In this “extraordinary family memoir,”* the National Book Award–winning author of The Future Is History reveals the story of her two grandmothers, who defied Fascism and Communism during a time when tyranny reigned.
 
*The New York Times Book Review
In the 1930s, as waves of war and persecution were crashing over Europe, two young Jewish women began separate journeys of survival. Ester...

Describes six years in the life of a daring and resourceful Polish Jewish boy and his family, who survived the Holocaust by using false papers and posing as Catholics.

"Think of it as a game, Jack...Play the game right and you might outlast the Nazis."Caught up in Hitler's Final Solution to annihilate Europe's Jews, fifteen-year-old Jack Mandelbaum is torn from his family and thrown into the nightmarish world of the concentration camps. Here, simple existence is a constant struggle, and Jack must learn to live hour to hour, day to day. Despite intolerable conditions, he resolves not to hate his captors and vows...

"Ruth Gruener was a hidden child during the Holocaust. At the end of the war, she and her parents were overjoyed to be free. But their struggles as displaced people had just begun. In war-ravaged Europe, they waited for paperwork for a chance to come to America. Once they arrived in Brooklyn, they began to build a new life, but spoke little English. Ruth started at a new school and tried to make friends--but continued to fight nightmares and flashbacks...

"A powerful memoir about a Holocaust survivor who was deemed hopeless-and the rehabilitation center that gave him and other teen boys the chance to learn how to live again"--