All the Broken Places by John Boyne

All the Broken Places by John Boyne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Many thanks to Milly Neff for recommending this awesome Holocaust book! Oh boy, I loved this novel, but I really tried to like Gretel Fernsby, but her life, her history, her personality kept me reading---but I did not really like her throughout her life from childhood to adulthood. I loved 91 year old Gretel though and this book moved back and forth in time, so chilling, haunting, and sad. Gretel's past has tormented her whole life but as the 91 year old now living in England, I loved these parts of the book most because Gretel has become a caring, forthright, dame who befriends a new family in her complex that calls upon her (demands) to question her own guilt, complicity, and all that she has spent her life running from and can she really help protect violence? A must read!

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The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson (audio book)

The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved the voice of the person who narrates this audiobook as the main character, Leon Leyson, who is saved from death (and others in his family) as a result of OsKar Schindler's compassion during the Holocaust. Even though this is a child's book, it will appeal to all readers, young and old. Highly recommended!

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Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this book for two reasons, with the first being it is the Goodreads February Discussion for Books Hot Off the Presses
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
and the second is my participation in the 2014 HUB Reading Challenge
http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2014/.... This book is on the list of the 2014 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults. Rose Justice is a transport pilot, who grew up outside Hershey, PA. It is during the war that Rose's plane is intercepted, she is captured by the Germans and taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she is a prisoner for six months. Rose and the other captives (who are there much longer)endure beatings, torture, experimentation, and deprivation. It is during her imprisonment and after, as she recuperates in Paris that the full story emerges. What was so wonderful about this story was the "family" Rose formed while in Ravensbrück and it was these bonds that enabled them to endure and in many cases, survive. Wein weaves the importance of family throughout the whole book; with Rose's Hershey family, her pilot friends who are her family before her capture and the Rabbits, Lisette, Irina, Roza, Karolina and others who are her camp family. Rose uses her poetry and storytelling with her concentration camp friends to as a way to remember life before and survive each day whatever way they could. It is during her imprisonment (and after) with the Hamburg Ravensbrück Trials and the Doctors' Trial against Nazi war criminals that Rose emerges as a much stronger person; a writer and medical student, and is able to bear witness in her own way to the atrocities of the camp and let the world know the names of all 75 of the Rabbits who were maimed (and many killed) by Nazis due to their experimentation. Readers will love the women (pilots, survivors, and those who do not survive) in this book; their bravery, fury, compassion, defiance, craziness, and beauty. Highly recommended!

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