Sacred Shadows [Hardcover]

Maxine Rose Schur (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1997 | Age Level: 11 and up

"When I was told my father was dead, I ran away....I reached the pine grove, and there I flung myself down, hugged the damp earth, and waited."Against a pre-Hitler backdrop rarely viewed in young adult novels, Lena Katz suddenly learns that the Germany for which her father died is now considered part of Poland. She grows up torn between her desire to leave and her allegiance to her mother, who ignores thecountry's growing anti-Semitism. Then Janusz, a handsome young idealist, enters Lena's world and alters her life forever. Maxine Rose Schur's books include The Circlemaker (Dial), her first novel, which Publishers Weekly hailed as "atmospheric and suspenseful...maintaining an edge-of-the-seat tension until the very last words."

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 6-9. Lena Katz is a Jewish girl growing up in Germany in the period between the two world wars. After Poland reclaims the German province in which her family lives, anti-Semitic activity becomes more blatant. Lena's mother believes that things will get better and resists all attempts by her extended family to get her to move to Germany. Many of Lena's Jewish friends, including romantic interest Janusz, are attracted to the new Zionist movement, and Lena is caught in the middle of a difficult dilemma: remain with her war-widowed mother or flee to Palestine. The novel's suspenseful ending is rendered more powerful by the knowledge that most readers will bring to it: many Jews who did not leave Europe did not survive World War II. The book is most successful at making real the ways in which Lena's life is affected by racial hatred. For example, her mother's previously successful shoe store is unable to compete with stores owned by non-Jews after suppliers will no longer provide her with shoes and customers are too intimidated to shop there. Unfortunately, parts of the plot are melodramatic, and some of the characters are stiff, unbelievable, and all-too-familiar. Nevertheless, libraries may want to purchase this for its unique historical perspective. An afterword supplies factual details about the destruction Hitler wrought in Europe.?Ellen Fader, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Schur (When I Left My Village, 1996, etc.) draws on family history for this ominous tale of German and Polish Jews facing rising tides of anti-Semitism in the years before Hitler's rise. In the wake of her father's death at Verdun, young Lena Katz and her mother run a successful shoe store in Ledniezno, once a town in Germany, now part of a reconstituted Poland. Being both German and Jewish, they and their friends come under increasing attacks as the years go by--a time in which Heine's poems become attributed to ``anonymous'' in new editions of Lena's textbooks, newspaper and government antagonism toward Jewish businesses becomes more open, and local support for the Nazis grows. Lena's mother refuses to leave Poland, promising better times ahead and angrily rejecting the Zionism of Lena's heartthrob, Janusz. Spanning the years between 1917 to 1932, the plot is episodic and slow to develop; Lena's innocence in the face of all she sees and hears is artificially prolonged, while the ending, in which Lena at first refuses and then decides to accompany Janusz to Palestine, passes without even a parting scene with her mother. A brief afterword encapsulates the Holocaust and the foundation of Israel. The novel offers readers a moving glimpse of how public opinion set the stage for genocide, although that purpose occasionally engulfs the storyline and characters. (Fiction. 11-13) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 11 and up
  
• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Dial; 1st edition (October 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803722958
• ISBN-13: 978-0803722958
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,633,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book!!!, September 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sacred Shadows (Hardcover)

This Book is an excellent book. Not only is it fun to read but it is imformative too. This book was set during world war one and the holocaust. This book is about a young girl and her life over a long period of time. It had a very clever plot and kept me interested the whole way through the book. This book is geared for people between the ages of 12-15. Buy this book and you won't be sorry.

5.0 out of 5 stars It's hard to be a jew in Poland!, June 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sacred Shadows (Hardcover)

Sacred Shadows is an exiting and touching book. It shows what it was like for a German Jew to live in Poland during the times of Hitler. Lena, a teenaged girl who helps her mother in the shoe store. Sala, a friend from school, and Lena become very good friends, but later Sala freezes to death near a lake after a cold night in Lena's basement. Further into the story Lena falls in love and goes to another country with him because it's too hard to be a Jew in Poland. This is a great book, I think that everyone should read it!