In this graphic novel-style book six people recount their experiences of the Holocaust during World War II. As Jews, they were each persecuted by the Nazi regime, even though they were only children at the time. They retell their stories here: of what it was like to be in Nazi-occupied countries, of being in hiding, of escape or internment, and of what happened next.

Reading age: 9-11

When Hetty’s family move to Martin Street near Portobello bridge in Dublin, they’re not sure of their welcome. And next door, Ben’s family are not sure about their new Jewish neighbours: it’s The Emergency and they are suspicious of strangers. But for Ben, the chance to earn a few pence is too great and secretly he does odd jobs for them. And there’s a bigger secret: Renata, a World War Two refugee, is on the run in the city. Hetty is determined to rescue her. The web of secrets begins to unravel and there are lives at risk. Can Hetty and Ben overcome their differences and save Renata, or are they just meddling in things they know too little about?

Reading age: 10+

Based on a true story, this book follows Jewish children who travel to the Lake District in the U.K. directly after being freed from a concentration camp.

Reading age: 10-13

In 1944, Gerrit Bolkestein, a member of the Dutch government in exile, announced in a radio broadcast from London that after the war he hoped to collect eyewitness accounts of the suffering of the Dutch people under the German occupation, which could be made available to the public. As an example, he specifically mentioned letters and diaries. The broadcast was heard by a young Jewish girl called Anne Frank, who was hiding with her family and friends in a secret annexe in Amsterdam. She had been keeping a diary of her experiences since they first went into hiding in 1942.

Anne thinks this is a brilliant idea and writes “Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a novel about the Secret Annexe!”In May 1944, the idea of this novel takes on serious form: “At long last after a great deal of reflection I have started my Achterhuis (Secret Annexe), in my head it is as good as finished, although it won’t go as quickly as that, if it ever comes off at all”.

The diary of Anne Frank was found in the Secret Annexe after the family was arrested and was kept carefully by Miep Gies, one of the people who helped the family. Miep handed the diary back to Otto Frank, together with Anne’s notebooks and loose sheets of paper, when he returned to Amsterdam.

The diary continues to be read by millions of people all over the world.

Reading age: 11+

In December 1938, a young Englishman canceled a ski vacation and went instead to Prague to help the hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Nazis who were crowded into the city. Setting up a makeshift headquarters in his hotel room, Nicholas Winton took names and photographs from parents desperate to get their children out of danger. He raised money, found foster families in England, arranged travel and visas, and, when necessary, bribed officials and forged documents. In the frantic spring and summer of 1939, as the Nazi shadow fell over Europe, he organised the transportation of almost 700 children to safety. Then, when the war began and no more children could be rescued, he put away his records and told no one. It was only fifty years later that a chance discovery and a famous television appearance brought Winton’s actions to light.

Reading age: 9+

Ben­no, a personable cat, lives in Berlin, in the Mitte neigh­bor­hood sur­round­ing the majes­tic Neue Syn­a­gogue on Oranien­burg­er Strasse where Jew­ish and non-Jew­ish fam­i­lies live togeth­er. He is a wel­come guest wher­ev­er he goes but his rou­tine is dis­rupt­ed with the events of Kristall­nacht. When it is over, the lives of his Jew­ish friends are for­ev­er altered and his lit­tle com­mu­ni­ty dis­rupt­ed: ​“Rosen­strasse was still a busy street, but the peo­ple were no longer friend­ly.”

Reading age: 8-10

Due to a miss­ing tick­et, six­teen-year-old Hedy has been sep­a­rat­ed from her fam­i­ly as they attempt to escape the Nazi infil­tra­tion into Hun­gary. Illus­tra­tions show­ing droop­ing pos­tures and anx­ious facial expres­sions depict the inse­cu­ri­ty of a young girl who knows her fam­i­ly must leave imme­di­ate­ly rather than wait for a full com­ple­ment of tick­ets; oth­er­wise it may be too late. Although Hedy tells her sto­ry in mat­ter-of-fact lan­guage, the illus­tra­tions con­vey her anx­i­ety and fear, show­ing a teenag­er trav­el­ing alone dur­ing a dan­ger­ous time. The inclu­sion of fam­i­ly pho­tographs and use of con­ver­sa­tion­al lan­guage com­mu­ni­cate to the read­er the ter­ror and fright of this young Jew­ish girl, doing her best to main­tain her com­po­sure and her judg­ment as she winds her way toward neu­tral Por­tu­gal. There, she final­ly meets her wor­ried fam­i­ly in time to board a boat to America.

Reading age: 10+

When Michael was growing up, stories often hung in the air about his great-uncles: one was a clock-mender and the other a dentist. They were there before the war, his dad would say, and weren’t after. Over many years, Michael tried to find out exactly what happened: he interviewed family members, scoured the internet, pored over books and traveled to America and France. The story he uncovered was one of terrible persecution – and it has inspired his poetry for years since. Here, poems old and new are balanced against an immensely readable narrative; both an extraordinary account and a powerful tool for talking to children about the Holocaust.

Reading age: 10+

A conversation between a grandfather and his granddaughter regarding the number tattooed on the man’s arm leads the man to explain how he received it in a Nazi concentration camp. The text is accompanied by photographs of the granddaughter and grandfather in addition to photographs from World War II.

Reading age: 7-10

As resistance workers smuggle food into the Warsaw ghetto, another group of workers, including one brave young girl, enlist the help of the neighbourhood cats to distract the Gestapo and their dogs from discovering the resistance work.

Reading age: 8-12

In Octo­ber 1940, Aube and her par­ents find refuge from the Nazis in a vil­la out­side of Paris. There she meets magi­cian Var­i­an Fry and his assis­tant, Dan­ny Bénédite. Even in hid­ing, the group, which includes painter Marc Cha­gall, find ways to enter­tain them­selves with art and music. Peo­ple come and go as the vil­la serves as a tem­po­rary safe haven. But in Decem­ber, police raid the vil­la and take all the men away. Aube’s father is released a week lat­er, but the group knows they must leave the vil­la for­ev­er. By the time Aube and her par­ents leave in Feb­ru­ary 1941, she holds her own muse­um of draw­ings by famous artists in her bag.

Reading age: 8-10

In a Pol­ish town ​“hung on the edge of despair” lives the Wren, a poor old man with a beau­ti­ful voice and a sole pos­session, his beloved hur­dy-gur­dy. When the Nazis force the peo­ple to give up their musi­cal instru­ments, the Wren defies the order by play­ing one last song before being dragged away to his demise. That night the Spar­row, the Wren’s stu­dent sneaks through the vil­lage and recov­ers the instru­ment, hid­ing it behind the boil­er of her apart­ment build­ing. Years lat­er, after the end of the war, a boy dis­cov­ers the hur­dy-gur­dy with a let­ter from the Wren tucked inside. ​“Find­er, if you are not the Spar­row, know that once a young girl risked her life for an old man who lived…in the key of despair, but the octave of truth.” As the young boy grows into a man, he keeps the instru­ment safe through­out his trav­els, vow­ing to leave his own let­ter in it “…so that no one will ever for­get.”

Reading age: 8-11

When her mother is killed by the Gestapo, a Jewish girl named Lola is sent into hiding. At first, Lola secretly lives in the home of a Ukrainian woman. But when someone threatens to expose her to the Nazis, Lola must flee again, this time hiding with another family in a dirt hole beneath a barn. Struggling against cold and hunger, the hidden family lives under the constant threat of discovery. Lola has lost everything - her home and her family. All she has left is one article of clothing, a dress lovingly embroidered by her mother. Will Lola ever find safety - or freedom?

Reading age: 10-12

As a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland, Yanek Gruener is at the mercy of the Nazis who have taken over. Everything he has, and everyone he loves, have been snatched brutally from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner, his arm tattooed with the words PRISONER B-3087. He is forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another, as World War II rages all around him. He encounters evil he could have never imagined, but also sees surprising glimpses of hope amid the horror. He just barely escapes death, only to confront it again seconds later. Can Yanek make it through the terror without losing his hope, his will, and, most of all, his sense of who he really is inside?

Reading age: 12-15

Maria Andzelm was a Catholic teenager whose family took in two Jewish men in Nazi-occupied Poland and hid them under their barn floor. She brought them food and books, but they were caught and paid a terrible price. Maria's stirring story is one of five featured in this important book of young people putting their lives on the line for others.

Reading age: 12+

He's a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Runt. Happy. Fast. Filthy son of Abraham. He's a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He's a boy who steals food for himself and the other orphans. He's a boy who believes in bread, and mothers, and angels. He's a boy who wants to be a Nazi some day, with tall shiny jackboots and a gleaming Eagle hat of his own. Until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind. And when the trains come to empty the Jews from the ghetto of the damned, he's a boy who realizes it's safest of all to be nobody.

