We Remember the Holocaust [Paperback]

David A. Adler (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up

We Remember the Holocaust chronicles the Holocaust in the voices of those who survived it. They tell us about Jewish life in Europe before the 1930s and about the violence of Hitler's rise to power. They describe the humiliations of Nazi rule, the struggle to keep families together, the fight for survival in the ghettos, the ultimate horror of the concentration camps.

With its moving first-person voices and original photographs from private collections, We Remember the Holocaust is an intensely personal contribution to the history of a period that must never be forgotten.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

PW noted that Adler's skillful use of personal accounts by Holocaust survivors "gives readers a broad scope of genuine feeling." Ages 10-up. (Apr.)q
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-7-- An introductory description of the Holocaust that relies heavily on numerous interviews with survivors and the families of survivors. Adler superimposes a brief historical narrative on the interview fragments constituting the heart of the book, while Rogasky's Smoke and Ashes (Holiday, 1988), Chaikin's A Nightmare In History (Clarion, 1987), and Rossel's The Holocaust (Watts, 1981) use interview segments to supplement a more substantial historical narrative. Adler succeeds in exposing his readers to personal details and feelings of Jews whose families were decimated by the Nazi mass murder, and he thus provides a memoirlike--and very particularized--view of the genocide. A major thematic thread running throughout the text is the shameful lack of international concern for what was happening--from the U. S. refusal to allow refugees into the country to anti-Jewish pogroms in pre-Nazi (and post-Nazi) occupied countries such as Romania, Poland, and Hungary. Black-and-white photographs from the 1930s and 1940s appear on almost every page, and they accentuate the survivor accounts in the book. Although episodic and sometimes too fragmented, this is an appropriate and effective supplement to more substantial recent treatments, and it is an apt beginning point for young readers who find Milton Meltzer's Never to Forget (Harper, 1976) too advanced. --Jack Forman, Mesa College Lib . , San Diego
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Paperback: 148 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) (April 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805037152
• ISBN-13: 978-0805037159
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,391,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I write both fiction and non-fiction. I begin my fiction with the main character. The story comes later. Of course, since I'll be spending a lot of time with each main character, why not have him or her be someone I like? Andy Russell is based, loosely, on a beloved member of my family. He's fun to write about and the boy who inspired the character is even more fun to know. Cam Jansen is based even more loosely on a classmate of mine in the first grade whom we all envied because we thought he had a photographic memory. Now, especially when my children remind me of some promise they said I made, I really envy Cam's amazing memory. I have really enjoyed writing about Cam Jansen and her many adventures. For my books of non-fiction I write about subjects I find fascinating. My first biography was Our Golda: The Life of Golda Meir. To research that book, I bought a 1905 set of encyclopedia. Those books told me what each of the places Golda Meir lived in were like when she lived there. I've written many other biographies, including books about Martin Luther King, Jr; George Washington; Abraham Lincoln; Helen Keller; Harriet Tubman; Anne Frank; and many others in my Picture Book Biography series. I've been a Yankee and a Lou Gehrig fan for decades so I wrote Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man. It's more the story of his great courage than his baseball playing. Children face all sorts of challenges and it's my hope that some will be inspired by the courage of Lou Gehrig. I am working now on another book about a courageous man, Janusz Korczak. My book One Yellow Daffodil is fiction, too, but it's based on scores of interviews I did with Holocaust survivors for my books We Remember the Holocaust, Child of the Warsaw Ghetto, The Number on My Grandfather's Arm, and Hiding from the Nazis. The stories I heard were compelling. One Yellow Daffodil is both a look to the past and to the future, and expresses my belief in the great spirit and strength of our children. I love math and was a math teacher for many years, so it was fun for me to write several math books including Fraction Fun, Calculator Riddles, and Shape Up! Fun with Triangles and Other Polygons. In my office I have this sign, "Don't Think. Just Write!" and that's how I work. I try not to worry about each word, even each sentence or paragraph. For me stories evolve. Writing is a process. I rewrite each sentence, each manuscript, many times. And I work with my editors. I look forward to their suggestions, their help in the almost endless rewrite process. Well, it's time to get back to dreaming, and to writing, my dream of a job. David A. Adler is the author of more than 175 children's books, including the Young Cam Jansen series. He lives in Woodmere, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative, heartbreaking, & tragic but essential reading, October 21, 2010

By 

Thomas A. Fenton (Walton, Kentucky, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: We Remember the Holocaust (Hardcover)

Although short, and written for a younger audience, grades 9-12, this is an urgently needed book for anyone of any age wanting to comprehend the horror of the Holocaust. How do you rate a book that alternately made you cry in sorrow, boil in anger and righteous indignation, ashamed to be part of any group that either participated in or ignored the cries for help, but also sometimes made you shout for joy at the tenacity and elegance of human spirit of those who were persecuted that enabled them to survive? The only answer to the question comes by gritting your teeth, and recognizing the urgency of letting everyone know what really happened, mainly in Germany and surrounding countries, but also, unbelievably, all over the world.

