cover image Kinderlager: An Oral History of Young Holocaust Survivors

Kinderlager: An Oral History of Young Holocaust Survivors

Milton J. Nieuwsma. Holiday House, $18.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-8234-1358-4

Relaying the first-person stories of three women incarcerated in Auschwitz as children, Nieuwsma, a freelance journalist, has done an impressive job of capturing their voices and presenting coherent accounts of their experiences. The women--respectively ages six, seven and 10 upon liberation in 1945--describe how they survived the decimation of their Jewish community in the Polish town of Tomaszow Mazowiecki, endured the unimaginable conditions at Auschwitz and came to be placed in that concentration camp's Kinderlager, or children's camp. They also identify the hardships these early experiences created for them in their adult lives. Many of the episodes are horrific. One girl is marched off to die: ""So we're going to the crematorium. Doesn't everyone go to the crematorium? Don't all Jews go to the crematorium?"" (When the children are sent back, the girl explains to her mother that there'd been a mix-up, adding, ""They'll take us next time."") However, the information is not mediated in any way for young readers--for example, there is only scanty framework established for the events, nor much attempt, implicit or otherwise, to help readers absorb the shocks. Many of the horrors are gratuitous, as in a news photo of an aunt lying murdered in a jewelry-store robbery, after the war. Nor are obvious questions posed (What was the Germans' rationale in creating a children's barracks within a death camp?). See Anita Lobel's recent No Pretty Pictures for a work at least as frank as this book but that nonetheless transcends the terrors of its subject. Ages 10-up. (Nov.)