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Vova, a fifteen-year-old boy is in prison under sentence of death. He is sitting on his bunk writing his story and he hopes to get it finished before he is led out to Hangman's Square. What is his crime? He scored a goal.
This is the poignant, thought provoking first chapter. Then the book goes back and describes the events which led to up to Vova being in the prison cell.
Vova lives in Kiev and is interested mainly in football. He plays for the Dinamo Kiev club. But in 1941 the Germans bomb Kiev. The young footballers escape as they are in the stadium at the time and, after the air raid, their coach leads them into the devastated city to see if they can help. They do what they can and rescue Vova's sisters, then go back to the stadium which becomes their hiding place when the Germans later invade Kiev. Then the coach smuggles them out of Kiev and they go and join the partisans.
But after a spell with the partisans some of the footballers are told that they are being sent back to Kiev –– to play football of all things. The Nazis had heard about the Kiev footballers and they claim that they will not be able to win against properly trained European sides. So it is arranged that the Kiev Dinamos should play against various Fascist sides. Vova is told that victory on the football field will show his people that they can win.
They train, the matches begin and the Dinamos win all of them. Then it is time for the last match and it is to be against a professional German side. Just before the match the referee –– a German –– comes into the dressing room and tells them that they will lose the match or they will all die. It took some time before they could take it in. To live they had to lose.
The match begins. The Germans play rough and cheat but the referee pays no attention and does all he can to help the Fascist side and the Dinamos are soon two goals down. Then Vova looks at the haggard, hopeful faces in the crowd and realises just what victory would mean to them. He says, "Better die in hope than live in shame." From then on the Dinamos begin to fight back.
This one particular incident really brings it home to the reader just how heartless and unbelievably brutal the Nazis could be. But the football match is only part of the story. The section when Vova was with the Partisans also brings out the true horror of the German invasion of Russia ––the mass shooting of thousands of Jews and whole villages reduced to devastation and death. A particularly memorable passage is that which describes the German Army advancing. They have a shield to protect them against enemy fire. That shield is a line of peasant women roped together. The women will also set off any landmines before the Germans reach them. Then there is the time when Vova is among a group when the Germans are selecting victims to be shot for reprisals. Every fifth man is to be dragged out and shot. Vova's presence personalises this incident.
And then there is the effect war has on people. Vova sees his sister Vera turn into a completely different person, hard and ruthless. The book also raises, tacitly, the position of the Partisans. They know that for every German they kill many innocent people will be killed in reprisals –– on the odd occasion hundreds or even thousands.
Poignant and heart rending this book shows the true reality of the Second World War in Russia.
It is based on a true incident. James Riordan visited Kiev and interviewed eyewitness to the 'match of death' and members of the families of the footballers.
The football match took place on the 9th August, 1942.
12 to adult
This novel was first published in the USA in 2001. It tells how Henry Forester, a nineteen-year-old American bomber pilot, was shot down over Alsace in 1944 and how, with the aid of the French Resistance, he tried to find his way home.
Henry is helped by people from all walks of life. There is the kindly, old schoolteacher, the wealthy lady, the eight-year-old boy who acted as a guide and his widowed mother who hid him on her farm, the teenage girl who carries radio parts hidden in her umbrella and bicycle basket. Finally Henry ends up in one of the camps of the maquis where he helps by making time bombs.
While in France Henry also sees the the horrors of war at first hand instead of at a distance as when he was in his aeroplane. He finds out that Allied bombs can kill French civilians as well as Nazis. He realises that the people helping him are risking torture and death. He is shocked by the bitterness and anger of Claudette although he understands when she tells him of how she saw her mother killed when she would not let a convoy of drunk Germans into the house, of how the Nazis hanged the priest from the church tower and shot thirty people how were said to have helped the maquis -- her eighty-year-old uncle among them. Henry later sees that war has also made the French brutal in their turn and the reader shares his digust and revulsion as he sees a teenage girl believed to be a collaborator have her head shaved, her dress torn open and being threatened with a horse whip.
He also experiences Nazi torture himself as his face is repeatedly plunged into a basin of water and held there for increasing lengths of time. And then in a life or death struggle Henry kills two men. Not with a bomb from his plane but face to face. And he had wanted to kill them to save his life. He would have to live with that for the rest of his life.
But the book is not just about war torn France. We also learn of Henry's upbringing on a Virginia farm during the Depression and his relationship with his stern father. While travelling through France Henry keeps thinking of his home.
