The Devil's Arithmetic

Read this probably 20 years ago, and it was my first actual introduction to the Holocaust, beyond “bad stuff happened, people were killed, America came and saved everyone”. And then I promptly forgot the title for years until assigned it in high school. I have a fondness for Jane Yolen's books purely from remembering reading this one.

Although this book may not be historically accurate and may be simplistic in nature, I think that it achieves what the author desired to do. Jane Yolen allows the reader to experience what things may have been like for young Jewish people and emphasizes the struggles and horrific experiences that happened during the Holocaust. This is a great way for children to grasp the concepts and learn more about these moments of history, without being too tragic and graphic. Great read!

Quotes:
“Not to act,' Immanuel Ringelbloom, a Jewish historian of the holocaust, has written, ‘not to lift a hand against the Germans had become the quiet, passive heroism of the common Jew. That heroism to resist being dehumanized, to simply outlive one's tormentors, to practice the quiet, everyday caring for one's equally tormented neighbors. To witness. To Remember. These were the only victories of the camps.” - Jane Yolen, author's note

“Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived, even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks.” -Jane Yolen, author's note

Hannah is a bored teen, tired of hearing her grandfather's stories about the Holocaust, annoyed that she must attend her family's Passover Seder. She finds, suddenly, that she has been transported back to 1941 Poland, where she is sent to a concentration camp.

The details of the travel to the camp as well as her time in the camp are vivid and shocking to Hannah, and, consequently, to us as readers. People die as a result of the conditions, and some are put to death right in front of Hannah. The food is meager and the guards are brutal. All of this is in sharp contrast to Hannah's modern life, and, again, we as readers are able to experience the horrors of that time just as Hannah is experiencing it.

There are a few references to Hannah's modern life that might be unfamiliar to contemporary readers, but these can be easily explained. I found it to be a very powerful story. We must not forget.

A 1001 Children's Book.