Grace in the Wilderness: After the Liberation, 1945-1948

Siegal takes up where she left off in Upon the Head of the Goat, the Newbery Honor book that etched on readers' minds the fate of Hungarian Jews under the Nazis. Now Hitler's thugs have fled Bergen-Belsen in 1945, leaving Piri Davidowitz, her sister Iboya and the other prisoners to be freed by the British army. Piri is starving and critically ill, sent to a hospital to recover and, after a long time, released to go with Iboya to Sweden. The girls find work and Piri believes she has found a home with gentle people she calls Mamma and Papa. She falls in love, too, and it's hard for her to decide, finally, to sail with Iboya to a new life in the U.S. The book ends aboard ship where Piri and a young man, Fritz, are conversing. He exonerates all the Germans, blaming only Hitler (""with his sick brain'') of complicity in the murders of 11 million people. It's stunning to compare Fritz's posture to the British liberators' outrage and grief at witnessing the conditions in the camp, the dead and dying victims of the glorious Third Reich. (12up)