| Booktalk
#1
When the German soldiers first
came to my town in Bedzin, Poland, they set fire to the synagogue.
We were made to wear a yellow felt star pinned to the front of what we
were wearing. The star had the word JUDE, or Jew, printed across
it in black letters. Next, we were forced to leave our home and move
into a room in a Jewish ghetto. We had been herded there by soldiers
with snarling dogs, along with thousands of other Jews.
Just when I thought things
couldn't get any more frightening, my sister Rachel had been shoved into
the back of a truck by two soldiers. She's been gone for weeks now
and my father has just learned that she's alive at a Nazi labor camp in
Parschanitz, Czechoslovakia. Now Papa is telling me he's send me,
Eva, to the same camp. He thinks I'll be safe there making cloth
for German army blankets and uniforms. I can only hear my voice saying
"No, Papa! Let me stay with you!" Papa says there is
no choice. It will save my life.
Will it save 12 year old Eva's
life? Read TORN THREAD by Anne Isaacs. (New
Hampshire Great Stone Face Committee)
Booktalk #2
Twelve-year-old Eva and her
sister, Rachel, are taken from their father by the Nazis, while living
in a Jewish ghetto during World War II. The girls are imprisoned in a Nazi
work camp in Czechoslovakia. Eva and Rachel are forced to work at a material
factory, making clothing and blankets for the Nazi war effort. Every day
has its difficulties, and not all the people are what they seem. Some Jews
collaborate with their captors; at least one camp officer secretly tries
to help the inmates. Eva gets her hair caught in a bobbin machine and is
saved only by having her hair cut off. The girls are given little to eat
and no hot water. They decide to bathe at work but the water had fabric
fibers and they get serious rashes. Will the girls survive long enough
for the Russians to rescue them? This fictional story is based on the experience
of the author's mother-in-law as a teenage prisoner in a Nazi labor camp.
(Jeannie Bellavance bellavance@erols.com
for Pennsylvania
Young Reader's Choice Awards) |
