Category:Holocaust Children, Fiction (subject)

1940s

1948

Ilse Aichinger. Die größere Hoffnung [The Greater Hope] <German> (Amsterdam: Bermann-Fischer, 1948).

Herod's Children, English trans. by Cornelia Schaeffer (New York, NY: Norton, 1963).

Fiction. A semi-autobiographical novel, a surrealist account of a child's persecution by the Nazis in Vienna. One of the top German-language novels of the twentieth century.

"This brilliant novel follows the lives of Jewish and half-Jewish children in Nazi Austria. As the children try to understand the meaning of the star they must wear, and the reason for the new restrictions on their lives, those around them are drawn into their fantasies. Over and over, the children act out the Nativity scene, trying to find the correlation between the star over the stable and the star they must wear. In the end, they discover the true meaning of the star, a meaning their oppressors never dreamed of."--Publisher description.

Ilse Aichinger (Austrian, 1921-2016) - Ilse was raised Catholic, but as the daughter of a Catholic father and a Jewish mother, she was subjected to Nazi persecution after the Anschluss in 1938. Her twin sister Helga escaped from Nazism in July 1939 through a Kindertransport to England. Ilse remained in Vienna, where she was able to hide her mother in her assigned apartment. Many of her relatives perished in the Holocaust. After the war she pursued a successful career in Austria as a writer.

1980s

1989

Lois Lowry. Number the Stars (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1989).

Historical Fiction <juvenile audience>. Novel.

"In 1943, as the German troops begin their campaign to "relocate" all the Jews of Denmark, Annemarie Johansen’s family takes in Annemarie’s best friend, Ellen Rosen, and conceals her as part of the family. Ten-year-old Annemarie must learn how to be brave and courageous. Through her eyes, we watch as the Danish Resistance smuggles almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark, nearly seven thousand people, across the sea to Sweden. The heroism of an entire nation reminds us that there was pride and human decency in the world even during a time of terror and war."--Publisher description.

Lois Lowry (USA, 1937) is the author of more than forty books for children and young adults, including the New York Times bestselling Giver Quartet and popular Anastasia Krupnik series. She has received countless honors, among them the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, the California Young Reader’s Medal, and the Mark Twain Award. She received Newbery Medals for two of her novels, Number the Stars and The Giver. Her first novel, A Summer to Die, was awarded the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award. Ms. Lowry lives in Maine.