Wonderful memoir about the Holocaust for younger readers. Children will be able to connect to both brothers and father as they live through the harshest of realities. Not an easy read for some, but some stories should never be easy.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books, Quill Tree Books for the opportunity to read an advance reading copy.

Title: The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz
Author: Jeremy Dronfield

Genre:
Middle grade, Non-fiction, Memoir, WWII

Recommended Ages:
5th-9th grade

Favorite excerpt:
"If you want to keep living, you have to forget your father.”

Summary/ Review:
Fritz is a sixteen year old boy, who has an undeniable bond with his father Gustav. Gustav is a furniture upholsterer. During the outbreak of war, Fritz and Gustav do everything possible to avoid the inevitable. However, the father and son duo are arrested and sent to Buchenwalk concentration camp. Over the next five years, the reader is drawn into a horrific memoir of the suffering, cruelty, and brutality of the Jewish people during World War II.

The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz: a True Story of Family and Survival, is written for young readers or older reluctant readers. The story is compelling yet gripping, it will make you angry and have you crying minutes later. I will never forget this phrase repeated on multiple times throughout the memoir. "If you want to keep living, you have to forget your father.” Fritz’s love and loyalty for his father is unquestionable. Jeremy Dronfield captures the true story of an unforgettable bond between father and son, their strength, determination, and love during one of the most difficult times in History.

In this younger reader’s edition, Dronfield’s writing creates a greater depth of understanding for the young reader, from explaining who Hilter was, to breaking down vocabulary words, like Holocaust. This is an excellent resource for a middle school history classroom. As an educator, I was blow away with the author’s ability to take a negative part of History, and build a smooth narrative which is easy to follow and comprehend. A biography taken from smuggled journals so we can remember those who suffered during this terrible part of history. This memoir has a guide for parents and teachers at the end, another excellent supplement. I highly recommend this read!

As stated by the author, “Merely simplifying or abridging the original book wouldn’t do- I wanted it to be an all-new retelling of the story with young readers in mind. I went back to the research, dug deeply, and managed to make a few new discoveries, so this book contains few information, and a better understanding of certain key events than was possible in the original.”

***I listened to the audio version, and the narrator was excellent!

Thank you to Jeremy Dronfield, Harper Collins Publishers, and Netgalley for the Advanced Reader Copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

#reluctantreaderreads
#jeremydronfield
#youngreadereditions
#netgalley
#advancedreadereditions
#TheBoyWhoFollowedHisFatherintoAuschwit

Excellent work of writing. A really good read for people who are interested in the Holocaust.
Recommendation for young readers.

4.5 stars

I read a lot of WWII-era novels, so I was quite interested in this nonfiction option. I admit that it's a difficult read. It is very emotional and even traumatic at times to read the horrors laid out in this book. The author uses vivid details, which isn't always a good thing, based on the subject matter. However, it's a book that does need to be read ... and remembered. The atrocities of what was done should never be forgotten. The book is written in an honest and sympathetic manner. Even through the desperation, hope, strength, and determination shine through.

This powerful, moving middle grade adaptation of the adult international bestselling narrative nonfiction book The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz shines a light on the true story of two brothers who experienced the atrocities of the Holocaust in very different ways. With details not available in the original version, the middle grade read is gentle and easily understandable history of antisemitism.

For adults this is an easy read and I would highly recommend it to adults who want to experience the history but may not be emotionally available for the brutality of the adult version. Middle graders with an interest in history would find this read interesting.

This edition includes photos and they are used very well. The photos offer the characters a face and emotional connection to the readers.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book.

This was a gut punch and a great read. I am intrigued by any story/non-fiction about WWII and particularly concentration camps. Definitely a top read for that category. I am glad the author was able to tell this family's story.

Fritz and Gustav are both transported to Buchenwald together. When it is decided that Gustav should be transferred to Auschwitz, Fritz will not allow him to travel there by himself.

He is let to go by the Nazis, and the father and son are held captive for six years in two camps. They are kept going by their unwavering love for one another and their optimism for the future.