Reading age: 14-18

Told in diary for­mat, this title traces the heart wrench­ing fate of Peter van Pels and his par­ents, who join the Frank fam­i­ly in hid­ing in an Ams­ter­dam attic on July 13, 1942, and were forced to stay there for two years. Peter feels help­less that he is con­fined to such cramped cor­ri­dors, espe­cial­ly with know-it-all Anne, and longs to be on the out­side fight­ing the Nazis. Author Dog­ar skill­ful­ly ​“reimag­ines” the rela­tion­ships between the two fam­i­lies, and here is where her cre­ativ­i­ty takes full force; while stay­ing true to the well known his­tor­i­cal facts high­light­ed in Anne’s famous diary, she retells the account of the Annex through Peter’s eyes.

Reading age: 14+

Dinah is a bored Jew­ish girl liv­ing in the repressed city of Utopia in the imag­ined Amer­i­ca of 2020. She voic­es her bore­dom to her com­put­er and is sent on a life-chang­ing jour­ney to 1943, where she joins her dis­tant cousin Gon­da and two friends in There­sien­stadt. Though their sur­vival depends on com­pli­ance with the Nazis, the teenagers secret­ly rebel against the guards by find­ing pup­pets that had been con­fis­cat­ed. They plan to use the pup­pets to reveal the truth to Red Cross inspec­tors, but when they are dis­cov­ered the two boys are sent away, pre­sum­ably to Auschwitz. Dinah and Gon­da remain in Thereisen­stadt until the end of the war when they are res­cued. The book ends with Gon­da return­ing to fam­i­ly in Prague, while Dinah returns to the future. As she ​“flies” home, Dinah recounts the lessons she was taught: ​“I had been giv­en the chance to grow up, even though at great cost…I had dis­cov­ered the nature of love, of death and how to make some­thing out of noth­ing. I final­ly real­ized I had learned that only free­dom and kind­ness mat­tered…”.

Reading age: 13-17

Amy Beck­er’s moth­er holds a dark secret. In fact, her whole past is a secret. All Amy knows is that her moth­er came from Ger­many, and that her moth­er does­n’t love her. That icy voice. Those rigid rules of how to eat, dress, walk, talk, think. And no mat­ter what Amy does, no mat­ter how much she fol­lows the rules, she just can’t earn her moth­er’s love. But every­thing changes that sum­mer of 1963, when 14-year-old Amy is sent to Camp Takawan­da for Girls. Takawan­da, where all the rules get bro­ken. Takawan­da, where mean girls prac­tice bul­ly­ing as if it were a sport. Takawan­da, where Amy’s cousin unveils the truth about what Amy’s moth­er lost on Kristall­nacht. Amy’s dis­cov­ery embold­ens her to open the Pan­do­ra’s box of her moth­er’s secrets, set­ting in motion a trag­ic event that changes Amy and her fam­i­ly for­ev­er.

Reading age: 13+

When Felix dis­cov­ers a whole car­rot in his bowl of soup, he is con­vinced it is a sign that his par­ents, Jew­ish book­sellers, are com­ing for him. It is 1942, and for three years and eight months Felix has lived a secret life in the Catholic orphan­age where they hoped he would be safe. But when Moth­er Min­ka sad­ly tells Felix that the car­rot is not a sign from his par­ents and they are not com­ing for him, he does not believe her. He decides he has to warn them that Nazis are burn­ing Jew­ish books. Ear­ly the next morn­ing, he slips out through the main gate and begins to fol­low the riv­er home.. On his har­row­ing jour­ney, Felix res­cues Zel­da, an orphaned six-year- old, and the two of them, along with oth­er chil­dren, are shel­tered briefly by a Jew­ish den­tist who treats high-rank­ing Nazis. Inevitably, though, they all are locked into a box­car and know they are on their way to a death camp. When a hole is acci­den­tal­ly punched through some rot­ted boards, they real­ize they have a chance to escape. Mirac­u­lous­ly, Felix and Zel­da sur­vive their jump from the mov­ing train. Lying in a field some­where in Poland, Felix doesn’t know what the rest of his sto­ry will be — ​“It could end in a few min­utes, or tomor­row, or next year…,” but how­ev­er it turns out, he believes he has been lucky — more than once.

Reading age: 12+

When the orphan­age that Sara has lived in since child­hood burns to the ground, Sara is already eigh­teen years old and poised to leave. With the mon­ey she’s saved and the memen­tos she’s been giv­en, she trav­els to Ger­many to explore the Jew­ish her­itage she has only just learned she belongs to. It turns out that her moth­er sur­vived a Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camp, only to die in a DP camp, giv­ing birth to her. But Sara does reunite with her grand­fa­ther, find a roman­tic inter­est, and start to under­stand both the his­to­ry of the Holo­caust and the pow­er of for­give­ness.

