My Holocaust Story: Hanna

Book excerpt: An important new novel about one family's experience in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. Hanna Kaminsky loves gymnastics, her best friend Eva, Elza's chicken soup with dumplings and reading. But in September of 1939, the happy life that Hanna has always known disappears. The Nazis have invaded Poland and are herding all Jews into ghettos in the cities. Hanna's family members are forced into hiding in the countryside. For a while it seems they are safe. But hiding from the Germans means trusting others. Rounded up by the SS, Hanna and her family are sent to the Warsaw Ghetto where they must use whatever skills they have to survive. Through the eyes of young Hanna, this novel skillfully handles its intense subject matter and provides moving insight into one of the defining events of our recent history.