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Living with his mother and two sisters in the Warsaw Ghetto, Misha is befriended by the director of the orphanage, Dr. Korczak, and finds a purpose to his life when he joins a resistance organization. Shadow of the Wall
I thought it was really well written and had a good story line. Paperback This is a sobering YA novel set during the 1940's during the tumult in Europe. Misha and his family are Jewish, and you can imagine that this does not turn out well for them. Forced to live in the ghetto, Misha and his family among many other Jews find it harder to scrabble for survival day after day as conditions worsen.
This is not a happy book. Yes, there are some happy events in here and the ending is hopeful, but this book illustrates in an age-appropriate way how harsh some people had it back then and for unjustified reasons. Misha's mother even makes such a comment - how people could be treated like this in the 20th century. And that is a very good question indeed for children and adults to ponder. Paperback Shadow of The Wall by Christa Laird was a very fascinating book as well as a quick read. It is about a teen boy named Misha living in a Nazi ghetto in Warsaw Poland during World War II. He was determined to ensure that his mother and loved ones survive. He would risk death by smuggling food for them. He joins a resistance group to oppose the Nazis. They would smuggle people and items behind the Nazi’s backs. Dr. Janusz has him smuggle his sister out of the Ghetto. I very much enjoyed this book. It had sad and touching moments and suspense. Several chapters had me on the edge of my chair while reading it wondering what is going to happen next. It makes me realize how learning about our history is so important so that these atrocious acts on humanity do not take place ever again. I would suggest this book to someone who is looking for a historical book about the Holocaust. Paperback Risking Life to Preserve Life - A Book That Deserves Greater Recognition
To keep his ailing mother alive, Misha Edelstein must risk his life to smuggle what bits of food he can find into the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of the city in World War II. Later on, he must risk his life to smuggle his baby sister out of the Ghetto, into the hands of kind strangers, in the hope that she may survive. Adding to the theme of the meaning of life in the face of death is that much of the story takes place in Janusz Korczak's orphanage in the Ghetto. Dr. Korczak, along with Mrs. Stefa and Miss Eszterka and several of the orphans were all real people. Throughout his life, Mister Doctor (as Korczak often was called) cared for orphans, providing Warsaw's unwanted children with nurturing and comfort. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Warsaw was under seige; the following year, the city's significant Jewish population was rounded up and imprisoned in a Ghetto the Nazis encircled with an eight-foot wall (hence the title of this book). Though Janusz Korczak was offered false papers for safe passage to the Aryan side on several occasions, he steadfastly refused, saying that one must never abandon children in a time of need. To the end, with solemn dignity, Janusz Korczak accompanied his children to the cattle cars that would take them to Treblinka, never to be seen or heard again.
The theme of this Young Adult novel fits very well with the life of Janusz Korczak, an important figure more children should know about. Ms. Laird drew upon her own research to ensure the book's historical accuracy. Although Betty Jean Lifton's superb biography had not yet been published when this book was written, Ms. Laird did consult Hanna Olczak's Mister Doctor and Joseph Hyams's A Field of Buttercups, the former being a translation from the Polish of an account written by someone who actually knew the Doctor, the latter being the first original English-language biography of Korczak. Young readers who wish to know more about this kind, gentle champion of children would do well to read Mark Bernheim's Father of the Orphans.
Christa Laird's beautifully told book has been translated into several languages and deserves to be reprinted again in English. Moreover, it deserves to be read by a new generation of young adults. Paperback