One Candle

One Candle by Eve Bunting is another successful Holocaust book for young children. The illustrations by K. Wendy Popp are stunning. They are in light brown tones with some color added for life in the present, with family sitting around the dinner table on the first night of Hanukkah. As grandmother remembers one Hanukkah when she and her sister Rose were prisoners in Buchenwald, the illustrations lose their color and are muted. But the story grandmother tells at the Hanukkah table is beautiful.

With the help of her sister, Rose, grandmother stole a potato and some butter from the kitchen in Buchenwald. This was very brave for a small twelve year old girl. This was not for them to eat, although they did eat the parts of the potatoe which were removed from the core to make room for the butter. With a string from a skirt, a wick was made and grandmother, Rose and six other Jewish women had one candle for Hanukkah.

Each year grandmother and Rose recreate this moment with thier family. Retelling this story gives then some peace and hope. When one of the children asks why the young women took the risk, grandmother says,

That Hanukkah candle lifted us. It lifted us to the stars. In our minds, sweetheart. In our hearts.

In the end, grandmother, Rose and all of their family toast L'chayim - To life! And each year, they are all lifted to the stars. It is the tradition of remembering triumph over evil that raises us up. And sharing these moments with family is at the heart of every celebration.

A wonderful lesson plan for using this book with 6th graders can be located here, a University of Michigan site and written by a student. If this link becomes broken, please let me know as I am saving a copy. Also, since the book centers on Hanukkah, I found the Teacher Guide to Hanukkah very informative with a number of lesson plans which could also be used with this book.

TITLE: One Candle
AUTHOR: Eve Bunting
ILLUSTRATOR: K. Wendy Popp
COPYRIGHT: 2002
PAGES: 29
TYPE: fiction
RECOMMEND: I love how the family honors a tradition to show courage and hope. The illustrations are also very nice.

Erika's Story

I was born sometime in 1944.

I do not know my birthdate.

I do not know my birth name...

What I do know is that when I was just a few months old, I was saved from the Holocaust. (p. 1)

This is the beginning of Erika's story. She was thrown from a train to by her parents to escape the Holocaust. Author Ruth Vander Zee was traveling in Germany in 1995 when she met Erika sitting outside a tornado demolished building. Vander Zee allows Erika to tell her story through this book - with words and pictures. Erika wonders how her parents felt as they threw her to an uncertain future, hopefully to live instead of to die. As she ages, Erika marries and has children of her own. She reminds us that it was once said that my people would be as many as the stars in the heavens. Although six millions stars fell during the Holocaust, Erika's star is still shining and I am glad she shared her story with first Vander Zee and the now the world.

The illustrations are beyond wonderful. In fact, all but a few resemble photographs, although one can see that they are not. These "photographs" are all black and white or muted blue tones. The only colors are the yellow stars worn on the chests of the people in the cattle car and the pink blanket wrapped around the young baby girl. The emphasis created with this use of color is haunting. The cover (seen above) is also quite interesting with a black and beige background with a cut out star in the center which has a yellow background. Behind the star is a fence with the German word VERBOTEN, which means forbidden. A very powerful mental picture.

The author provides a Teachers' Resource Guide with a very nice assortment of materials for use with students.

TITLE: Erika's Story
AUTHOR: Ruth Vander Zee
ILLUSTRATOR: Roberto Innocenti
COPYRIGHT: 2003
PAGES: 24
TYPE: Holocaust narrative
RECOMMEND: The book is so simple, yet powerful in its simplicity. The illustrations alone are stunning and combined with the narrative the book is an excellent resource.

Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story

Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story by Ken Mochizuki, illustrated by Dom Lee, with an afterword by Hiroki Sugihara is a beautiful book which shows that the actions of one person, supported by their family, can make a huge difference.

The opening page of the book contains the following two proverbs, which serve as starting places in ones thoughts for reading the book:

If you save the life of one person,
it is as if you saved the world entire. -- Jewish proverb

Even a hunter cannot kill a bird
that comes to him for refuge. -- Japanes proverb

This beautiful story is told through the voice of a five year old boy, Hiroki Sugihara, who lived with his mother and father and other family members in Lithuania in 1940. His father was the Japanese diplomat to Lithuania. One morning in July, the family awoke to see hundreds of Polish Jews standing outside their front gate. These people were refugees who begged Mr. Sugihara to issue them Japanese visas so they could escape through Russia to Japan and avoid certain death at the hands of the Nazis. Mr. Sugihara asked his country if he could issue these visas and was repeatedly told no. After asking his family, including the young boy and his siblings, Mr. Sugihara decided to issue as many visas as he could before he was stopped by his government or the Nazis. In doing so, he put his family in the line of danger as well.

Passage to Freedom is a very moving story and the illustrations are beautiful - according to the book they are "rendered by applying encaustic beeswax on paper, then scratching out images, and finally adding oil paint and colored pencil." The result is an image in monochromatic tones of brown with haunting clarity. The cover brings forth an interesting thought - I had passed this book a number of times, wondering what in the world a Japanese father and son could possibly have to do with the Jewish Holocaust in Europe. Certainly the Japanese were involved with World War II, but not to liberate the Jewish people. After reading the short book, I am fairly ashamed of my own ignorance, and perhaps my bias. Still, an unusual link which is further highlighted in the Afterword, with Sugihara stating, In 1969, my father was invited to Israel, where he was taken to the famous Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem. In 1985, he was chosen to receive the "righteous Among Nations" Award from Yad Vashem. He was the first and only Asian to have been given this great honor. (Afterword)

The publisher, Lee & Low Books provide a Classroom Guide for the book. Here is another lesson plan for conflict resolution. And another guide for students who are a little older - 6th grade lesson plan. The book is versatile in that it is writtten at a lower reading level, but the story itself transcends age.

TITLE: Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story

AUTHOR: Ken Mochizuki

ILLUSTRATOR: Dom Lee

COPYRIGHT: 1997

PAGES: 32

TYPE: non-fiction

RECOMMEND: A very unusual Holocaust book, with a strong moral story.