The background is both authentic and detailed. There are also some little known facts -- like the fact that Switzerland feared a Nazi invasion and was not as friendly towards Allied fugitives as is commonly thought.
This is a novel but it is based not only on stories told to the author by her own father but also on the experiences of many other American airmen in a similar position to Henry.
Comes with a fairly long historical note, a map and a glossary.
Powerfully written. A worthy addition to the literature of the Second World War.
Young adult
Norway under German occupation during the Second World War.
Marek and Oalf Olsen live in Ulfhus a small village near Trondheim. Their father is arrested by the Gestapo and the two brothers try to look after their mother. Then the girl friend of the older brother Oalf is attacked by a German officer. Headstrong and unthinking Oalf decides to ambush the officer’s car and kill him. He persuades his younger brother to help him. The plan succeeds and the officer is killed but there is someone else in the car and he escapes to carry word to the Germans that the Olsen brothers are guilty.
Marek and Oalf flee to the Hardanger Plateau. It is the beginning of winter but they manage to struggle across the harsh terrain in a blizzard and reach a hut occupied by members of the Norwegian Resistance and also by British commandos. The brothers stay with the Resistance.
Marek is only fourteen but the group soon find that he can be very useful. Marek has always had an ambition to be an engineer and already he is good with all kinds of engines.
What follows is an exciting story. It is told in the first person by Marek, the sensitive one. He realises that nothing is as clear cut as Oalf would believe. Marek discovers that there are good Germans as well as bad. And then there are dreadful dilemmas. The acts of sabotage of the Resistance can harm the German War effort but at what price? What dreadful reprisals would the Germans carry out?
And then there is the position of a prisoner of the Gestapo. What does he do when his own family are threatened with death? Who does he betray ––his own family or the Norwegian Resistance?
There is an interesting description of the part played by the Shetland Bus –– the Norwegian fishing boats which travelled between Shetland and Norway.
Apart from the War the descriptions of how Marek and Oalf survived when on the run are fascinating. How they built themselves snow houses for example.
Comes with a historical note.
An exciting adventure story tempered with deeper thoughts on the very nature of war.
Very highly recommended.
11 to adult.
This book was first published in 1989.
Warsaw 1942. Thirteen year old Michal Edelmann's father is dead and his mother is dying. He lives, with his two young sisters, in the orphanage run by Dr Korczak in the ghetto. Despite the danger, Michal takes part in smuggling expeditions beyond the wall of the ghetto to get food for his mother whom he visits frequently. After he becomes fourteen Michal leaves the orphanage and joins a resistance group and so misses the mass deportations to the death camp of Treblinka.
This book is founded on fact. Michal - or Misha - and his family are fictional but many of the other characters really existed. Dr Korczak is one of the greatest heroes of modern Polish history. He trained and worked as a doctor before taking over his first orphanage in 1911. He was also a teacher, scientist, writer, commentator on social welfare and educational theorist. He ran the orphanage in the ghetto until he was deported with all the children in 1942.
To return to the book, some of the children in the orphanage really existed too. For example Abrasha, the boy with the violin. And the story of Adzui, the sewer guide, is also true. He jumped from one of the early deportation trains and spent some time with the partisans of south-east Poland before returning to Warsaw. Adzui was the only child in the orphanage who escaped the evacuation.
Shadow of the Wall clearly brings out the horror of Warsaw in the 1940's and the utter brutality of the Nazis: - the way in which someone could be beaten or bludgeoned to death for a whim, the dead bodies left lying in the street just covered by newspaper until they were taken away by a refuse cart, the hunger and deprivation, the disease. The most touching part of the book is when the orphanage children are all marched away to the station.
This book should be read to make sure that we never forget the horrors of the holocaust and make us determined to ensure that such events do not happen again.
Poignant and heart rending.
12 to adult
This book was first published in 1989. It is a sequel to Shadow of the Wall.
It starts with some letters by Richard Buchanan to his girlfriend. Richard is a teenager who is having problems with his stepfather - who is the Misha of Shadow of the Wall. Misha flies to Australia to try to find his sister (who may have escaped the holocaust) but he leaves behind an account of his experiences which may help Richard to understand how he became the person he is. As he reads it Richard begins to feel quite differently about his stepfather and he explains this change in his feelings in subsequent letters to his girlfriend.
Misha gives a very brief summary of his life in Warsaw (which was described in Shadow of the Wall) and his escape through the sewer before moving on to his experiences with the resistance group in the forests south of Warsaw. Then Misha is sent back to Warsaw where he works as a courier for the resistance. During the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 he surrenders to the German Army and spends seven months as a prisoner of war before going to Italy with general Anders Second Corps.
