Category: world war II

Heroica series, empowering woman

Heroic-a Series:- Empowering Women of WWII – The Deadliest Female Sniper in Recorded History – Lyudmila Pavlichenko – Lady Death

Published on by dgkaye48 Comments

Welcome back to my Heroic-a series of empowering women of WWII. Today I’m spotlighting one of the deadliest female snipers of WWII, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who killed 309 fascists in the Soviet Union – in the now known as Ukraine.

Lyudmila Pavlichenko was born in Bil Tserkva, Ukraine in 1916. She was a complicated human being – brave, and forever haunted by her killings. She was a history student, became a mother, a wife twice, and a sniper. Her war is now over, but her words remain.

“Gentlemen, I am twenty-five years old and have killed three hundred and nine invaders. By now, don’t you think you’ve been hiding behind my back too long?” ~ This was the beginning of Lyudmila’s speech when she was sent to America in 1941 and met President Roosevelt and First Lady, Eleanor to try and get the US to join the war on the European front.

In 1930, Lyudmila’s family moved to Kiev, (now part of Ukraine). She was a tomboy who joined a shooting club in the Soviet Union. She worked by day at Kiev arsenal and at night she studied at the university. Her spare time was spent on shooting practice. She earned many badges and ultimately became the Soviet Union’s most remarkable precision marksman – fierce and determined.

By June 1941, operation Barbarosa happened. Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Lyudmila went straight to the registry to join the war and fought to become a shooter – not a nurse or any other female roles. They tested her by handing her a rifle and told her to shoot two Nazis. Piece of cake for her. She was assigned rifle duty. The rifle weighed over four kilograms, which became like a third arm. Three weeks later she’d accumulated over one hundred sniper kills and made a hero by the Russian Red army. They nicknamed her – Lady Death.

During her first kill campaign, Lyudmila fell in love with a fellow sniper and married him. She was sent to the Crimean Peninsula to fight for eight grueling months of unrelenting hell to fight in the Battle of Sevastopol. The Soviets were outnumbered ten to one. By June 1942, the Luftansa had dropped over fifty tons of artillery on them. After the siege, only eleven survived. Lyudmila was one of them. She trained new snipers and was promoted to Lieutenant. Her new husband died in battle, and Lyudmila channeled her grief through her rifle. Her record for counter snipers were remarkable. The National WWII Museum states that she won every battle she fought. Her patience remained hidden as she stayed concealed without movement for three days during the Battle of Sevastopol.

Lyudmila’s tactical methods were diabolical. She never had to fire more than one shot, just as she never used the same hiding place twice. She was an ace at using decoys. Lyudmila suffered four wounds by 1942. Two were serious shrapnel wounds that left her in hospital in Crimea. The Soviets realized just how valuable she was and didn’t want her back in the action risking her life, but opted to use her to train other snipers. And in 1941, she was sent to Washington, D.C. to gain the support of America to join the war and help fight the fascists. Stalin wanted Western allies to join in the European front. Lyudmila was the first Soviet citizen to be seen by an American president. Roosevelt was welcoming, but it seemed American journalists were more interested in her beauty secrets than her heroism.

By the time Lyudmila spoke in Chicago, she learned how to handle the press. She toured forty-three cities with First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. After some tough ice-breaking, the two women became lifelong friends and maintained correspondence for almost two decades. In 1957, Eleanor visited Moscow. She connected with Lyudmila, all the while accutely aware they were being listened to. Eleanor commented, “There is something very charming to me about this Russian woman.” Their friendship lasted until the death of Eleanor in 1962.

In 1943 Lyudmila was awarded the Gold Star Hero award of the Soviet Union. She also received The Order of Lenin, and a commemorative stamp was made in her name. American song writer, Woodie Guthrie wrote a song for her. She also received many gifts from the U.S. From 1945 to 1953 she completed her university studies at Kiev and became a historian for the Soviet Navy headquarters, while suffering exacerbating PTSD for the rest of her life.

On October 10th, 1974, at the age of fifty-eight, Lyudmila Pavlichenko died of a stroke. The weight of war always leaves a high price tag on human life.

Watch the full story of Lyudmila Pavlichenko below in this half hour video.

©DGKaye 2026

Heroica series, empowering woman

Heroic-a Series: Empowering Women of #WWII – Andree de Jongh – Code names – Dedee and Postman

Published on by dgkaye63 Comments

Welcome to today’s post about empowering heroines of World War II. Today I’m going to share a bit about the heroics of one tiny, petite young woman of age twenty-four who didn’t even look twenty – Andree de Jongh – Code Names – Dedee and Postman.

Andree de Jongh was born in WWI, Schaerbeek, Belgium. De Jongh was studying to become a nurse. In 1940 she moved to Brussels and joined the Red Cross voluntarily and got involved with rescuing and hiding allied airmen. In total,776 stranded allied airmen were rescued through her creation of the ‘Comet Line’. This was the route she traveled over twenty-four times, 800 kilometres each way back and forth, to guide stranded allied airmen out of Brussels, taking them through the Pyrenees to Bilboa Spain’s British consulate. When De Jongh made her first journey through to Spain, the British almost didn’t believe this tiny woman led the allies to them, they were convinced it was a German plot! Interesting the route went to Spain, considering Spain pretended to be neutral in the war but kept a covert allegiance to Germany and Italy.

De Jongh’s team were also referred to as the ‘DDD’s’ because their surnames all began with the letter ‘D’, hence, the code name Dedee. De Jongh was known as a real firecracker. In fact, her father named her ‘little cyclone’ when she was just a little girl.

These missions took place because every soldier was crucially needed to fight the Nazis, so if uninjured, the soldiers were sent back to war. The first mission was the only one that wasn’t 100% foolproof. The soldiers were led safely to Spain, but not taken directly to the consulate, which caused several airmen re-arrested when caught trying to get to Bilboa. From 1941 through 1943, De Jongh had made twenty-four trips back and forth. British MI6 and MI9 got involved with the program and sponsored it.

There were 3000 volunteers for these missions, 70% being women. At the end of the war approximately 290 of those volunteers were captured and/or killed. The Comet Line route wasn’t an easy one. It began in Brussels to Paris by train, cross the Sommes at Corbie, Paris to Bordeaux to Bayonnne or St. Jean de Luz by overnight express. Bayonne to Urrugnu by bike or foot to the Pyrenees – an eight hour trek overnight of twenty-five kilometres climbing six hundred-foot mountains, in all weather. The dangers were weather, terrain – and worse, the traitors and betrayers.

De Jongh was caught and interrogated and the Germans refused to believe such a pretty and tiny young woman could possibly be capable of such journeys, so instead of killing her, they sent her to a concentration camp in January 1943, first to Ravensbruck, then to Mauthausen, and there she remained until Liberation Day. When the war ended, she was freed by the allies, weight under eighty pounds and dying from Tuberculosis. But she didn’t die!

After the war, De Jongh was invited to receive the George Medal at Buckingham Palace, in 1946. She also received numerous other medals from many allied countries who fought the war, such as the Medal of Freedom, the French Legion d’honneur, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, and a few more. In 1985, the king of Belgium made her a Countess. De Jongh completed her nursing degree then moved to Africa to help the leper communities. She died in Brussels at the age of ninety on October 13th, 2007.

Below is a video with more details how this incredulous woman became a heroine of WWII.

©DGKaye2026

Heroica series, empowering woman

New Heroic-a Series: Biopic Bits – Empowering Women of War

Published on by dgkaye55 Comments

While many watch TV or scroll their phones for news and entertainment, I prefer to take my news from reliable sources from my favorite podcasters and analysts. But, I also watch documentaries on Youtube. I’m fascinated at what makes people tick and how they came to be – sometimes intentionally, others – situational.

One of my favorite genres I read and watch are stories from WWII. For every miraculous escape, or surviving the unsurvivable, those who sacrificed their lives for others, and for others searching deep into what creates diabolical and inhumane humans; these are the stories that fascinate me.

Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of docs about heroic women of war who risked their own lives for their country. This little mini – bits of biopic, as I like to call this series, are condensed versions of some of the stories about these female war heroes. An interesting difference from what usually comes to mind as war heroes – men in uniforms on battlefields. These are stories about unassuming women who did heroic things to defend their country, kind of stories. We can learn how these women ended up fighting in the war without joining the battle fields, how unimportant women were assumed to be (war was for men), how instrumentally helpful they were because they were inconspicuous, and how they managed to survive, and who they became after.