I'll stop there, as difficult as it is. This book screams to be read, and I'm so grateful that this beautiful account of a father and son's love got published.

The publisher’s summary for this book and the adult version with the same title made them both sound like “must reads” for those who flock to WWII historical fiction so I got an electronic ARC as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, Dronfield seemed to switch every few paragraphs from retelling the experiences of an Austrian Jewish family during the war to a few paragraphs that seem like they should be coming from a straight up non-fiction account instead of a narrative, almost like a change in perspective. That change up was very odd and hampered flow and impact. It also seems likely that the author does not have much experience with the reading abilities of the target age group as so many sentences were subject-verb-direct object and little else. Made for very stilted reading with little emotion when the subject matter is so very emotion-filled. I made it to about page 65 before I had to move on to something else. That is not a common occurrence as most books have something that keeps me turning pages.

This book is a middle-school-level version of the adult bestseller of the same name. With new details not in the original, and a more gentle and understandable retelling of the history of antisemitism and Nazi brutality, this would be an outstanding read for middle schoolers, or anyone who enjoys a good (true) story of perseverance, grit, and determination to stand by your family no matter the cost.

I finished this book in just a couple of days, it was so compelling, and I am going to encourage my students who show an interest in WWII or the Holocaust to read this book. Although it is outside the scope of our curriculum in 6th grade, we still discuss WWII and the Holocaust through our "Today in History" review at the beginning of each class.

The photographs that are included are such an excellent addition--it helps humanize the story and remind the reader that it is all true. This is such an outstanding book, and I highly recommend it.

I am struggling with how to rate this book, because it is based on the lives of real people, and I think their story is important. However, I found this book to be dry and I don't think it would be the best option for most middle-grade readers.

What I liked was that the author gave us the perspective of two brothers who lived very different paths. Kurt was able to escape to America where he was raised by a Jewish family that took him in, and Fritz ended up in concentration camps with his father. I also appreciated that the book was full of pictures of the people being mentioned - this is something I always appreciate when I'm reading a book about real people.

What I didn't like is that this was written in such a boring way that I had to struggle to keep reading. It is full of information about the time period, which is important, but the story is drowned in all of that information. Fritz and Kurt were written so flatly and with so little emotion that when sad things happened, I had no emotional reaction.

The style of writing and pacing of the story make this a smooth read, but the content makes it a difficult read. Given current events I think this book is especially relevant and provides younger readers with a glimpse into what occurred during the Holocaust without overwhelming them. If I taught a history class that covered WWII I would definitely use this as a source and recommend it to students who want to learn more. That being said if you are going to recommend this to a younger reader (6th grade and up) you should prepare them for what they are going to read about and also provide them with an opportunity to talk with you while they are reading. More sensitive young readers may find it very upsetting. The only thing that would have made this a better read was if each chapter listed the months/years covered within it (to help with putting events into the context of the war).

One of the things that caught my attention with this book is the way it follows the separate journeys of two brothers, Kurt and Fritz. The narrative stays with one brother for a few chapters and then switches to the other. Somehow putting those stories side by side made the whole even more moving than I think it would have been to tell them individually.

In any case, I got completely swept away by this book. Fritz’s father– oh my gosh. He seemed like such an incredible person. He kept hopeful in the face of some truly horrifying experiences. His relationship with Fritz was so cool, too. And Kurt, living in the US. I loved getting the window into his story, too.

Some wild things happened to those guys, too. I’ve read other stories about WWII before, so some things I was already a little bit familiar with, like Kristallnacht. (Familiarity did not lessen the heartbreak, though.) But other things, like what happened when the camp inspector demanded that no Jewish prisoners be in specialized positions in the camp, were things I’d never read about before.

The back of the book has a lot of additional resources for readers who want to know more. I loved reading through that timeline and looking at the other sources, too.

The only thing I’d say negatively about the book is that there are a few places where I feel like the author talks down to readers a little bit. It’s not often or overly much, so I think the great parts of the story far outweigh that issue, but I did notice it as I read.

