Witnesses to War: 8 True Life Stories of Nazi Persecution

Leapman, a British journalist, suggests the far reaches of Nazi terror by focusing on the experiences of eight children, each victimized during WWII. Anne Frank is here; so is Renee Roth-Hano, whose own book Touch Wood has already described her experiences as a Jewish girl hidden in a French convent. Another Jewish girl escapes Germany through the Kindertransport; a Jewish girl from Paris finds safety in the village of Le Chambon; other children narrowly escape the Warsaw ghetto. These subjects have been more solidly treated elsewhere (for example, the chapter involving Le Chambon does not indicate the heroic scope of its rescue mission nor name the pastors famously responsible for it). But this book is worthwhile nonetheless. A generous supply of unusually well-researched photos amplifies even the more familiar sections, conferring on them a chilling immediacy. Leapman also includes material rarely presented for this age group. He describes the sinister workings of a program that kidnapped Polish children for adoption by proper German families; elsewhere, he traces the fates of the children of Lidice, the Czech village razed to retaliate for the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich. While this book lacks the emotional charge of a work like No Pretty Pictures (reviewed above), it has firm educational value. Ages 10-up. (Sept.)