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Title: The Number on My Grandfather's Arm by David A. Adler, Rose Eichenbaum ISBN: 0807403288 Publisher: Union of American Hebrew Congregations Pub. Date: October, 1987 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4
Rating: 4
Summary: An important, personal story
Comment: In "The Number on My Grandfather's Arm" a young girl tells the story of her grandfather. He's a quiet, thoughtful man, and obviously kind, but he has the strange habit of always wearing a long sleeved shirt, even during the heat of the summer.
One night when her parents go out for the evening and grandpa is washing up the dishes, the girl notices a large set of numbers tattooed on his forearm. When she asks him what they are, he quickly covers the numbers up. "It's time you told her", the girl's mother says, coming into the kitchen.
Grandpa leads her to the living room and carefully begins to tell her the story of where those numbers came from. He explains about Hitler: "he was a wild man. He waved his arms and shouted about the Jews. And, when he shouted, thousands of people shouted, too." He tells her how the Jews were beaten, sometimes killed, forced to wear yellow stars, and-- most monstrous of all-- how they were shipped off to concentration camps and labled as "enemies of the state." With tears in his eyes, he tells her how the Jews were often tortured, beaten or killed. "'I was one of the lucky ones,' Grandpa said. 'I survived.'" In the end, the little girl tells her grandfather that it is the Nazis who should be ashamed of what happened, not him, and he re-rolls his sleeves up to go back and take care of those dinner dishes.
"The Number on My Grandfather's Arm" is a powerful story, made all the more so because it is illustrated with B&W photographs not only of the girl and her grandfather, but of Hitler and of the persecuted Jews. One very powerful photo is of a disheveled, clearly hungry man with his fingers laced through a chain-link fence and a yellow star sewn to his jacket. For an adult, it is a haunting image and for a child I imagine it would provoke many questions.
The book is short and sparsely illustrated, but will undoubtedly pose many questions for the young reader than it will answer, chief among them "how did this happen?" (a question a good many scholars and academics are STILL asking today). Mr. Adler does not answer this Big Question for us, presumably leaving it up to the parents/families of the reader to explain in their own way man's cruelty to other men and how an atrocity like the Holocaust could happen in the first place. The history of the persecution of the Jews and WWII is very short and simplified in this short book, but this is to be expected considering that the book is written for very young children.
If I have any criticism about the book it is with the illustrations. For a work of this magnitude-- that is, one that will inevitably ask more questions than it answers and is clearly about the Big Issues-- I would have expected more photographs and for them to be in color. The story, while well written, seems much more sparse and almost dated by the use of the B&W photos. Still, it's an important work and one that is highly recommended for sparking discussion about this terrible and pivotal period in world history.
Rating: 4
Summary: Another winner by David Adler
Comment: This is a 27-page picture book. A grandfather explains tohisgranddaughter how he received the tattooed number on his arm duringhis internment at Auschwitz. True story of a Polish holocaust survivor. Brief but good description of the holocaust and treatment of the Jews. Photographs illustrate this book, some from WWII.
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Title: Terrible Things: An Allegory of the Holocaust by Eve Bunting, Stephen Gammell ISBN: 0827603258 Publisher: Jewish Publication Society Pub. Date: December, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Lily Cupboard by Shulamith Levey Oppenheim, Ronald Himler ISBN: 0064433935 Publisher: HarperTrophy Pub. Date: March, 1995 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp 1942-1944 by Hana Volavkova ISBN: 0805210156 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: March, 1994 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
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Title: One Yellow Daffodil: A Hanukkah Story by David A. Adler, Lloyd Bloom ISBN: 0152020942 Publisher: Voyager Books Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $6.00 |
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Title: The Children We Remember by Chana Byers Abells ISBN: 0688063713 Publisher: Greenwillow Pub. Date: August, 1986 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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