"We Remember..." is filled with pictures of survivors and Holocaust atrocities. Thankfully, they are all black and white pictures. Color would have rendered them even more obscene than the events they pictured were. (I use the word `obscene' here not to indicate vulgarity, but rather the intensely evil nature of the events themselves, as in "abhorrent to morality or virtue".)

David A. Adler does a masterful job of gathering the first hand eye-witness testimonies of those who actually were there, most either as children, or young adults. The story is appalling: the indifference of world leaders to the events themselves, and to the plight of those onboard a ship trying to escape for their lives. One ship with 769 Romanian survivors was turned away at every port, and finally sunk by a Soviet submarine (p.45).

He tells of Hitler's attempted takeover of the government in 1920 and his meteoric rise to power; of Neville Chamberlain's attempt at a policy of appeasement of Germany, and its failures; how many of the German people welcomed him with open arms; how a few non-Jews, but only a few at first, had the courage to resist the government mandated persecution; and, he does so in a manner that is both riveting and engaging. As I read, I jotted down words that came to mind: shocking, distressing, outrageous, inhuman, ungodly and unchristian were some of them.

The one thing that impressed me as Adler told his story is that not only did the world refuse to believe that the Nazis were doing this terrible thing, but that the events were so horrible, and so indescribably unbelievable that many of the Jews themselves didn't believe the warnings and stories at first. As they went to the death chambers, they did so thinking the best of the situation, and hoping for the best outcome.

One young reader reviewed this book in 2000 using the word "fun" to describe his experience. I attribute that description simply to his age and lack of understanding of the use of the word "fun". Let me assure anyone who reads this, they will NOT have fun reading it. If they are human, they will find themselves cursing (not literally) anyone that could even imagine doing such things to another human being. They will weep. And, their righteous indignation will well up inside themselves with a determination to either tell others about this unbelievable but true story, or be sure others know. And that is why David A. Adler took the time to make us all sick at our stomachs.

Read it. Please. Pray that it never happens again. Five monstrous stars for a cautionary story told very, very well.

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative, tragic, heartbreaking story, October 21, 2010

By 

Thomas A. Fenton (Walton, Kentucky, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: We Remember the Holocaust (Paperback)

Although short, and written for a younger audience, grades 9-12, this is an urgently needed book for anyone of any age wanting to comprehend the horror of the Holocaust. How do you rate a book that alternately made you cry in sorrow, boil in anger and righteous indignation, ashamed to be part of any group that either participated in or ignored the cries for help, but also sometimes made you shout for joy at the tenacity and elegance of human spirit of those who were persecuted that enabled them to survive? The only answer to the question comes by gritting your teeth, and recognizing the urgency of letting everyone know what really happened, mainly in Germany and surrounding countries, but also, unbelievably, all over the world.

"We Remember..." is filled with pictures of survivors and Holocaust atrocities. Thankfully, they are all black and white pictures. Color would have rendered them even more obscene than the events they pictured were. (I use the word `obscene' here not to indicate vulgarity, but rather the intensely evil nature of the events themselves, as in "abhorrent to morality or virtue".)

David A. Adler does a masterful job of gathering the first hand eye-witness testimonies of those who actually were there, most either as children, or young adults. The story is appalling: the indifference of world leaders to the events themselves, and to the plight of those onboard a ship trying to escape for their lives. One ship with 769 Romanian survivors was turned away at every port, and finally sunk by a Soviet submarine (p.45).

He tells of Hitler's attempted takeover of the government in 1920 and his meteoric rise to power; of Neville Chamberlain's attempt at a policy of appeasement of Germany, and its failures; how many of the German people welcomed him with open arms; how a few non-Jews, but only a few at first, had the courage to resist the government mandated persecution; and, he does so in a manner that is both riveting and engaging. As I read, I jotted down words that came to mind: shocking, distressing, outrageous, inhuman, ungodly and unchristian were some of them.

The one thing that impressed me as Adler told his story is that not only did the world refuse to believe that the Nazis were doing this terrible thing, but that the events were so horrible, and so indescribably unbelievable that many of the Jews themselves didn't believe the warnings and stories at first. As they went to the death chambers, they did so thinking the best of the situation, and hoping for the best outcome.

One young reader reviewed this book in 2000 using the word "fun" to describe his experience. I attribute that description simply to his age and lack of understanding of the use of the word "fun". Let me assure anyone who reads this, they will NOT have fun reading it. If they are human, they will find themselves cursing (not literally) anyone that could even imagine doing such things to another human being. They will weep. And, their righteous indignation will well up inside themselves with a determination to either tell others about this unbelievable but true story, or be sure others know. And that is why David A. Adler took the time to make us all sick at our stomachs.

Read it. Please. Pray that it never happens again. Five monstrous stars for a cautionary story told very, very well.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We remember the holocaust, May 14, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: We Remember the Holocaust (Paperback)

This book is very informative and gives young readers a headstart in the holocaust. The terrible things that happened during the holocaust comes to live in this book.