Ten Thousand Children: True Stories Told by Children Who Escaped the Holocaust on the Kindertransport
by Anne Fox, Eva Abraham-Podietz
List Price:
Our Price: $7.87
You Save: $3.08 (28%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.35 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Anne Fox, Eva Abraham-PodietzEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1998-09-01
ISBN: 0874416485
Number of pages: 128
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Publisher: Behrman House
Book Reviews of Ten Thousand Children: True Stories Told by Children Who Escaped the Holocaust on the Kindertransport
Book Review: Testimonies from the Kindertransport
Summary: 5 Stars
The testimonies written by the Jewish children of the Kindertransport are very scary - scary because the fear that Hitler systematically used on the German people that began as the erosion of their civil liberties and culminated in Jewish Germans and German Jehovah's Witnesses perishing in concentration camps is the same fear that U.S. president Bush is constantly pushing: "Give me full power to do whatever preemptive act is necessary to keep you safe from whatever I determine is a threat to you".
The testimonies in this collection are very upsetting - a dark sense of dread and the need to not just cry but to bawl one's heart into exhaustion haunt them. Anne Fox and Eva Abraham-Podietz have collected unique stories written by fellow escapees on the Kindertansport to Britain from Hitler's Nazi Germany. The stories are arranged under seven chapter headings: 1) Life Under Hitler, 2) Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), 3)Preparing to Leave, 4) The Journey, 5) Life in England, 6) The War Years, 7) After the War. The seven chapters are preceded by a section subtitled "To the Reader" and followed by an Epilogue. The stories are each followed by an update written by Fox and Abraham-Podietz informing the reader how each child fared in adulthood. Both authors were not yet teenagers when they joined 10,000 other children who escaped to Britain without their parents to end up living with foster parents.
In the foreward, we learn that the British are generally a cold people and not very charitable between themselves compared to other societies (I can testify to that), and many children (they call themselves "the kinder") felt unwanted in their new homes. Some were made to work as servants. When World War II was over, most of the children had no choice but to stay on in Britain because Hitler had wiped out millions of their parents in his concentration camps.
Under Chapter 1) Life under Hitler, Sylvia is the first of the "kinder" to share her account, which is mostly about the "Heil Hitler" salute that everyone did out of fear of being punished otherwise. " 'Mother would not have given the Hitler salute', I confided to Ruth"(p16), wrote Sylvia. In the update, we learn that her parents died in Hitler's concentration camps and her aunt in New York brought her to America where she became a secretary, got married, and became a mother.
Other stories include entries by Ruth, Dorit, Karla, Susie, Vera, Eva, Marta, Kurt, Peter, Marion, Ben & Stefan, Sara, Ernie, Ilse, Trudy, Ina, Klara, Anne, Celia, and Lilly. Their stories are profoundly touching in an unanticipated way - and that is a gross understatement. The photos of the children carrying their belongings such as an occasional violin and waving farewell to their parents - who we know did not survive is just too painful to contemplate. It hurts as much as watching those kids being bombed by Bush at the Baghdad wedding party in "Fahrenheit 9/11" by Michael Moore.
The chapter arrangement of the above stories serves to illustrate the gradual progression of Germany's slide down Hitler's slippery slope to a Nazi nightmare. When the first measure were taken against civil liberties in Germany, they seemed minor and perhaps even reasonable if you bought into the fear-mongering by Hitler. People's rights were taken little by little. Kosher slaughtering of meat was outlawed as were all publications of the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society. Eventually, people were incarcerated without charges just as Bush does today in the USA. Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David and Jehovoh's Witnesses wore Purple Triangles. Christians and Jews were Hitler's targets, Muslims are the targets of today's Bushies and neocons.
In the Epilogue we learn of the Kindertransport reunion in 1989 in London, England. Britain is a difficult place for a British Jew or Jewess to grow up - imagine how much more difficult it was for Jewish children who were also GERMAN! But despite the cold British weather and its effects on British behaviour, the British did rescue these children from a despotic madman whose evil is beyond imagination - when you think you know how bad Hitler was, you have reached an awareness equal to one one-thousandth of a percent of his evil. We can never know or understand that amount of evil.
Thomas Paine wrote "War is the gambling table of governments, citizens the dupes of the game". Just as the Civil War was not started by elites for anything but money, yet it was won by the common man fighting against slavery - so was the Second World War started over money but was won by the common man stopping Hitler. On behalf of my Step-Grandfather Hugh "Skeets" Beatty (RIP), may the Almighty forgive his shortcomings and reward his effort at Normandy, amen. [...]
Biographies & Memoirs Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Biographies & Memoirs Books
The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendshipby Jeffrey Zaslow
Gotham; Published: 2009-04-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.60
Price in other shops:
A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanityby Bill O'Reilly
Broadway; Published: 2008-09-23; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.90
Price in other shops:
The Last Lectureby Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow
Hyperion; Published: 2008-04-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.40
Price in other shops:
Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10by Marcus Luttrell
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2009-05-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.56
Price in other shops:
Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimistby Michael J. Fox
Hyperion; Published: 2009-03-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.00
Price in other shops:
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Timeby Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2007-01-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.50
Price in other shops:
Much to Your Chagrin: A Memoir of Embarrassmentby Suzanne Guillette
Atria; Published: 2009-03-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.25
Price in other shops:
Taking Woodstockby Elliot Tiber, Tom Monte
Square One Publishers; Published: 2007-06-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.69
Price in other shops:
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah EquianoCoffeetown Press; Published: 2008-10-01; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
A Lion Called Christian: The True Story of the Remarkable Bond between Two Friends and a Lionby Anthony Bourke, John Rendall
Broadway; Published: 2009-03-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.76
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Terrible Things: An Allegory of the Holocaustby Eve Bunting
Jewish Publication Society of America; Published: 1989-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.00
My Knees Were Jumping - Remembering the KindertransportRelease date: 2003-12-30; DVD
Best price: $14.81
Price in other shops:
Secret Lives - Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWIIRelease date: 2004-07-20; DVD
Best price: $8.55
Price in other shops:
I Have Lived A Thousand Years: Growing Up In The Holocaustby Livia Bitton-Jackson
Simon Pulse; Published: 1999-03-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.47
Price in other shops:
The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survivalby Mona Golabek, Lee Cohen
Grand Central Publishing; Published: 2003-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.28
Price in other shops:
My Heart in a Suitcase (Library of Holocaust Testimonies)by Anne L. Fox
Mitchell Vallentine & Company; Published: 1996-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $18.89
Price in other shops:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransportby Deborah Oppenheimer
Bloomsbury Pub Ltd; Published: 2000-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $33.75
Survivors: True Stories of Children in the Holocaustby Allan Zullo, Mara Bovsun
Scholastic Paperbacks; Published: 2005-03-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.28
Price in other shops:
Kindertransportby Olga Levy Drucker
Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); Published: 1995-10-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.86
Price in other shops:
Into The Arms Of Strangers - Stories Of The KindertransportWarner Brothers; Release date: 2001-08-28; DVD
Best price: $8.98
Price in other shops: