book review...

well, first of all, let me say that this is one of the best random picked book that i have ever read, really. I had started to read it with the usual casualness of any book...a few paragraphs here, a page or two there, you know, lasting for a week or so- this book was not the case.

it had me grabbing it right after lunch, immediately after dinner and wondering about what was going to happen in-between. this book is about the "Kindertransport" that took place between Germany,Poland, Austria, and Vienna during World War II. The Kindertransport was an actual transport that took (mostly) Jewish and other "non-wanted" children between the ages of 3-17 across the border in the safety of England. these stories are amazing to me (i am a huge history lover, especially World War II), to see how normal these childrens lives were, just like normal children until Hitler came into power and then everything changed for them , everything. One Jewish woman told the story of how her school teacher was an actual S.S. trooper, how when he asked her a question, (which she knew she was right) he would just look at the class and say "Well, we know that that answer isn't right, because that's a Jewish answer!", to further the already hate against them in the community.

Another story is of a Jewish  little boy who's family had a beautiful apartment in Vienna, decorated by an interior decorator, who had taken pictures and put them in his studio. another woman saw it, went to the police, and then within 24 hours the boy's family had to vacate their home because a non-Jewish family wanted it. And, there were many more stories than this, before things got really bad, before!

i don't want to give the whole story away, but as the families could see how bad things were getting, opportunities presented themselves to these parents to become a part of the Kindertransport, essentially safety. the only difficulty was that it was just for the children, not for the parents, leaving  parents to decide between having their children around them during these hard times, or let them go, not knowing whether they would ever see them again, but knowing that they would be safe from persecution and  the Nazi's.

 in all of these people's stories, all but one parent let their children go, her father actually pulled her out of the Kindertransport, and she ended up living, but having to go through Auschwitz because of it, so you can see what kind of cruelty these children where actually saved from. this was an wonderful read, definitively go out and buy it if you are a history lover.