A Child's First Step to Understanding the Holocaust

I thought that I had made a mistake. I had taken my daughter, aged 9, to the movies and we saw Jakob the Liar. The previews didn't seems to have anything in it that would suggest it was anything but some guy making the worst of a crappy situation. It was a bit more brutal. Now, being Jewish, I had always intended to teach her all about the Holocaust. Just not using a movie. Especially not one that gave her nightmares.

There is a picture book that I have saved for our first discussion of the Holocaust; Tell Them We Remember. It is a look into the lives of several Jewish children and their travails through that horrific time. It is honest - many of those children die. In telling her teacher about this book, it started a month long study in her class of the Holocaust. One of the books that was read in the class was Number The Stars.

Number The Stars is a girl's eye view of the Nazi occupation of Denmark. Annemarie Johansen and her best friend, Ellen Rosen, are school girls in 1943. The nazis are occupying Denmark. It is Rosh Hoshana, the Jewish New Year, when the Rosen go to temple to learn that the nazis are beginning their campaign to "relocate" Denmark's Jews... they have taken the temple's membership records and now know the names and addresses of all of the local Jews.

Annemarie's parents take Ellen into their home and say that she is her sister. On the night of the first wave of raids, there is a knock on the Johansens' door, and it is nazi soldiers inquiring after the Rosens. After assuring the soldiers that they don't know where the Rosens could be in spite of being such good friends, they are forced to endure a search of their apartment. The girls, hearing what was occurring while they were in the bedroom, think fast to hide the Star of David that Ellen had on her necklace. When the soldiers came to their room, they wanted an explanation as to why everybody but Ellen had blonde hair. They asked her her name and she answered "Lise Johansen"... the name of Annemarie's older sister that had died in an accident the year before. Fortunately, the picture in the family album shows a baby Lise with dark hair. The nazis leave, but not without a few intimidating gestures.

So begins the story of how the Johansens smuggle the Rosens across the sea to Sweden. So begins, also, the most beautiful and miraculous story of how a nation embraced a culture and saved them from annihilation. Between 1943 and the end of the war in Europe, the Danes smuggled nearly all of its Jewish population into Sweden. Nearly 7,000 people. THIS is the most wonderful thing about this book. It is based upon fact, while fictionalized to make it palatable to the young reader. And at the same time it is telling of the worst of human cruelty, it is also showing the best of human compassion and love.

This is an excellent book with which to introduce the horrors of a difficult time in our history. It does tell of the reality of the pain people endured, but it counters it with the inherent goodness of an entire nation.

It turns out I hadn't made a mistake. The road my daughter took was somewhat more roundabout than I had intended, but the destination was the same: She has a good understanding of the Holocaust and what it means to her as a person... and as a Jew.