Friedeman and Szany’s middle grade book, “Interrupted Lives: Nine Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust,” is a resource that is desperately needed by schools not just in the United States, but should be translated into numerous languages and distributed worldwide.

This book includes the stories of nine different people—five women and four men—who survived the Holocaust as children. The survivors hail from places throughout Europe, including France, Poland, Hungary, and the Netherlands, with five survivors originating in Germany.

Each story includes photographs of the survivors, along with biographical data, such as birthdates, death dates, immigration dates, along with a major lesson from each person. Of all the included stories, three in particular really touched my heart.

The first was the story of Adele Zaveduk who, along with her mother younger sister, lived in the home of a gentile in France. But, painfully, the woman who gave them shelter denounced Adele’s mother, resulting in her mother being sent to a concentration camp. After that, their caretaker then lied to Adele and her sister, calling their mother a bad person. It was heartbreaking.

The second story that touched me was that of Judy Straus from Montabaur, Germany whose major lesson was to encourage people to fight for their rights using the vote. Finally, the third story that really touched me was that of Ruth Stern from Berlin, Germany, whose lesson focused on adaptation to survive coupled with resilience.

My paternal grandmother was born in Austria. While still a young teenager, she was forced to work in an ammunitions factory. After this, she was sent to Berlin to work as a maid. I still know very little about what my paternal grandmother endured as she was extremely tight lipped about everything. But even so, I have always been hesitant to visit Berlin; I believe this is where she experienced the most trauma. And in my own personal life, I have also had to rely on adaptation for my own survival, relying upon my own resilience. It is for these reasons that Ruth Stern’s story resonated the most with me.

Children deserve to have childhoods and while many, if not most, of the people in this book were denied this right, I’m grateful that they at least lived through this tragedy. I cannot begin to even fathom the experiences that many children during this era experienced, and particularly the experiences of the children that were murdered.

This book is more than timely, given the current rush of antisemitism around the world. But through education, we can eliminate both hate and misunderstanding. I sincerely hope that this book will have a long print run and will appear on bookshelves around the world.

I received an ARC of “Interrupted Lives: Nine Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust” by Amanda Friedeman and Kelley Szany from NetGalley, Lerner Publishing Group, and Kar-Ben Publishing in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.