The Fighter

French author Greif's moving and realistic novel follows Moshe Azik Wisniak, a Polish Jew, in a WWII concentration camp. Born in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, Poland, in 1915, Moshe is no stranger to hatred against the Jews. At age 14, Moshe emigrates to Paris where he works for an uncle as a leatherworker. Moshe, who now goes by the name Maurice, marries and looks forward to a happy life in Paris until Hitler invades France. In 1941, Maurice and other Jews are rounded up; Maurice ends up in Auschwitz where every hour of every day is about survival. Greif (who also translated the novel into English) vividly depicts the horrific conditions in the camp and how taking off your shoes meant certain death. Maurice is lucky; he survives and is reunited with his wife and son. The atrocities he's experienced at the hands of the Germans, however, will remain with him forever. Greif's novel, based on the experience of an actual survivor, does not remove the audience from the horrors of the Holocaust; readers will be immersed in them right along with Moshe. Ages 12-up.