Reading age: 12-15

In 1939, thir­teen-year-old Paula Beck­er is a viva­cious girl grow­ing up in a small Ger­man town with­in a lov­ing fam­i­ly. She enjoys cook­ing with her mom, play­ing with her younger sis­ter, and teas­ing her dog. Short­ly after her birth, her moth­er was exposed to rubel­la and as a result, Paula has become deaf. Deter­mined to fit in, Paula has devised her own method of hand sig­nals which her neigh­bors and friends have grown accus­tomed to and she is treat­ed like every­one else. When the Nazi gov­ern­ment ini­ti­ates Action T4, a pro­gram which dic­tates that doc­tors euth­a­nize the men­tal­ly ill and the dis­abled, Paula real­izes she is marked by her impair­ment and fears for her life. With the help of Father Josef, she is tak­en to the coun­try and hid­den in the home of a retired school teacher who teach­es Paula how to sign. When the Gestapo invades the farm, Paula is forced to flee again and is hid­den in a home­less shel­ter of a church where she becomes friends with a young Gyp­sy boy, who becomes her pro­tec­tor. Told in lyri­cal, free verse, this is a pow­er­ful and mov­ing account of one young girl’s deter­mi­na­tion to sur­vive dur­ing the hor­rif­ic Nazi regime in Ger­many.

Reading age: 12+

Anna’s father is wanted by the Nazis – dead or alive – and one day he disappears. Then she and her brother Max are rushed by their mother, in alarming secrecy, away from everything they knew – home and schoolmates and well-loved toys – right out of Germany.

Reading age: 10+

In March 2000, a suitcase arrived at a children’s Holocaust Education Centre in Tokyo. It belonged to an orphan girl called Hana Brady. Everyone was desperate to discover the story of Hana – who was she? What had happened to her? This is her true story.

Reading age: 10+

This is the story of one of history’s most dramatic rescues – smuggling Denmark’s Jewish population across the water to Sweden, and safety. Many of the characters are based on the author’s own family, including her father, Bamse, and the book was inspired by the stories he told to her.

Reading age: 10+

Set in wartime France, this touching novel tells the story of Marcel and his brothers Rene and Pierre, who befriend a German soldier during the life-changing summer of 1940. Then Uncle Anton brings a woman and her young daughter to stay and suddenly everything changes, as the threat of the German army looms closer.

Reading age: 10+

A fictional story inspired by the life of Odette Meyer, a young Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied Paris, and the many secrets she learns to keep. Odette knows that her Jewish identity must be hidden and that she must never tell anyone about her mother’s resistance activities. She is smuggled into the French countryside where she learns quickly how to hide her Jewish identity. When the war ends, can Odette return to her old life?

Reading age: 10+

Ten-year old Jonas Albers lives in Paris with his parents and younger sister Nadia, who is deaf. While he is staying with friends (the Carrado family working in the circus), his family are eventually deported to the East. It is no longer safe for Jonas to stay with his circus friends and he is smuggled into the Professor’s house. While in hiding Jonas keeps a diary about his experiences.

Reading age: 10+

An account of one child’s survival during the Holocaust as No. 289 on Schindler’s list. Born Leib Lejzon, in Krakow, Leon was only 10 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and his family was forced to relocate to the ghetto. At thirteen he and his other family members found refuge at Oskar Schindler’s Enamel factory. He was so small Schindler called him ‘Little Leyson’ and he had to stand on a wooden box to operate the factory’s machinery.

Reading age: 11+

Karl and his sister Rosa, young Jews who escape the Nazi terror on a Kindertransport, are forced to leave their family behind. After frightening experiences and a harrowing journey, they find a haven at a refugee farm at Millisle, County Down, in Northern Ireland. The devastating Belfast Blitz of 1941 provides the climax to this story, which is based on true events.

Reading age: 11+

Rose Blanche, (Weiße Rose or White Rose), was the name of a group of young German citizens who, at their peril, protested against the war. Rose is also the little girl in this picture book, who watches as the streets of her small German town fill with soldiers. When she discovers a place where children are imprisoned, staring hungrily from behind an electric barbed wire fence, she starts bringing them food. An incredibly powerful visual image of the horrors of the Holocaust.