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I subtitled this series – ‘heroic-a’, a genre I made up to categorize female war heroines. In this first episode, we’re observing Alice Arteil – Code Name: Sylva. Loire, France.

Alice Arteil (1912 to 1995) seventh child, brought up proper in a poor family of twelve children in Loire region of France. Educated only until thirteen years old. Her parents worked at and owned their own bakery.

In 1936, Alice married textile merchant Raymond Arteil, a mercantile. In 1940 they had a baby girl. Raymond joined the French army, and was captured a year later. And Alice made it her mission to find her missing husband, as he was declared. And she did – a few years later, after learning he was imprisoned in a war camp in Prussia (border of Poland and Russia). Alice had had enough of feeling powerless and joined a resistance group to foil, fight, build resistance networks, and find her husband. Some of her duties were to hide fugitives, run guerilla missions through the forests and mountains, and deceive the nazis. Her undercover code name became Sylva, which meant ‘forest’, because she knew the lay of the land in the Loire. By 1943, she was leading her own resistance. Interesting to note that women were only about 15% of the resistance, and many were part of communications – sending and transmitting messages. Many death-defying missions.

By 1940, France had caved to the Gestapo. The Vichy police had turned into French Gestapo. By 1943, they were calling up boys(men) born betwen 1920 to 1922 to work as forced labor for the Germans. Not voluntarily. The ones who refused to sign up, created a huge new resistance. Alice kept up her missions of resistance throughout the rest of the war, risking her own life with every mission, as the gestapo were on to her. She survived their, ‘shoot her’ orders, along with many mountain missions in all weather to transmit messages, weapons, and leading Jews through the mountains, saving the lives of many. She survived it all, and after reuniting back with her husband, sank right back into civilian life. She was later recognized by some of the highest echelons of France and received the Croix de Guerre and many other honorable medals, for her heroism during WWII.

Makes one stop and think – what would we do if our country was being taken over, become a hostage of it or join the resistance? No brainer for me. I’m a born justice fighter. If it’s unjust, I’m going to call it out. That’s who I am. So, there’s nothing to think about for me. I most certainly would have been part of the resistance.

If you’d like to learn the whole story condensed into 36 minutes, you can hear the whole story below of this valiant woman:

“Alice Arteil was not the woman she was before the war.” No doubts, after what she’d seen and done.

“She fought when she could have hidden, she had led when she could have followed, she had risked her life repeatedly when she could have stayed safe.”

©DGKaye 2026

Bitmo Sunday book review

Sunday Book Review – Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz by Isabella Leitner

Published on by dgkaye65 Comments

Welcome to my Sunday Book Review. Today I’m reviewing a book I grabbed while it was on FREE, and glad I did because unlike many books on this topic, the subject matter wasn’t detailed with stories of the inhumanity the nazis exerted over the Jews, as much as it is Isabella’s own survival story, and how she managed to stay alive through three death camps that gripped me. Isabella Leitner wrote this book in the late 70s.

Get This Book on Amazon

Blurb:

The deeply moving, Pulitzer Prize–nominated memoir of a young Jewish woman’s imprisonment at the Auschwitz death camp.

In 1944, on the morning of May 29th, her twenty-third birthday, Isabella Leitner and her family were deported to Auschwitz, the Nazi extermination camp. There, she and her siblings relied on one another’s love and support to remain hopeful in the midst of the great evil surrounding them.


In Fragments of Isabella, Leitner reveals a glimpse of humanity in a world of darkness. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as “a celebration of the strength of the human spirit as it passes through fire,” this powerful and luminous Pulitzer Prize–nominated memoir, written thirty years after the author’s escape from the Nazis, has become a classic of holocaust literature and human survival.

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My 5 Star Review:

Isabella Leitner born in 1921 Hungary, survived the genocide of World War II, and lived to tell, until 2009. A remarkable long life after all she endured and suffered.

In this book, Isabella tells her story from the time the Germans deported Jews from Hungary, through all of the inhumane conditions she managed to remain alive, and her resilience to defy death at any cost, to the liberations of the holocaust victims by the Red Army, to her eventual migration to America.

