Yellow Star

Does your family have a story? Some are funny. My Grandma and her sister married twin brothers. Her son, my dad, and his brother, my uncle, married sisters! I broke that tradition. Some are sad. I know I had a great great uncle from Austria who fell overboard on his way to America. Some are tragic. I know my husband had an aunt who was kidnapped by Nazis and was never seen again.

Within some tragic stories, there is hope and survival. Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy is such a story. Roy's aunt, Syvie Perlmutter, was one of only twelve children to escape the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. Yellow Star is her story, remembered and told decades later. Syvia, now called Sylvia, told her story to her niece in phone conversations across thousands of miles. Roy was uncertain of how to tell her aunt's story, but knew it needed to be saved for future generations.

The result of Roy's efforts is a short book in free verse. It is a quick read, but heavy in pain, sorrow, terror. It is divided into years and seasons and events. The monotony of Syvia's days is captured quickly, but it is the moments that are etched in her memory that move the book forward.

Syvie was only 4 years old when the Nazi's invaded Poland in 1939. Within months, her family and more than 250,000 Jews were forced to move into the Lodz Ghetto, packed in like sardines at first, but violence, starvation and eerie vanishings quickly cut their numbers. Syvie parents had to work, and her older sister was old enough to work herself and earn another ration of food. Syvie was forced to stay at home alone. There was no school for the Jewish children. Syvie occupied her time keeping the small apartment clean and playing with dust bunny "dolls". After children started disappearing, Syvie was required to stay indoors at all times for her safety.

The German soldiers required the Jews in the Ghetto to work for them. Any person who was too frail or too weak, too old or too young was a "waste" of food and space and the Germans began to systematically kill or take these people "away." Eventually, the soldiers began a thorough search for any children below the age of twelve. They took them away from their families and put them on trains. The soldiers said that the children were going to a better place, but it was a lie. They were going to the concentration camps and then on to the gas chambers. Syvie was lucky that her father was smart and always ahead of the game. For awhile, they hid in a hole in a graveyard together, night after night, to avoid the raids.

The Russians finally freed the Jews of the Lodz Ghetto in 1945 when Syvie was ten. Unfortunately, there were only about 800 Jews left and only 12 children. Children that had been hid in graveyards, on rooftops, in the woods and in cellars over the last five years and rarely ever seeing the light of day.

This book is all the more powerful because it is written in the first person, in the voice of young Syvie herself. It was difficult to read because I could imagine having to fight for the right of my own daughters to live. I cannot imagine leaving my youngest home all day, alone, without food or any supplies of any kind. I could not eat or sleep at night thinking that my child's life might not have a future beyond tomorrow. It is books like these, that recreate actual history, that make The Hunger Games and the like either look tame or look possible. Both of which are frightening ideas ...