This graphic novel tells the stories of six Jewish children who survived the Holocaust during World War II. Some were evacuated to England...others were hidden....and some were sent to concentration camps. Most were separated from their parents and never saw them again. It is amazing what children can survive. They are often stronger and more resilient than adults.

This book is moving and meaningful. The stories are truthful, but not too graphic for children to read. The art is fantastic. Due to the nature of the stories, I do recommend parental guidance for younger children. Death, starvation, internment, separation from family.....the subject matter is dark. But I think it's important that the events never be forgotten.

Although we are not Jewish, several members of my extended family who stayed in Germany when the rest emigrated to America were killed by the Nazis during the war. Most were killed for being Catholics who refused to embrace the Nazi regime. The stories in this book left me thinking about what my own family members....and millions of others....endured. I can't even imagine how scared they must have been. It made for a very emotional reading experience for me. My children all grew up safe, well fed, loved and protected. A whole generation of children during the war did not. Bombs. Executions. Starvation. Gas chambers. It is important for there to be books like this, because if we don't allow it to be forgotten then maybe it won't happen again.

The artwork is fantastic. The stories emotional and hard-hitting. Wonderful book!

**I voluntarily read an advanced readers copy of this book from Sourcebooks via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

Thank you, Sourcebooks Kids for the eARC of this powerful book.
This graphic novel tells the stories of six children who survived the horrors of the Holocaust. I think this would be an excellent introduction to the events of the Holocaust for students in upper elementary or middle school. Each chapter is fairly short, with incredibly powerful illustrations, which could open up a dialogue, or allow students to look more deeply into one story or aspect of the Holocaust. I really appreciated how the book ended with photos of each of the people whose stories were told, as well as more details about their life. I would definitely recommend this as a starting place when talking to students about the Holocaust.

Amazing! This book tells the incredible stories of six survivors of the holocaust. The six children in question have different backgrounds and different experiences during World War II and these are shared in a graphic novel format. The illustrations are incredible and add so much to the feel of the stories.

I am a firm believer that all children should be taught about the events of the Second World War in an age appropriate way and despite explaining some extremely distressing events, this book does this. I will be strongly recommending that the children I work with (9-11) have access to this book.

A great graphic novel. The stories of Holocaust survivors told in a medium that can draw in young and old readers alike and help to start conversations. I found the artwork stylized and lovely and the stories were shorter tales through a range of lives lived. I think this will be a great tool to help younger people understand what the Holocaust was and why it still needs to be remembered.

This is such a great graphic novel! Being a teacher it is hard to teach the subject of the Holocaust in a way that brings the topic justice but also be engaging for the students. This graphic novel does the perfect job of bringing the topic to a younger generation in a medium they would actually appreciate and use. I can already see several of my students who would not only read this but learn from it! As soon as physical copies are available I will be buying some for my classroom!

Survivors of the Holocaust is a compilation of six kids' experiences leading up to and during the Holocaust. This graphic novel does a great job of explaining historical places and events of significance (such as Kristallnacht and camps like Dachau) but without being overly graphic about them. This book is definitely for middle grade readers, as the stories are short and quite simple. It was brilliant to put this into graphic form--I wish I had had this when I was younger.

ARC provided free from Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review.

I received this electronic book through NetGalley

As a librarian I am on the lookout for ways to present history to children through books.

These 6 stories of survival are heartbreaking, but written in a way that is easy for children to understand. It is important to keep teaching generations about the horrific history of the Holocaust, in hopes that history never repeats itself... I love the "What happened next?" section because you can connect to the characters even further.

I would recommend this book.

This graphic novel perfectly illustrated the horror and hardship that children had to face during World War 2 and the Holocaust. It pulled stories from four survivors in Germany and abroad and illustrated their stories in a touching and heart wrenching way. This graphic novel would be perfect for preteens and above who want to know more about this fateful time in international history. It keeps the stories of survivors alive and easy to comprehend. I loved this graphic novel and will return to it again and again.

This is in comic-strip form and really easy to read. It is accessible for readers aged around 6 years+ but could be used in older classes too.

The illustrations are simple but beautiful and the stories are told without being too filled with the horrors that occurred.

I would definitely have a copy of this in school for the children to peruse.