On her 23rd birthday, May 29, 1944, Isabella was deported to Auschwitz from the Hungarian ghetto she was already forced to live in with her mother, four sisters, and a brother. Her father had already sensed the winds of war coming for him and his family and managed to get to America before the war began, in efforts to seek passage to bring his family to America. But sadly, before anything could be arranged for his family, the Germans got to them first. The story is written as an accounting of what happened to one family during the occupation, almost non chalant does the author reveal her stories. Not looking for pitty, but brazenly just telling it how it was, leaving us, the readers to form our own empathy.

The title for this book is definitely apropos. And the author’s writing style was one that just kept me captivated throughout until the last page. The book isn’t written as a novel. It’s a memoir written as fragmented bits of important moments and remembrances of the time her family suffered to live, relayed throughout the book, and the taste left behind after the war had left its psychological damage on survivors, some who couldn’t even bear hearing German words again. This book is one woman’s testament to the horrors of the holocaust, and the undeniable will to survive.

©DGKaye2025

Bitmo Sunday book review

Sunday Book Review – BEELITZ-HEILSTÄTTEN: Where Ghosts Never Die by Marina Osipova #historicalfiction/#psychothriller

Published on by dgkaye56 Comments

My Sunday Book Review is for Marina Osipova’s latest historical fiction release – Beelitz-Heilstatten” Where Ghosts Never Die. I’ll preface my review by adding that Marina is one of my favorite HF authors. I’m pretty sure I’ve read all her books. If I haven’t, there may be a few buried in my Kindle. Marina writes beautifully crafted stories with detailed descriptions that take us into story. This book, I thought a strange title until I was swept to BEELITZ-HEILSTATTEN when the story that began in 2018 took us into that place – a military hospital, back in 1916, with a very clever plot that really heats up once we’re taken there – a very scary place.

Get This Book on Amazon

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Blurb:

What if rediscovering your birthplace unearthed a secret so powerful it could rewrite history—and your own identity?

A Russian-American writer obsessed with her birthplace – a ghostly derelict German military hospital near Berlin
Her Austrian husband, who pines for the father he never met
A passionate young doctor destined for darkness
A demonic figure who changed the course of history
Interrogation reports stolen from the Soviet secret police
What mysterious force connects them all?

This genre-bending time-slip narrative bridges 2018 to the haunting eras of WWI and WWII, interweaving together the ghosts of history and a shocking secret that threatens the present.

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My 5 Star Review:

Marina Osipova never disappoints. She is well known for her WWII war stories and for rich characters who endure war. But this book is like she created a whole new genre, historical fiction, thriller, romance and paranormal, all wrapped in one. I even wondered if perhaps there was a lot of memoir woven into Part 1. It’s difficult to describe the plot for it is so involved and to try and describe accurately would be giving out spoilers. Suffice it to say, the book begins in present 2018 in Beelitz, Germany. The woman telling the story lives in Austria, emigrated from Russia, on vacation in Germany with her husband Hans. She asked Hans to take her to Beelitz as her birthday wish, to visit the hospital where she was born – Beelitz-Heilstatten. And when she eventually arrives there, something bizarre takes place, and suddenly we are swept into 1916 where the sinister story begins about what took place there.

The writing is impeccable and addictive. The heartbeat of the story heats up in 1916 as we are introduced to detailed occurrences of hospital horrors of war that went on there, and the sinister characters keeping us turning the pages wanting to discover what these two worlds have to do with each other, anticipating what the common thread is that links these two eras. When it does come together, a stunning connection becomes apparent. She now wishes she’d never gone there.

Pay close attention to Part 1, there is great foreshadowing expressed in nonchalant conversation, exhibiting subtle covert clues relating to 1916 in the hospital, Part 2.

There’s an uncanny sense of objects and people appearing further away in the past than they actually are – D.G. Kaye.

©DGKaye2025

Bitmo Sunday book review

Sunday Book Review – Two Necklaces by Paulette Mahurin #historicalfiction #WWII

Published on by dgkaye49 Comments

Welcome to my Sunday Book Review. Today I’m reviewing a book by one of my favorite historical fiction authors, Paulette Mahurin – Two Necklaces. A story of human compassion still existing in a terrible time of war. This book was upcoming on my Amazon reading list, and as serendipity had it, just before I finished reading another book, Paulette was promoting the book on Netgalley, so I grabbed my copy there.