On the whole, I think readers looking to learn more about what happened to Jewish families during World War II should check this one out. Readers who enjoyed THE BOY FROM BUCHENWALD by Robbie Waisman should add this one to their reading lists.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions my own.

This review will post to my blog on 1/14/23.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy in return for an honest review.

Absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 Holocaust nonfiction. I've read quite a few historical fiction books set during World War 2 and those are heavy reads, but knowing that the people in this book are actual real people made it even more difficult to read. What a story of love and bravery and courage and survival.

"Fritz was ashamed that he was taking advantage of that crime....Auschwitz had made him like this. Auschwitz took good people and made them so that the best they could hope to do was survive and help the people closest to them."

Jeremy Dronfield’s upcoming book “The Boy Who Followed his Father into Auschwitz” (@harpercollinsch, Jan 17, 2023) tells the story of the Kleinmann family, who Dronfield first introduced to readers in his 2019 book of the same name. This edition, as the subtitle indicates, is “A True Story Retold for Young Readers,” is a compelling, heartbreaking, harrowing story of the Kleinmann family’s Holocaust experience. A Jewish family living in Vienna at the time of the Nazi invasion, Dronfield recounts interviews with brothers Fritz and Kurt (14 and 8 when Nazis invaded) that piece together the fates of the family members, including Fritz and his father Gustav, who somehow managed to survive SIX years in various concentration camps. Their mother Tini and sister Herta are not so luck

This is a great account of the Holocaust for mature middle schoolers and teens — schools would do well to teach this instead of John Boyne’s garbage. Dronfield provides plenty of supplementary material to help kids situate this story within the larger historical period: he does not shy away from harsh realities of concentration camps, ghettos, and Jew hate, but depicts all of these things in a way that is appropriate for kids.

It is very much a story of the brothers Kleinmann. As a reader I was curious to know more about the women in the family, especially Edith, who survived the blitz of London.

Very well written for young readers on a very important time in history. This true story almost hard to read at time. But the subject needs to be address with today's and tomorrows' youths. I found the author did a great job telling this story. You can almost feel the suffering and understand how the young man stayed with his father through years of horrible abuse at the hands of the Nazis. I would recommend to this book to any person regardless of age. It is fast pasted and informative.

I loved the storyline of this book, but the writing was extremely difficult to follow. I realized at the end it was a young readers edition I was reading which explained the level, but I’ve read other books geared towards children that had more captivating writing-The War That Saved My Life for example.

The positive: The story was captivating because of how brave they were. I loved how Fritz and Papa attempted to stay together throughout their entire harrowing experience. I also enjoyed their courage and how Fritz was so young yet he was determined to make it out alive. I can’t imagine what he endured at such a young age. And I loved the ending and seeing how it all came together with their photos. This book is intended for teens and is appropriate for them. Nothing they talked about would be inappropriate for a teenager. It is a tough subject so parents should read along and discuss the topics with their kids.

The negative:The characters were two dimensional as was the descriptions leaving me wondering what everyone/everything looked like. When I’m reading a book I want the characters and places to be described so well to me I can picture it all in my head. I have been to a concentration camp which is why I could envision the beds, torture chamber, showers, and camp in general that the author described in minor detail. I have also read numerous books about Auschwitz-Birkenau and could envision it from those books. But if this was the first book I had read on the subject I would have been googling to see what it looked like.

Like most WWII books focusing on the Holocaust it is a hard read. Have tissues handy. But it still a good read.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book. The courage and determination of Fritz and his father to survive. It’s crazy and sad that nothing was done sooner. It’s sad some people liked the other way and did nothing. This book definitely needs to be read.

This book has such great detail and you can tell that so much research went into it. I found myself pouring over the maps and re-reading sections of the book.
This is an intense read, as any involving Auschwitz and the Holocaust can be.
I know that this is not a book for everyone, but it needs to be read and passed around to many. It will be a great book for anyone looking to do more research on this subject or even doing a research paper for school.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.