A very good introduction of the Holocaust experience for children. The six stories were short, but impactful. I could quickly connect with each of the children in their individual stories. The graphics were really good as well. I highly recommend.

Quick thoughts

Thank you to Sourcebooks Explore for the advanced eARC of this book.

The graphic novel aspect of this book and the subject it is addressing is perfect for introducing children to the Holocaust. I enjoyed the manner in which the survivors' stories were told without holding back from this dark time in history. I can see this being useful in middle grades classrooms. One could go into further historical context with many of these stories. This could potentially be great for high school age students and perhaps even a supplementary college read. Frankly, I was not aware of some things such as the internment camps in England. This was a powerful book that should be exposed to readers of all ages.

Such a powerful book! I love that it is in graphic novel form. This is going to open up the history of the Holocaust to a new generation. These stories are difficult and thought-provoking. The illustrations bring the horror of what happened alive.

Survivors of the Holocaust by Kath Shackleton is a brilliant non fiction graphic novel that tells the story of six children who survived WWII and the Holocaust. Talking about the Holocaust to children has always been tricky. You might be able to explain it to them, but they are at an age where they might not be able to comprehend what you are explaining. I think that this book will be able to help with that problem immensely. The illustrations and the colors were chosen extremely well and did a terrific job visualizing the story for the reader. I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in learning about WWII or the Holocaust. I give this novel a five out of five stars for terrific storytelling and great illustrations. When this novel is released, I will definitely bee recommending my library to purchase it.

Survivors of the Holocaust (Graphic Novel)
Edited by Kath Shackleton, Illustrated by Zane Whittingham
Published by Sourcebooks eXplore. Review copy provided by NetGalley. Available Oct 2019.

I don’t think I need to explain the topic of the book. It’s pretty plain right there in the title and the book’s subtitle. So I’ll skip that and only touch on story elements to avoid spoilers.

The first thing to note is that this graphic novel is obviously written for younger readers, of Primary School age. The art style is pretty simple, and hammers home its message fairly bluntly, with swastikas everywhere – from the legs of soldiers to hubcaps of cars. The german soldiers are depicted throughout as large, hulking ogres – though again, that’s one of the purposes of uniforms – even today – you don’t see the person, you see the uniform – and as the book’s five narratives come from the perspectives of Holocaust survivors’ childhood memories, it’s no wonder that the Nazis are depicted as such huge, monstrous beings.



Visually, each story also features a limited but distinct palette of colours, which works well enough in this format, and serves to make each story distinct, which would be especially useful for younger readers in differentiating the stories. The artwork is fairly simple but stylised in a way that works to emphasise the context of the content througout this graphic novel, where “realistic” artwork is less important than conveying emotion and “feel”.

Little niggles – Martin’s story begins with the Polenaktion, though it doesn’t explain where Martin’s familiy originated from, which is something that would have the capacity to make the story a little more impactful, especially to younger readers that this graphic novel is aimed at. This is sort of rectified later, but I feel that not explaining it as part of the narrative causes the *full* impact of that story to be lost.



In my (digital, review) copy, the text from Page 35 is entirely absent. I expect this will be rectified before final publication time, though it did remove most of the exposition for the third story, though the graphics on that page did imply that the protaganist (Ruth, as I found out at the end) was Czech when the Wehrmacht moved into the region, and then later the text talks about them leaving Czechoslovakia, so I guess that’s the story.

Arek, whose story concludes the graphic novel, takes him through Birkenau-Auschwitz is in many ways the story that many of us are most familiar with in terms of broad strokes, and gives us a strong conclusion to this collection due to it’s more confronting content.



The book concludes with a “What Happened Next?”, which was a nice touch – showing the artwork of the different characters alongside their real-life, modern photographs. I liked this because it puts real faces to the more disconnected “story-book” versions of them as children.

Next, the book contains a glossary of terms, which would certainly be something that would help many readers of whatever age, as well as parents, family, teachers or anyone reading the stories to others to answer many of the many “why?” and “what?” questions that a book like this would provoke from its audience. This is followed by a historical timeline, that again helps with context for each of the stories.

I think these three post-story inclusions really do help the book be more than a collection of stories and give interested readers jumping off points for their own research or reading as well as a great deal of additional context.



