I Am a Star, Child of the Holocaust by Inge Auerbacher
Of all the books about the holocaust that I’ve read, I’m not sure if I’d actually recommend I Am a Star, Child of the Holocaust by Inge Auerbacher. Which to my knowledge might be the first time I’ve not raved about a book dealing with the Holocaust. I don’t want to discount Auerbacher’s story. No, I would never dream of doing so. Every Holocaust story needs to be told and I personally feel an obligation to read these stories. The thing is, I’m not 100% sure why I even feel this way. The story is fascinating, and cruel. But the narrative is told in such a factual manner that I don’t think I connected emotionally with Auerbacher. Which is odd. The Holocaust is the basis for many stories – all emotionally charged, so it felt odd to me that I felt it was missing.
I Am a Star is the juvenile non-fiction account of Inge Auerbacher, who at the age of seven in 1942 was sent with her parents to a concentration camp. She spend her next three birthdays there.
The book begins,
Of fifteen thousand children imprisoned in the Eterazin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia between 1941 and 1945, about one hundred survived. I am one of them. At least one a nd a half million children were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. The reason most of those children died is that they were Jewish.
Why should one remember these dreadful events? The death of one innocent child is a catastrophe; the loss of such numbers in unimaginable. Their silent voices must be heard today. This is why I feel compelled to trace the historical events that made this great evil possible and to tell my own story.
Auerbacher’s story is horrifying and she does give a really good background about the history of the Holocaust so that a child who knows nothing about World War II would learn and understand what happened. The question that will never be answered though is why? We know what happened, but we will never truly understand why.
Interspered between the text is a collection of poems written by Auerbacher. Or I assume that they were written by Auerbacher – there was never really an acknowledgement or explanation of the poems – which is partly why I found the format of I Am a Star a bit disconcerting. They seemed randomly placed throughout the book. They did relate to the text though, so I am assuming they were written by Auerbacher. It’s almost as though the book wanted to be a non-fiction narrative written in verse and also written formally. I liked both, but maybe they needed to be placed into the book a bit better.
I enjoyed the photos that accompanied the text. I always enjoy photos in memoirs, and this was no exception. I like to visualize what’s going on. There were a fair number of illustrations. Again, I’m not sure if these were Auerbacher’s or not.
I really liked I Am a Star and learning about Auerbacher’s story. If I could recommend only one non-fiction book to read about a child in the Holocaust though, this one would probably not be it. I just didn’t feel that gut-wrenching horror that I usually feel when I read books about the Holocaust. I felt removed from the story. And to tell you the truth, I imagine that the author had to remove herself from her own story just to get past the emotion of bringing it all back to the forefront of her memory.
Overall, I’m glad I read it but it’s not on the best Holocaust memoirs that I’ve read. I’d recommend something along the lines of I Have Lived a Thousand Years by Livia Button Jackson at about the same reading level. But don’t discount I Am a Star. Each memoir written about the Holocaust should be valued and their stories heard. We are losing the survivors to old age, pretty soon we will have nobody left and only their words will be left behind.
Links of interest: Inge Auerbacher website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Memoir for ages 9-12.
Publisher: Puffin. February 1, 1993
Paperback, 96 pages. ISBN: 0140364013
I Am a Star, Child of the Holocaust is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.
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Tags: A-D Author, female author, Holocaust, I-L Title, Non-Fiction, war, World War II
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I haven’t read this, but I think you’re spot on, Natasha: I imagine you’d have to distance yourself from those horrors. At the same time, I imagine there would be a strong compulsion to write about them for many reasons. I agree, though, it’s critical these stories be told and recorded.
on September 22nd, 2009 at 2:39 pmThese stories are so important, yes.
on September 22nd, 2009 at 3:13 pmHi Natasha,
I really like the honesty of this review. As I was reading the first paragraph I thought to myself “the author has probably spent years trying to kill the emotions about her experience” then I got farther down and found you saying the same thing. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for someone to write their personal experiences of the Holocaust.
My Grandmother, Grandfather & Great-Aunt were smuggled out from a Ghetto in Hungary as teenagers to the US without their family at the beginning of the Holocaust. My Grandparents both died before I was born and my great-aunt would not talk about it so I do not know much of their experience. I only know that it was on that journey that my grandparents met and none of my family would be here were it not for someone willing to take the risk.
I am ashamed to say that I have not read any books about the Holocaust or written by a survivor since I was a kid because of the extreme emotional response I have to the stories.
Thank you for reading them and reviewing them. Your comment in this post about their stories deserving to be heard made me decide that I should go ahead and read these stories I have been afraid of for so many years because nothing I experience in reading them could ever come close to what they lived through and their stories do deserve to be heard, lest people begin to forget. I have an ARC here that I need to read this week (Fiction) from the perspective of an American reporter in EU in the time before the US became involved that I but have been putting off reading. I’m going to start it and go from there.
on September 22nd, 2009 at 3:44 pmThank you.
Love your last sentence. People die every day but many have truly remarkable stories they still need to tell
on September 23rd, 2009 at 8:43 pmI just read the comment you made on Twitter about the response that you received from the author, which led me to read you review of the book. I often wonder how it is that adults can review children or YA books accurately when your expectations, as an adult are so different from a child’s expectation of a book.
on October 22nd, 2009 at 10:57 amYou comment in your review “I just didn’t feel that gut-wrenching horror that I usually feel when I read books about the Holocaust.” But should a children’s book about the Holocaust contain gut-wrenching horror? The Holocaust books I read as a kid were sad but they didn’t go into the kind of details that books for adults do, and I don’t think they should.
Simcha – In this case, I didn’t feel an emotional connection with the author, as though she has removed herself from the story and is telling it from a distance. The book was very factual. Kids will learn a lot about the Holocaust from reading this book. But I believe that those facts need a strong emotional base to draw the reader in. I also believe that kids do need to believe that this happened to REAL people who had REAL emotions. I think that a book can still deliver an emotional response without all the gory details that might be present in an adults book. There was just something missing . . . But like I said, the book is very important and should not to be discounted. But it’s probably not the first one that I would reach for when turning to a child to teach them about the Holocaust.
on October 22nd, 2009 at 12:54 pmWe posted your review on War Through the Generations.
on December 27th, 2009 at 9:42 pmi read this for literature circles in school, i chose this book because it was short and i thought it was an easy A. but it turned out to be a good book
on April 28th, 2010 at 5:24 pmYep,
on November 9th, 2010 at 4:18 pmI agree with all of you guyzzz…………………………………………………………………………..
I LOVED THIS BOOK AND I THINK THAT IT REALLY INSPIRED ME TO READ MORE OF HER BOOKS!