Auschwitz Explained to My Child

How does one broach with a child or young adult a subject like the Holocaust, the full magnitude and horror of which are difficult even for many adults to comprehend? This book, in conversational format, offers an ideal way to present this difficult subject to a young audience. At the book’s opening, the author and her daughter Mathilde meet Berthe, a friend of the author’s, on the beach, where they see the number that was tattooed on Berthe’s arm at Auschwitz. The book, following Wieviorka’s answers to her daughter’s nearly eighty questions, provides a concise yet unsentimental and unsparing history lesson that explains Hitler’s rise to power and the rise of anti-Semitism, the creation of ghettos and concentration camps (not only Auschwitz), the genocide of the Jews, the “Final Solution,” Jewish and other resistance, and the guilt of the Germans.