. The way Gratz wrote this was very in depth. That is what I think that more of these stories need. They need a more detailed story.

It really made you feel like you where there. Right next to Yanek in the concentration camp. I also learned many news things about the Nazis. Like how they hired convicted criminals to be Kapos in the camps. At the start of the book Yanek was a boy about 10. He was just a innocent boy. Then when the Nazis came he was coming on 11 or 12 maybe. Then when they took him he was going on 14.

The important thing about 13 is that it means its time for your barmitzfah. Before they took him and his uncle had his barmitzfah. Now they couldn’t have had it in there house or else they would’ve been shot. What they did was they had it in the basement.

This was one of my favorite parts of the book because usually Jewish people have a huge celebration for there barmitzfah. I mean my friend rented out half of the Los Angeles stadium for his barmitzfah. Yanke’s family could’ve had a big celebration for his barmitzfah. The only down side is that they would’ve been shot dead on spot.

Another thing that shocked me was the cruelty of the Nazis. There was one point of the book where they would make prisoners move huge rocks for no real reason. They just wanted to see the Jews suffer. In the novel you could see how Yanek changed over time. In the beginning of the novel he was a innocent little boy. At the end of the novel he was a grown man who didn’t fear death.

I thought this book was great and I wouldn’t mind reading it again.

-Max U.