Get This Book on Amazon

Blurb:

“Two Necklaces is a beautiful, compelling story of young love set during the rise of Nazism in Germany that you won’t want to put down.” –Geneviève Montcombroux, author of Racing North

In 1933, after Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany, fourteen-year-old Christa Becker begins attending meetings of the League of German Girls, sharing the new regime’s ideology with her brother Jürgen. But he sees things differently and refuses to distance himself from a Jewish friend, suffering grave consequences for his choice and causing Christa to question the regime’s teachings. When she meets and falls in love with Paul, a Jewish jeweler, her life is thrown into turmoil, and she must enlist the help of her grandmother to navigate her developing relationship despite the escalating risks. Upheaval ensues, but she refuses to back down from her burning desire to be with Paul.

Two Necklaces is the story of a German girl’s coming of age who dares to think for herself at a time when that very act was dangerous, even life-threatening. It delves into the very nature of the human condition with its frailty, strength, and the struggle of mind and heart.

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My 5 Star Review:

Christa is a lovely German girl living at home with her parents and grandmother. Her father is a distinguished business man and her mother owns a box company. And her Oma, her beloved grandmother, all play roles in this gripping story of oncoming war and Hitler’s hate for the Jews.

The story begins in 1933 Germany when Hitler steals power and begins his lying insinuations about Jews being insignificant. Young girls like Christa are sent to BDM classes to learn how to hate, and to be groomed for marrying, or plainly, getting impregnated by German soldiers to produce more Aryan children.

Christa has three friends who attend these classes – Gertrude, Vera and Brigit. Of the three, Gertrude and Brigit are proud Germans and Jew haters, while both Christa and Vera are very uncomfortable with what they are learning and witnessing.

Christa’s brother gets ‘sent away’ for being seen with a Jew, and her parents are adamant about Christa not talking to or showing any concern for Jews. But Christa and her Oma are both compassionate people, and as the story unfolds, take on some very scary situations as their compassion cannot help but help a young Jewish man, Paul, who Oma knows well.

For Christa’s birthday, Oma gives her a pendant necklace, which somehow gets broken, and there the real story begins. Oma offers to take Christa to a distant town where she knows a jeweler who can repair it, but upon their arrival to her friend, Nahum’s house, learns he’s no longer alive, but his son Paul, now running the business out of his house, is. Christa feels an immediate attraction to Paul, and later sneaks out of her house to pay him another visit. He is forlorn and opens up to her about the neighbors terrorizing him and gives him her necklace because she says it’s lucky.

Christa’s friend Gertrude becomes a true nazi, not surprising as her father is the brother of the famed Rudolph Hess. Gertrude visits Christa and tells her how she snoops in her father’s briefcase and finds plans for the removal of Jews after the 1936 Olympics. Christa’s dad is hired by the Reich, against his will, to help with the architectural plans to eliminate Jews, while her mother is steeped in grief at what has happened to her brother.

Paul stows away to Ravensburg where Christa lives after his home was set ablaze and underground resistance alerts Christa, who helps to hide Paul. It is Oma who has contact with Paul’s German neighbor who gets the action going to try and save Paul amongst the fear and angst going on in the new nazi Germany. Christa’s growing fondness for Paul puts her in some dangerous situations as her and Oma plot to get Paul out of Germany, as Christa’s relentless desires sometimes has her forgetting that she is putting her own life on the line, while her father is away from home months at a time working on plans for SS Himler to build concentration camps. As Oma’s plan to help save Paul puts the family in peril, a second necklace comes into play to help save Paul’s life.

I couldn’t put this book down in this gripping tale of good German’s risking their own lives to save one Jew from the likes of Hitler and his monsterous nazi regime. I’ve read many books and watched many documentaries on the horrors of the nazis and their capabilities and their zero regard for human life, but this story takes us on a journey through the other side of things – compassionate Germans who are against the regime, risking their own lives in secret to save the lives of others.

This book is a fast-paced page-turning read as we get a glimpse of war and hatred from the view of citizens who are unwillingly trapped in it, and a good look at human compassion that can still exist in a time where that alone could get one killed.

