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WHEN THE WORLD WAS OURS by Liz Kessler

WHEN THE WORLD WAS OURS

by Liz Kessler

Pub Date: May 18th, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9965-2
Publisher: Aladdin

Three Austrian children experience the ravages of World War II.

On Leo Grunberg’s ninth birthday in 1936, he and his two best friends, Elsa and Max, celebrate by riding Vienna’s Ferris wheel. Leo collides with English tourists, leading to a friendly connection that later proves lifesaving when the couple sponsor visas for Leo and his mother. Mr. Grunberg is tragically sent first to Dachau and then Auschwitz. Elsa, whose family, like Leo’s, is Jewish, moves to Prague to escape growing dangers in Austria, but their new lives are shortly upended: Elsa is unable to escape via the Kindertransport, and she is sent with her family to Auschwitz. Christian Max’s father joins the Nazi Party and forbids him to spend time with Jewish friends; initially resentful, Max ultimately joins the Hitler Youth. His father is assigned to work at Dachau and later Auschwitz—where Max becomes a guard—and Max crosses paths with Mr. Grunberg in both locations, each time shunning the man who treated him so kindly. He also meets Elsa in an unforgettably dramatic scene in which he must confront his own humanity. These coincidences may strain credulity, but this sometimes-horrific, sometimes-sentimental page-turner exposes readers to the entire arc of the Holocaust. A note explains how the author’s father’s family escaped the Nazis after meeting a British couple in a similar manner to that portrayed in the book.

Readers viscerally experience the Holocaust in this gripping novel.

(resources, further reading) (Historical fiction. 12-18)