This period of history is one where preservation of the lessons and knowledge learned is important. While the easy solution is to expect “schools” to “do it”, the fact is that outside of nations such as Germany, Austria and Israel, the curriculum is simply too crowded and history is something that gets shuffled off to the side by necessity – nevermind the discussions on which bits of history get taught, as there is rather a lot of it and the relevance of different subjects within are very much localised as school contact time is very much a zero-sum game.. this is where books like this, bought by family members, in school and public libraries and so on come in.

In the end, Survivors of the Holocaust does achieve what it sets out to do – in giving a child’s perspective on what it was like to escape Hitler’s Reich in a mannner that is accessable to older children. The content is delivered in a way that feels like it would be impactful on reflection without being *too* confronting in a graphic sense. Obviously, the full impact of this graphic novel would differ depending on the reader.

Speaking for myself, an adult who is reasonably well-versed in this period of history, it’s certainly a sombering read.

It was with great excitement that I downloaded a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley as my library patrons avidly read everything that I can give them on the Holocaust and for “Survivors of the Holocaust” to be in graphic novel format made it all the more appealing to this librarian. I will not, however, be purchasing this one for either of my middle grades campuses. I gave one of my two stars for the back matter included in this title. The additional information/photos of the six survivors and how they lived the later part of their lives, the timeline, and the glossary were excellent. The second star was assigned for the stark and sometimes too realistic illustrations. Truly the art conveyed the violence and evil of the Nazi regime, its horrific attacks on those deemed unworthy, and the horror of the prison camps. But this title is intended for ages 10 and up and several of the illustrations would likely cause great distress among teachers and parents of my students. Conversely, the text of Kath Shackleton’s book is, overall, very simplistic. My ARC had a section that read: “I loved Paris. It was a lovely life. It was a cultured life.” Adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, compound and complex sentences were seldom used. My 10 and ups need higher quality text and randomly throwing in words like “rue” and “furtively,” especially with little context surrounding them, just isn’t enough. The six survivors of Hitler’s atrocities clearly had devastating experiences, but with the overly abbreviated and juvenile sounding narrative, their potentially powerful stories fell terribly short. Those looking for a more effective middle grades WWII graphic novel should look into Loic Dauvillier’s “Hidden.”

I know the Holocaust is a very hard topic to write about, especially for children. That being said, I think this book would be great for older readers, 5th grade and up, even though it appears to be marketed towards younger children. I enjoyed reading about each of the children, and also seeing what happened to them when they grew up. The illustrations are unique and childlike, which is why it appears aimed at younger children. I am a k-4 librarian, and sadly, this book will be ‘too much’ for many of my students.

Survivors of the Holocaust is a powerful graphic novel that portrays the horrors of Nazi Germany and the eventual war from the eyes of six Jewish children who survived. It’s a deeply personal, tragic retelling from multiple perspectives, showing how terrifying war can be to a young child who doesn’t understand what’s going on and why. One boy and his family managed to escape but were interred in camps after arriving in England. A young girl was saved by her neighbor as she watched her parents get taken by the Nazis. Another older boy recounts his days in the camps and the horrors of starving every moment of every day. All of them lost friends and family. Some lost a few, some lost everyone.

No experience is the same but each shares similarities. Through it all, we see the absolute evil of the Holocaust and its perpetrators. We see the fear that descended like a cloud across Europe. Above all, we see perseverance against all odds, of children fighting to survive and live a life of freedom and opportunity. Each of these children went on to do great things, and their stories are essential reading for all ages.

A well done graphic novel that tells the stories of people who survived the Holocaust as children. I would definitely recommend this for middle grades to learn about this history from the viewpoint of other children or help them relate to the horrors.. I also like that they let you know what the children went on to become as adults.

This book is a heartbreaking but necessary read. The depictions of what these survivors went through are upsetting. I recommend teachers and parents read this along with middle graders so that they can discuss it with them.

These 6 stories of survival are heartbreaking, but written in a way that is easy for children to understand. It is important to keep teaching generations about the horrific history of the Holocaust, in hopes that history never repeats itself... I love the "What happened next?" section because you can connect to the characters even further.

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.