©2025

Bitmo Sunday book review

Sunday Book Review – The Girl From Huizen, by Paulette Mahurin #WWII #Historicalfiction

Published on by dgkaye61 Comments

This week my Sunday Book Review is for a book by one of my favorite authors of historical fiction, Paulette Mahurin – The Girl From Huizen. Why I enjoy her stories so much is not only that book after book I read in this genre, it never ceases to astonish me at the cruelty of mankind, but this author seeks out the humanity in others, and in the chaos, at a time where there wasn’t much civility. This book is no exception. This is a tale about Dutch teen Roz Jansen who lives on a farm in Huizen, a village in the province of Northern Holland. A courageous story of true events.

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Blurb:

The German occupation of the Netherlands brings with it food shortages, harsh treatment for resistants and deportation of Jews. The changes dramatically affect Rosamond Jansen’s life on her family’s farm on the outskirts of Huizen. When she finds herself under constant surveillance and oppressive treatment in her government typist job and the Nazis deport her best friend, her resentment turns to fear and a deepening hatred. Verbal cruelty, belittlement and emotional turmoil take their toll on her until a man arrives at the farm who, along with her uncle from Amsterdam, enlist her father into resistance work. When her father does not return home, Rosamond, too, is drawn into resistance activity. As more people disappear from her life, her involvement goes deeper, bringing her to a villa in Huizen where a woman named Madelief has a secret. As Rosamond becomes close to Madelief and the secret is revealed, her life starts to unravel.

Based on actual events at the villa, The Girl from Huizen tells the story of how Rosamond, working with Madelief, dared to defy the SS and their collaborators. But this is no ordinary Resistance versus Nazi story, rather it is a story of a shocking and unexpected unfolding where flames of tension ignite the page, as loss and grief consume and drive the girl from Huizen. It is a powerful story about the trusting friendship between two women. Ultimately The Girl from Huizen is a homage to the brave resistance members who risked everything to fight against Nazi oppression. Their efforts saved thousands upon thousands of lives.

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My 5 Star Review:

This author never disappoints in taking us right into her stories. Her characters are richly portrayed, as she takes us into both, the scenes of the action, and inside her character’s heads, having us feeling all their emotions as this tale unfolds. A well researched and gripping story from beginning to end. This incredible story had me turning the pages and picking up the book every chance I had.

It was a peaceful village in Gooimeer until the SS, Gestapo, and Dutch snitches and traitors turned Gooi into a starving village as most crops grown were mandatory donations to feed the enemy. As the war progressed and Hitler demanded his wolves to frequently check households for hidden Jews on a regular basis because he wanted to eliminate all the ‘vermin’, no home was safe from an SS invasion at any given time for spot checks.

Roz had been through enough already, watching her best friend Emma taken by the SS, and her job turned into typing for the SS. The cruelty of what was happening in her once peaceful life, had taken its toll.

When her father doesn’t return from a resistance mission, Roz was determined to join the resistance to help save children from being captured by the dirty Nazis. Roz leaves her job to help out on the farm, and is eventually introduced to Madelief, who she learns plays a big role in saving and hiding Jewish children (true events). And Madelief holds a deep secret about the villa which she is currently dwelling in, and using as a temporary holding, safehouse, before the children’s final safe destination. Once all is revealed by Madelief, and the relentless oppression, Roz’s life feels like spinning out of control.

This story will grip you through every mission taken by the resistance – risking their own lives to save the lives of innocent neighbors and strangers. Selfless and often hungry themselves, but sharing with someone worse off. Reality checks when Roz takes in pause to remember what it felt like to walk in shoes with soles, when she could enjoy the outdoors and life without fears off being stopped or raided by the Nazis who seemed to be everywhere, or where a sliver of chocolate could linger on her tongue long enough to take her back to plentiful times. These things reminded her of the simple pleasures that were once part of her life. Despite the climate of war, survival, and trying to help others, risking her own life, her strength to go on, despite her losses – both in life, and of life, a very important friendship made with Madelief kept her determination fueled to save the children.

As expected from this author, so much of the human condition in this story, and a wonderful telling of watching Roz turn from a mere girl to a young woman of maturity as the times had everyone growing up much too fast. This could be my favorite of many books I’ve read by this unsurprisingly, best selling author.

