Readers will encounter some widely recognized figures in this remembrance, such as Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel, but Roland draws from many decades of recorded testimonials, offering space for a chorus of less well-known voices. Paraphrasing and utilizing short quotes, he chronicles thematically the rising tide of Nazi repression, the brutal and terrifying roundups, life and death in the thousands of European camps, and heroic resisters like 15-year-old Warsaw Ghetto activist Aliza Vitis-Shomron and 16-year-old Sophie Scholl of the largely non-Jewish White Rose group. In the final chapter, the author offers glimpses of the Holocaust’s enduring effects on Jewish survivors. Tibor “Ted” Rubin spent two years as a teen in Mauthausen, followed several years later by 30 months as a prisoner of war in North Korea while serving in the U.S. Army; he enlisted after emigrating as an act of gratitude to the American soldiers who liberated him. Eva Kor, who was in Auschwitz with her twin sister (they were subjected to Joseph Mengele’s horrific medical experiments), controversially tendered a public statement of forgiveness for her ordeals. The book makes no mention of teenage Holocaust victims who were targeted for their sexuality, disability, or Romani ethnicity. Numerous historical photographs accentuate the sobering content.
