Customer Reviews

Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am in 6th grade and 11 years old. I love holocaust stories better than anything and this is definitely a five star book! I have read this book and it is fabulous. Marion and her family show great courage as they fight the battle of antisemitism. I love this book and I want Marion Blumenthal to know that it has touched me very much. It was so stirring that I couldn't put it down. If you liked this book, you should read Never to be Forgotten by Beatrice Muchman. (You can order it here on Amazon.) Marion, her mother, brother and father are wonderful testimonies of strength and courage during WWII. Anyone else who has a story like this should tell it. There are to many people out there who love these stories alot, I'm one of them. Thankyou for sharing your story with us Mrs. Blumenthal!!! It is fantastic!

This book is unforgettable as a story of the Holocaust from the eyes of a child. I've had the pleasure of hearing Marion speak several times and she is marvelous. My students read her book this past school year and then went to see her for an author visit. They were moved to tears--even the boys--by her life during the war. Reading the book and then hearing her speak about her experiences is sobering. Her message isn't just about the Holocaust; it is also about learning tolerance and fairness which is certainly a page we can all learn from in today's world.

FOUR PERFECT PEBBLES is just one of thousands of such stories that mandate telling and retelling. Simply and beautifully, Perl relates one little girl's mode of survival through one of history's most heinous periods. As the author of another Holocaust book, FAR ABOVE RUBIES by Cynthia Polansky, I read everything I can get my hands on pertaining to the Holocaust. This one is a gem that must not be overlooked.

Brief summary and Review:

Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story is a wonderful book of how a family stays together through thick and thin. The story is about one Jewish family's struggle for survival during the Nazi occupation of Europe. The family includes Ruth Blumenthal, the mother, Walter Blumenthal, the father, Marion Blumenthal, the daughter, and Albert Blumenthal, the son. The Blumenthals lived in concentration camps for six years which included Westerbork in Holland and the notorious concentration camp of Bergen-Belson in Germany. Conditions in these camps were so terrible that nearly half the camps population died of disease, starvation, exposure, exhaustion, or brutal beatings. The book received its name from young Marion's search to find four perfect pebbles of almost the same size. If Marion could manage to find these four pebbles, she felt that it meant her family would remain whole and be strong enough to survive the Nazi reign. This game kept young Marion's mind on things other than dead bodies lying around, the rumbles of her starving tummy, and the want for her family and life to go back to normal. This is a great story about the importance of family and diversity. I would encourage everyone to take this book home with them today and experience the true account of one family's struggle through the Holocaust.

"Four Perfect Pebbles" by Lila Perl and Marion Blumenthal Lazan, tells the story of young Marion's life in Hoya Germany during the rise of the Nazis. The story goes from Holland to Bergan-Belsen where the Blumenthal family ends up. And then after the war in the United States.
While this is book for the younger reader, this is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone at any age. Truly this book should not be missed.

Though this story is told as Marion saw it as a young child, it nevertheless remains a powerful and moving documentary of the most devastating war our planet has ever known.

This book is also a very good WWII primer. It would be required reading for a class entitled "WWII 101".

Marion Blumenthal spent her early childhood in Hoya, Germany with her brother and parents. They were a happy, prosperous Jewish family who owned a successful shoe retail business. But Marion's safe, secure world was shattered by the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. The Nazis, the dominant political party of the Third Reich, implemented their radical racial attacks against Jews, Gypsies, Slavics, Homosexuals, Communists, and whomever else was seen as a threat to Aryan purity. This meant the end of life as Marion knew it. Each passing day was a struggle to stay alive and out of the Nazis' clutches.

Despite their best efforts, the Blumenthal family fell prey to the Nazis. They eventually landed in Westerbork, a camp from which the prisoners where shipped to their deaths in places such as Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. The Blumenthals were transferred to Belsen, and despite their bleak future, Marion clung tenaciously to the hope that better times would come for her and her family. To bolster her and their spirits, she set about collecting four perfectly-shaped pebbles from the grounds of the camp. This was her metaphor for her family which, hopefully, would remain as one till the end of the war.

As the war dwindled to a close and Germany suffered one defeat after another, camp prisoners were shuttled along the remains of the Germain railways as the Nazis tried to desperately conceal the evils they had commited in the abandoned camps. Just when it seemed the war would drag on forever, Marion, her family, and their fellow prisoners were intercepted and liberated by Russian troops.

A beautiful story of inspiration, courage, and keeping a positive attitude even in the most dire of circumstances.

Marion Blumenthal was born in Germany in 1934, a bad time to be Jewish in Germany. She had a mother and a father and a brother who was two years older than she was. When they were still young, Germany began to get dangerous.

This book tells the true story of a family living through the Holocaust. Their story is told mainly from the points of view of Marion and her mother, Ruth. During the Holocaust, they resisted leaving Germany when it was safe to do so, because they did not want to leave Marion's grandparents behind. The grandparents refused to leave their home. After their death, it was too late to easily get out of the country. The sad thing is that this family had everything going for them. They had relatives in safe countries who were willing to sponsor them and take them in. They had permission to journey to the United States, but then the war got in the way and they were unable to sail. This family ended up traveling to Holland and then, when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, they were sent to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. They had received permission to go to Palestine, where they also had people willing to take them in, but the Nazis never sent them. Luckily, Marion's family survived the camp. Toward the end of the war they were put into a "death train" and sent toward Berlin, where Hitler was still holding out. On their way there, they were liberated by Russian soldiers.

Life after the war was still difficult for the Blumenthal family. They were very sick and without a country, since they had no desire to remain in Germany, where they had started. After the war ended and they were once again free, they then had to figure out how to continue surviving and how to make a life for themselves.

It was frustrating to read this book and know that the world would get worse and worse for this family, and to see them not take the roads to safety when they were open. They were very lucky to survive.

As a junior high reading teacher and being extremely interested in survivors of the Holocaust, I was thrilled to read this book. Students will readily relate to this book. The author was 5 year younger than Anne Frank, her family moved to Amsterdam from Germany when she was a small child, she went to Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen. The similarities are remarkable. Marion Lazan is an exceptional writer and speaker. After reading her book, we were fortunate enough to have her as a speaker. She is marvelous. This book is a must. Pamela Blevins

The book Four Perfect Pebbles by Lila Perl And Marion Blumenthal Lazan is about a little girl named Marion Blumenthal who is also the author of the book. It is about her and her family they are in a concentration camp during World War Two controlled by the Nazis. Marion's mother thinks that it is possible to find four pebbles that are perfectly matching. She has three and she is trying to find the fourth. Her family struggles to survive on their journey through life but only their hope and courage will help them survive. I enjoyed how Marion Blumenthal and Lila Perl came together to tell Marion's life story of hardship and horror. The details used in this book are so extraordinary, so moving that it will make you feel as if you are actually there and going through everything the Jewish are going through. Something I disliked about the book was the disturbing photos throughout the book but they did help tell Marion and her Family's story of horror and their will to survive.

This book is an interesting book. However, it is not one of my best holocaust books. Still, I must say that this book is interesting as few have a hobby ' collecting pebbles'. The details on the two camps that they had gone to were told clearly. I recommand this book to readers who have just started learning about the holocaust.