©DGKaye2023

Bitmo Sunday book review

Sunday Book Review – Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

Published on by dgkaye60 Comments

My Sunday Book Review is for a moving children’s book (ages 9 +), Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. I typically don’t read children’s books often, but I do read a lot of historical fiction, and I came across this book while I was looking at two books Robbie Cheadle had written reviews for and talked about these books written for children to help them understand in their terms about the wars and politically incorrect things humans do to humans. I was curious to read such a book to see how an author could write for the young ones to help them understand the tragedy of WWII.

This book was written in 1989, yet has over 10,000 reviews, many of them from recent years, and many from teachers and parents who’ve read this book to their children. This book is also in school libraries.

This is the heartfelt story of Annemarie Johansen, a Danish girl, and her best friend Ellen Rosen during occupied Denmark 1943. Nine year old Annemarie is a fictional character whose story the author based on true stories she learned of from a friend who lived in Copenhagen during the German occupation, and the sacrifices the Danes made to save most of their Jewish population from capture. Beautifully told with many lessons, teaching children about loyalty and compassion. Denmark surrendered to the Germans in 1940 because their country was too small and not a big enough army to defend themselves. It also explains the story about the Danish King, King Christian, who loved his people and rode on his horse, unaided by guardsmen, to greet the people of his city, daily, even through the war – a story that is documented, and was told to the children as a fairytale to keep them inspired and to know their king loved them, despite the takeover of his country. No doubts Hans Christian Anderson was Danish and well ahead of his times with his famous fairytales and plays!

Blurb:

The unforgettable Newbery Medal–winning novel from Lois Lowry. 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.

Through the eyes of ten-year-old Annemarie, 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.

A modern classic of historical fiction, Number the Stars has won generations of fans.

“Readers are taken to the very heart of Annemarie’s experience, and, through her eyes, come to understand the true meaning of bravery.” (School Library Journal)

My 5 Star Review:

In this story, the author expresses events that occurred with such an easy to understand and compassionate style, teaching history through simpler and metaphoric explanations as used to explain to the children what they were seeing and hearing on their streets, and in public anywhere. For example, when the Danes sank their own navy in Copenhagen harbor before the Germans could take them for their own use, the explosions as ships were burned, were loud and lit up the skies, in the book, the parents would tell them they were fireworks to entertain the children. The author has a wonderful way of conveying the scary events in a way that lets them absorb, what lightens the way to teaching.

A well conveyed story with genuine understanding of a child’s mind – example: little Kristi, Annemarie’s five year old sister, is used to seeing German soldiers on every corner in their neighborhoods as Annemarie tells her bestie, Ellen Rosen, reiterating Kristi is only five and that’s how she grew up in five years of occupation. She’s used to that, that’s all she knows. It’s the nine year olds who were born in freedom and watched their world taken away from them. A very clever telling.

This is a timely book still. And I should think everyone, any age above nine could read this and learn.

A beautifully told Afterword is at the back of this book, where the author authenticates the events that took place are all truth from the people who witnessed. She has a light way of writing on some gloomy subjects and does a great job of expressing – gently, heavy events. She authenticates events and enlightens as to what were facts and which were fiction. Yet, her fictional characters represented actual people’s circumstances. When she brings in Peter who worked for the resistance and was close with Annemarie’s family, Peter was fictional, based on a true person she read about that worked for Resistance.

A good and current reminder timely about the fragility of democracy.

The author reiterates the part of the book where it was the Jewish High Holiday, the New Year, and 1943 now, Jews were still allowed to be in public, (which I sure wouldn’t have gone to synagogue with German SS standing on street corners.) And on this holy day,the Rabbi warns the congregation in time to leave home because the Germans had asked the Rabbi for a ‘list’ of members and they were going to be taken and ‘relocated’. The Rabbi found out as a favor from someone in the high up ranks. Most Jews, except the non believers, left that same night. Most Danes took them in, took care of them and eventually, got them off to Sweden. Only weeks after that holy day, almost the whole 7000 population of Danish Jews were eventually smuggled across water by fishermen to Sweden. These are just some of the things we learn about history, in easy to digest stories.

A fantastic historical telling in easy to read comprehension for children 9 and up to help learn about Danish occupation during WWII.

©DGKaye2022