Kathy Kacer

Anna and her family have only one hope left to escape certain doom. It’s 1936 and life is becoming dangerous for the Jews of Krakow. As incidents of violence and persecution increase day by day, Anna begs her father to leave Poland, but he insists it’s impossible. How could he give up his position as an acclaimed clarinetist in the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra? When Anna and her father barely escape from a group of violent thugs, it becomes clear that the family must leave. But how? There seems to be only one possibility. Bronislaw Huberman, a world-renowned violinist, is auditioning Jewish musicians for a new orchestra in Palestine. If accepted, they and their families will receive exit visas. Anna and her grandmother boldly write to Huberman asking him to give Anna’s father an audition, but will that be enough to save them? This poignant story is based on real events in pre-war Poland and Palestine. After saving 700 Jews and their families, Huberman went on to establish what later became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Against an ominous background of the impending Holocaust in Europe and the first Arab-Israeli war, The Sound of Freedom still manages to remind the reader of the goodness in the world.

The true story of nineteen-year-old Jordana Lebowitz's time at the trial of Oskar Groening, known as the "bookkeeper of Auschwitz", a man charged with being complicit in the deaths of more than 300,000 Jews. A granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Jordana was still not prepared for what she would see and hear. Listening to Groening's testimony and to the Holocaust survivors who came to testify against him, Jordana felt the weight of being witness to history - a history that we need to remember now more than ever.

When eight-year-old Irene is removed from her First Nations family to live in a residential school she is confused, frightened, and terribly homesick. She tries to remember who she is and where she came from, despite the efforts of the nuns who are in charge at the school and who tell her that she is not to use her own name but instead use the number they have assigned to her. When she goes home for summer holidays, Irene's parents decide never to send her and her brothers away again. But where will they hide? And what will happen when her parents disobey the law? Based on the life of co-author Jenny Kay Dupuis' grandmother, I Am Not a Number is a hugely necessary book that brings a terrible part of Canada's history to light in a way that children can learn from and relate to.

Magic can be found in the darkest of places... It is the time of the Second World War, and Werner is a boy alone in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Separated from his family, he doesn't have a friend in the world. He shares his bunk with a quiet man named Herr Levin, who seems too gentle for this terrible place. One night Werner is woken by the sound of prison guards yelling. But it's not Werner they want, it's Herr Levin. "Do your magic " they order him. Magic? In Auschwitz? Werner never expected to meet a magician in such a sad and frightening place. Nor did he expect that his life could be changed, not just by Herr Levin's gift of magic, but by his gifts of hope and friendship. Includes a special section, with photographs, about the real-life Werner and the Great Nivelli.

For Laura's Bat Mitzvah, her rabbi gives her the journal of Sara Gittler, a Holocaust prisoner who never got to celebrate her coming of age. Laura researches Sara's life and shares her Bat Mitzvah with her "twin" at the ceremony.

The remarkable true story of a young girl named Edith and the French village of Moissac that helped her and many other children during the Holocaust. The town's mayor and citizens concealed the presence of hundreds of Jewish children who lived in a safe house, risking their own safety by hiding the children from the Nazis in plain site, saving them from being captured and detained and most certainly saving their lives.

It's already a dangerous time for thirteen-year-old Clara and her family. They have just been imprisoned in Terezin (Terezinstadt), a ghetto in a medieval town near Prague--which was built to show the world how "well" the Nazis were treating Jews during World War II.