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The Girl Who Escaped From Auschwitz by Ellie Midwood

Dec21

Symbols Of Resistance

The Girl Who Escaped From Auschwitz by Ellie Midwood is a powerful historical novel. It is a tale of courage, resistance and hope. Even in the darkest pit it is possible for light to shine.

The reader witnesses the bravery in a time of complete and utter horror. Ellie Midwood focuses in on two characters who do what they can in order to tell the world their stories. “You … will need to survive to avenge those people who perished.” Many went straight to their deaths, those who didn’t must tell the world of the evil.

Hope kept people going. Without hope the people perish. “He was the only person who gave her hope in this hell. Without him life lost all meaning.” In the depths of hell, people needed hope to believe that there were better times ahead.

There were many ways to resist. “Survival was the biggest form of resistance.” To keep going and to hold heads high when the Nazis wanted to brow beat everyone, offered hope to all who witnessed.

Auschwitz had guard towers. “Guard towers … to ensure that we won’t escape to tell our stories.” 

As the war drew to a close, the Nazis tried to destroy all the evidence in the camps. “They’ll slaughter us all … No one wants us to walk out of here and start telling our stories.” – But people did survive and told the stories of those who perished.

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An Orphan’s Christmas by Katie Flynn

Dec19

Growing Through The War Years

An Orphan’s Christmas by Katie Flynn is an historical novel that I read in just one sitting.

The action begins in 1936 as we follow the lead character through the orphanage to a wooden dwelling and through the war years.

Molly is a plucky girl. It is her personality and her strength of character that get her through some very tough circumstances from the age of eleven when we first meet her.

The orphanage is stifling. It is a place of ‘less than’ with little heating and little to eat. An older girl bullies Molly, forcing her to make choices she did not anticipate.

Bonds formed in childhood persist into adulthood until the rose-tinted spectacles are removed.

A character who is on the sidelines proves to be more loyal than one who takes centre stage.

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When The World Went Silent by Ellie Midwood

Dec6

Pandora’s Box

When The World Went Silent by Ellie Midwood is a powerful, harrowing historical novel that consumed me from the start.

The novel is set in Germany during World War II but opens and closes in Hiroshima in 1946. The whole novel surrounds the topic of the nuclear bomb, as we join and follow a young girl with a passion for physics. Deaf since measles aged five, Mina has immersed herself in science. “The world outside is hostile, filled with prejudice and intolerance. But precise sciences are her sanctuary.”

Following the Nazis rise to power, Mina was excluded from school and seen as ‘undesirable’, and has been home-schooled. Her superior talent within nuclear physics has brought her to the attention of the Nazis at the highest level. Mina is sent to Berlin to work on the development of the nuclear bomb but she is determined to never make a bomb. She wants to heal not harm. “We’ll all have to face the choices we made today.”

Mina has a conscience, a heart and much courage. “The courage of those who dare to stand against the darkness.” As a young girl, she stood up for the marginalized except for one time when she ran, and this haunts her dreams. “Still has nightmares… she was just a young girl whose only fault was walking away when she should have stayed.” The guilt remains even though she knows there is nothing she could have done. Later she is told “Sometimes running away is the only logical thing to do.”

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The Lightmaker Of Auschwitz by Nepthali Brezniak

Nov12

Powerful & Harrowing

The Lightmaker Of Auschwitz by Nepthali Brezniak is a powerful true account of the author’s father’s experiences during World War II.

The book has been written “to remember and not to forget” all those who lived and died during the Holocaust.

The author’s father was a Polish Jew. His wartime story is harrowing. We see the best and the worst of humanity. To survive was often a matter of luck.

Nazi-occupied Europe was a terrible place to be. The author’s father was in ghettos, several concentration camps and involved in a death march in 1945 during a terribly cold winter. He needed to have his wits about him, as well as luck, in order to survive. He also had a friend which gave him a reason to survive too. This book tells his story and also that of countless others.

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