In Britain after the War Misha has to adjust mentally. He has survived when so many people he has known and worked with have died. He is determined not to let them down or betray them. How can he best live his life to justify their sacrifice?
The book ends on a note of hope. There is one last tragedy and then Misha and his stepson Richard are reconciled. And Misha does at last find his younger sister Elena who was smuggled out of the ghetto as a baby.
Brings to life the horrors of wartime Poland and the dreadful waste of life.
12 to adult
This book was first published in 1992.
Prague in 1942. Twlve year old Jan Weiss is a Jewish boy living with his mother, two little sisters and his grandfather. His father, a doctor, has been sent east to tend wounded German soldiers. Then one day, the remainder of the Weiss family are ordered to report to the railway station where they will be put on board a train going to Terezin, forty miles away.
But Jan is not to go with them. A friendly family has offered to hide him.
Jan hides out in an attic for over a year. One day the boredom gets too much for him and he slips out for a short time. He thinks that no one will see him but he is wrong. He is seen and reported.
Jan wanders the streets of Prague. He ends up in the Old Jewish Cemetery at the tomb of Rabbi Loewe. Jan has heard all about Rabbi Loewe from his grandfather.
The Rabbi lived in Prague in the sixteenth century. There was a rather special legend about him. Then, as in the time of Hitler, the Jews faced persecution. The Rabbi Loewe took special steps to protect his people. From the mud at the bottom of the river he made a giant - or Golem - and then gave it life. The Jews now had a protector.
Jan remembers this legend. There is a slot in the tomb and Jan idly pushes his hand into it - and brings out a small, golden bird with rubies for eyes. Jan finds that this amulet can take him back through time and he is taken back to the time of Rabbi Loewe. He spends some time in the Rabbi's house and helps him to make the Golem. Then Jan feels he must go back to his own time. He wants to find out what has happened to the family who hid him - the Nemec family.
Back in the Prague of 1942 Jan finds that all the members of the Nemec family have been taken away by the German soldiers. Jan is tired of running. He wants to find his family. If he gives himself up to the Gestapo he is sure he will reunited with them again. Jan gives himself up and is sent to Terezin.
There Jan finds that the prisoners are living skeletons. The coffin cart is a common and usual sight. The prisoners are kicked and beaten by the Nazi guards and they can be put to death for the smallest misdemeanours. Every so often crowds of them are loaded onto trains and sent East and no one knows what happens to them. A prisoner will send back one postcard from a place called Auschwitz-Birkenau saying that he is all right and then he is never heard of again.
After one of Jan's friends has been hanged Jan decides he wants to see Rabbi Loewe again. He rubs the golden bird and is taken back to the Rabbi's house. But Jan does not stay too long. He has to go back to find his sisters. This time someone tells him the dreadful truth about the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Jan now knows that his sisters are dead. But he has a means of escape. He will use the amulet for one last time and go back to Rabbi Loewe.
Then he finds that the amulet has been stolen. When the next transport list to the east is posted Jan's name is on it.
The legend of Rabbi Loewe and the timeslip element give an extra dimension to this story of the holocaust. Sixteenth century Prague is well described and brought to life. Rabbi Loewe was a real person although the story of the Golem is a legend.
Many of the prisoners in Terezin really existed too and this book is dedicated to their memory.
There are no words in which to express the horrors of Terezin -- the sheer brutality and cruelty of the guards and the utter misery of the prisoners.
This is very much a book to read to ensure that we never forget the dreadful events of the holocaust.
A book to read lest we forget.
The Sudentenland in the closing months of the Second World War.
Anna lives in a small village on the borders of Czechoslovakia and Germany. One day she finds an escaped Russian prisoner of war in a barn. Anna feels sorry for him and takes him to a disused bunker –– a kind of huge underground fortress. She hides him there and smuggles food to him even although she knows that she will be shot as a traitor if caught.
The greatest danger comes from her younger brother Felix. He is an ardent member of the Hitler Youth and if he finds out what she is doing he will regard it as his duty to report her. Felix becomes suspicious when he sees her walking in the direction of the bunker so often. Once he insists on accompanying her. She takes him to a little room near the entrance of the bunker. Before she met the escaped prisoner this had been her den where she retreated to write poetry. Felix looks around at the table, the chair and the bunch of heather in a jam jar and he is sorry he doubted her. But the incident is still a dreadful warning to Anna.
