Yellow Star is another heartwrenching tale of an oppressed people overcoming adversity. In this first-person account, a woman named Sylvia recounts her childhood as a Jew growing up in Poland during the second World War. Sylvia is the name she took on as an American, whereas her birth name was Syvia. Young Syvia and her mother, father, and sister, Dora, are forced to leave their home and relocate in Lodz, Poland, a Jewish internment camp when Syvia is five years old. For the next five years, Syvia remained in hiding while her parents and sister worked, while narrowly escaping the clutches of Nazi soldiers who were searching for children. Many of the Jewish children were sent to extermination camps under the guise of being taken care of by the Nazi government. Due to the tireless efforts of her parents and only sister, Dora lives to see the rescue of her camp by the Russians, and her family is freed. The author of this book is Syvia's niece, and she recorded her aunt's stories from telephone conversations and put them into a book.I enjoyed this story because I consider it a primary source of history. These words are straight from the mouth of someone who lived through one of the most horrifying times in the modern age, and they are a reminder to us of how evil people really can be. I suggest teachers be mindful of the content and weight of this book before they assign it in their classrooms. Seventh and eighth grades would be my ideal age suggestion, but one could easily extend that range into high school. I definitely would not recommend this for any child under the seventh grade, simply because students need a concrete understanding of the events surrounding this time period, as well as the maturity that comes with older age. Overall, this book was a somber account of a fairly recent occurrance, and it paints a picture of bleak optimism in a terrifying time.
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