My 100 Children

Trying to find reason to go on living after her family died in the Holocaust, Kuchler-Silberman directed a postwar orphanage for 100 of the few Jewish children who remained alive in Poland. Her aim was to provide physical and emotional wholeness for those children who had lived in closets or forests and for the many who had seen their parents killed. She encountered aggressive anti-Semitism directed toward the children. Finally leaving Poland for safer Czechoslovakia forms the crux of the first-person narrative, but as much drama is found in moving vignettes, such as the intoxicated hilarity the children and staff enjoy, dressed alike in pink flannel pajamas (their first such warmth after the war). Kuchler-Silberman is truly a hero; her accomplishments will be honored in a forthcoming TV movie. Ages 12-up. (February)