What makes it worse is that Anna is forced to keep the prisoner hidden longer than she had thought because he turns out to be very short sighted and would not be able to find his way anywhere. There is nothing for it but to keep him hidden until the Russians advance.
This book is written around the theme of not following the herd but thinking for yourself. This is shown most clearly by Felix who has accepted all that the Hitler Youth has drummed into him and who believes that Hitler is more important than his family. Felix’s indoctrination is so complete that he is prepared to go on fighting even after it is obvious that Germany has lost the War. This results in the tragic ending of the book.
This theme is also presented in a quieter way. Anna’s father had been a circus performer and he did not fit in with the rest of the villagers. Eventually he took his own life.
This book gives a good picture of Germany in the closing months of the Second World War. It shows how far the Hitler Youth was able to dominate the minds of many of its members – many but not all. There were still some independent teenagers like Anna.
Teenage
Germany in the last days of the Second
World War.
Fourteen-year-old Hanno is in the Home Guard in a town near Berlin.
Most of his unit are dead and, when he sees his twin brother killed,
he runs away.
He comes to a bombed farm where he finds Effie, a girl of his
own age, hiding. They camp there for a few days and, in a series
of flashbacks, we learn something of the background of the two
teenagers. Hanno's father is dead and, when he was drafted into
the Home Guard, his mother took his sister to Frankfuhrt. Effie's
father is a communist. Before the War he managed to take Effie
and her mother first to Paris and then to England. Then Effie's
grandmother became ill and her mother took Effie back to Germany
-- where they were trapped when War broke out. Effie's grandmother
and then her mother died and Effie went to stay with an aunt in
Berlin. When her aunt was killed in a bomb raid Effie was left
on her own.
Meanwhile her father left England and
went to America, became a naturalised American citizen and joined
the American Army.
Effie and Hanno are in great danger. They are hiding from the
advancing Russians. But just as dangerous are their own people
-- remnants of the German Army still fighting and doing werewolf
actions or, on the other hand, German deserters. To say nothing
of the danger from Russian bombs.
But at least both Effie and Hanno have somewhere to run to --
Hanno to his mother in Frankfuhrt and Effie to the advancing American
Army in the west.
They leave the farm and join up with a group of refugees. Among
them are an old woman, a younger woman and her twelve-year-old
daughter who has been raped by some Russian soldiers. Also in
the group is Dr Hungerland who used to kill handicapped children
in hospital.
They travel by day and hide in the woods at night. The hardships
they experience are vividly described, the difficulty of finding
food and the constant threat of the advancing Russians -- both
on the ground and from the air. There is a poignant description
of the Russians bombing a line of refugees as they struggled along
a road. But despite everything the little group make progress.
Yet through all these afflictions Hanno and Effie, so different
in many ways, get to know each other and even care for one another.
And in the midst of all the devastation they both discover their
future careers and the book ends on a note of hope.
A touching story of two resilient teenagers among the dangers
of war devastated Germany.
Teenage
This book is based very loosely on the
experiences of Guido Fullin during World War II.
Italy during the Second World War. Roberto, the teenage son of
a Venetian gondolier, sneaks away with some of his friends to
see an American film.
For this simple pleasure they pay a dreadful price. German soldiers
enter the cinema and round up all the boys. They are put aboard
trains and taken to Germany, and later the Ukraine where they
are forced to work building airstrips. Conditions are dreadful.
The boys are beaten by the guards, they have very meagre rations
and for blankets and jackets to protect them against the Russian
winter they are forced to use sacks.
German brutality is rammed home by one single incident. When a
boy, worn out by over-work and weakened by lack of food, faints
one of the guards shoots him.
Eventually Roberto manages to escape. He decides to try to get
back to his home in Venice. But that is hundreds of miles to the
south west and Roberto has no food and inadequate clothing. To
make matters worse he will be in danger from almost everyone he
is likely to meet. If he is found by any Germans they will either
kill him or send him back to the camp where he will be punished.
And as an Italian, the local inhabitants will regard him as the
enemy.
Nevertheless Roberto starts on his long journey of danger and
deprivation. For food he is reduced to eating creatures found
under stones like slugs and insects. At night he sleeps under
trees -- or even up a tree roped to a branch so that he will be
safe from wild animals.
But he makes progress. And he finds that help often comes when
least expected.
This book brings out the point that the Nazis treated their allies
only marginally better than the countries they invaded.
A trtibute to human courage and resilience in the face of dreadful
hardships.
Teenage to adult.
(Parents and teachers should be warned
that one of the boys is Jewish and has to conceal his circumscribed
penis from the Germans).
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