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Title

Deborah Hopkinson. We had to be brave: escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport. New York, NY : Scholastic Focus, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., 2020.

• See Ruth David (F / Germany, 1929-2020), Holocaust survivor

Abstract

Writer Deborah tells the story of Ruth David to a Juvenile audience.

""Ruth David was growing up in a small village in Germany when Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s. Under the Nazi Party, Jewish families like Ruth's experienced rising anti-Semitic restrictions and attacks. Just going to school became dangerous. By November 1938, anti-Semitism erupted into Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, and unleashed a wave of violence and forced arrests. Days later, desperate volunteers sprang into action to organize the Kindertransport, a rescue effort to bring Jewish children to England. Young people like Ruth David had to say good-bye to their families, unsure if they'd ever be reunited. Miles from home, the Kindertransport refugees entered unrecognizable lives, where food, clothes -- and, for many of them, language and religion -- were startlingly new. Meanwhile, the onset of war and the Holocaust visited unimaginable horrors on loved ones left behind. Somehow, these rescued children had to learn to look forward, to hope. Through the moving and often heart-wrenching personal accounts of Kindertransport survivors, critically acclaimed and award-winning author Deborah Hopkinson paints the timely and devastating story of how the rise of Hitler and the Nazis tore apart the lives of so many families and what they were forced to give up in order to save these children"--

Contents

When they burn books : 1925-1938. Before -- Voices : life before the Nazis -- Hilter's rise to power -- The worrying time begins -- When they burn books -- When hate becomes law -- Voices : The signs were all there -- The tipping point : 1938. The ninth of November -- Voices : Kristallnacht -- The tipping point -- Here is a chance -- Flight : 1938-1939. Into the unknown -- Voices : parting -- Fred's passport -- Thea's narrow escape -- Separation and sorrow : 1939 and beyond. Voices : life in a strange land -- New land, new lives -- Last transport from Holland -- The door closes -- Voices : looking back, moving forward -- Postscript.

About the Author

Deborah Hopkinson (b.1952) is an American writer of children's books, primarily historical fiction, nonfiction and picture books. She was born in Lowell, Massachusetts.