I Survived the Nazi Invasion, 1944

I Survived the Nazi Invasion, 1944 introduces young readers to the Holocaust, a dark time in history when the Nazi regime persecuted and murdered millions of Jews and other marginalized groups. Through the story, the novel fosters awareness and empathy about the impact of hatred and bigotry.

The novel is set during World War II, specifically in Nazi-occupied Poland. After the Nazi invasion in 1939, nearly 3.5 million Polish Jews were confined to ghettos. Max and Zena’s story highlights the harsh realities faced by Jewish families living in ghettos, described as filthy and prison-like, with crumbling buildings surrounded by barbed wire. This imagery reflects the hopelessness and suffering felt by the Jewish people confined within these spaces.

In 1942, the Nazis’ plans escalated to what they called the “Final Solution”: a systematic plan for the genocide of all Jews. They deported millions from ghettos to concentration and extermination camps by train, where the vast majority were killed. In the novel, Max’s father explains that he was on one of these trains but managed to escape, only to return and find that the entire ghetto had been deported. Out of Poland’s large prewar Jewish population, only an estimated 40,000—120,000 survived the war (Lukas, Richard C. Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust. University Press of Kentucky, 1989)

Despite these horrors, I Survived the Nazi Invasion, 1944 also explores the resilience and resistance among Jewish communities. As the Nazis emptied the ghettos, armed uprisings erupted in cities and even some concentration camps. Many joined partisan groups that operated in forests to sabotage Nazi operations. In the novel, Max and Zena encounter a group of partisans operating in the Loda forest and undertaking dangerous missions. This element of the story illustrates that, even in such a dark time, there were people who resisted and fought for freedom.