Reading age: 10+

The story of Mary Elmes, the Irish woman who saved the lives of hundreds of children during the Second World War. From her birth in Cork in 1908 to her work in refugee and prisoner-of-war camps and how she helped to save hundreds of children from the Nazis. When Germany invaded France in 1940 the ordinary people and the children suffered hardship, fear and deprivation. People were hungry. 'Miss Mary' delivered sacks of chickpeas, lentils and rice to Francine's school and Francine and some of her friends wrote letters to thank her. But that was not all that 'Miss Mary' did to help the children. She went on to work with her colleagues, organising safe places for the children to stay and to save hundreds of them from being sent to concentration camps by the Nazis.

Reading age: 9-11

It is 1942. Fifteen-year-old Jack Mandelbaum has just arrived at a Nazi concentration Camp. Torn from his family, he now faces disease, starvation and the insane brutality of the Holocaust. The harrowing true story...as told by Jack himself.

Reading age: 12+

The true story of the Kindertransport children who were rescued from Nazi Germany and brought to England to start a new life. It has been specially adapted for children by Barry Turner from his highly acclaimed book, And the Policeman Smiled.

Reading age: 12+

Set in 1930s Berlin, fourteen-year-old Karl Stern never thought of himself as a Jew, his family are not religious and he has never been to a synagogue. Nonetheless, he is relentlessly bullied, beaten and humiliated at school by his classmates because of his ‘religion’. When Max Schmeling, champion boxer and German national hero, makes a deal with Karl’sfather to give Karl boxing lessons, he can now learn to protect himself from his tormentors. Inspired by the true story of German heavyweight champion Max Schmeling’s experiences following Kristallnacht.

Reading age: 12+

Fifteen-year-old Lilo is from a Sinti family living in Vienna during World War II. One day her family is picked up by the police as part of a policy to ‘clean up the Gypsy plague’. However, (real life) famous German film director, Leni Riefenstahl chooses Lilo to work as a film extra on a new movie she is making in Spain. She treats Lilo and the other Roma extras appallingly. Lilo takes her life into her own hands and attempts to escape the fate of the Roma and Sinti people during the War.

Reading age: 12+

Sheltering from the Nazis in a hidden cave during the last days of the Second World War, Saul listens with his family as Claude passes on the stories of the Golem of Prague, a man made of mud who protected Prague’s Jews in the sixteenth century. But in the last days of the war, there’s no protection for the Jews hiding from their enemies. His parents are killed by retreating soldiers and Saul is utterly alone in the world. But one person from the cave remains.

Reading age: 13+

Set in Amsterdam 1943, Hanneke is a young woman who spends her time finding and delivering black market goods to her many clients. This is very dangerous work but feels like a small act of rebellion against the Nazis. She is also grieving the death of her boyfriend killed on the Dutch front lines during the German invasion. One day a client asks Hanneke if she can help locate a missing Jewish teenager who has disappeared without a trace from a secret hiding place? Hanneke is soon drawn into the mystery of what happened to the young Jewish girl who vanished.

Reading age: 14+

Renia Spiegel was born in 1924 to an upper-middle class Jewish family living in southeastern Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. At the start of 1939 Renia began a diary. “I just want a friend. I want somebody to talk to about my everyday worries and joys. Somebody who would feel what I feel, who would believe me, who would never reveal my secrets. A human being can never be such a friend and that’s why I have decided to look for a confidant in the form of a diary.” And so begins an extraordinary document of an adolescent girl’s hopes and dreams. By the fall of 1939, Renia and her younger sister Elizabeth (née Ariana) were staying with their grandparents in Przemysl, a city in the south, just as the German and Soviet armies invaded Poland. Cut off from their mother, who was in Warsaw, Renia and her family were plunged into war.

As a fourteen-year-old Jewish boy living in Prague in the early 1940s, Petr Ginz dutifully kept a diary that captured the increasingly precarious texture of daily life. Petr was killed in a gas chamber at Auschwitz at the age of sixteen, and his diaries—recently discovered in a Prague attic under extraordinary circumstances—now read as the prescient eyewitness account of a meticulous observer. Petr was a young prodigy—a budding artist and writer whose paintings, drawings, and writings reflect his insatiable appetite for learning and experience. The diary ends with Petr’s own summons to Theresienstadt, where he would become the driving force behind the secret newspaper Vedem (“We Lead”), and where he would continue to draw, paint, write, and read, furiously educating himself for a future he would never see. Fortunately, Petr’s voice lives on in his diary, as fresh, startling, and significant.

Reading age: 13+