January 31, 2022
Based on video testimonies of two Jewish sisters—Renee Hartman and Herta Myers—born in Bratislava, what was then Czechoslovakia, this memoir reads true to its origins as an oral history of the girls’ experiences during and after the Holocaust. The book opens in 1943 when Hartman—the only hearing member of her family, which communicates using sign language—is 10 years old and Herta is eight. The “family’s ears,” Hartman is charged with warning her family as Nazi soldiers begin to round up Jewish people living in their town. The sisters recount their arduous journey first as unaccompanied children sent into hiding by their parents to live on a farm in Poland, then through a year in the Bergen-Belsen camp, followed by three in Sweden. Narrated in a matter-of-fact tone primarily by Hartman, with additional entries by Myers, the story is rich in the depiction of the sisters’ strong sustaining relationship throughout their horrific ordeals, especially Renee’s protection of her sister. Final sections chronicle the siblings’ subsequent lives in America, where they arrived in 1948; Greene’s epilogue provides historical background about the Holocaust. Ages 8–12.