Edit­ed by two Holo­caust edu­ca­tors, Aman­da Friede­man and Kel­ley Szany, Inter­rupt­ed Lives is a col­lec­tion of nine short auto­bi­ogra­phies assem­bled from inter­views with peo­ple who sur­vived the Holo­caust as chil­dren. Start­ing from the sober­ing premise that young read­ers will have few oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn from these indi­vid­u­als in the future, the book aims to con­dense their mem­oirs into an acces­si­ble form, and to also include basic infor­ma­tion that may not be famil­iar. Text box­es respond­ing to such ques­tions as ​“What was Auschwitz”? ​“What was Kristall­nacht?” and ​“What Was Vichy France?” are a point­ed reminder of the con­tin­u­ing need for care­ful­ly pre­sent­ed infor­ma­tion about this era.

Each one of the nine chap­ters intro­duces its sub­ject with basic facts, includ­ing the date and place of their birth, and their Holo­caust expe­ri­ence, date of lib­er­a­tion, and date of immi­gra­tion to the Unit­ed States. A sub­ti­tle cap­tures the cen­tral theme of the person’s life. For exam­ple, Ruth Stern, who was born in Berlin in 1931 and arrived in Chica­go in 1941, was forced to learn how to ​“Adapt to Sur­vive.” Like sev­er­al of the sur­vivors’ sto­ries, Ruth’s includ­ed a series of attempts at find­ing refuge. Her fam­i­ly left Ger­many for Antwerp, hop­ing they would be safe there, only to seek tem­po­rary shel­ter in France before their final depar­ture for the Unit­ed States. An ear­li­er attempt to obtain US visas had been reject­ed, as were their appli­ca­tions for asy­lum in Eng­land, Aus­tralia, and New Zealand. Even when emi­gra­tion from Europe was still pos­si­ble for some Jews, doors around the world closed against them.

At the con­clu­sion of each auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Friede­man and Szany pro­vide a spe­cif­ic les­son. Dis­cussing with mid­dle-grade read­ers the arbi­trary events that result­ed in either life or death is chal­leng­ing. In the case of Bar­ney Sidler, a sur­vivor of both the Częs­to­chowa forced labor camp and Buchen­wald, the les­son append­ed is ​“Try to Be Opti­mistic in Life.” Sidler’s bru­tal impris­on­ment cul­mi­nates in lib­er­a­tion. While his opti­mism played a role in his adap­ta­tion to ​“unimag­in­able hard­ships,” the asser­tion that it was part of the rea­son he sur­vived would not be lit­er­al­ly true. This, and oth­er, lessons in the book, offer a good start­ing point for con­ver­sa­tions with chil­dren about the dif­fer­ent mean­ings of sur­vival. After the war, Sidler’s abil­i­ty to remem­ber his past while look­ing for­ward to the future allowed him to adjust emotionally.

Judy Straus’s Ger­man Jew­ish fam­i­ly was one of many who believed that Hol­land would be a safe envi­ron­ment. When the Nazis occu­pied that coun­try, she and her fam­i­ly were sent to the West­er­bork tran­sit camp, and from there were deport­ed to There­sien­stadt. Her detailed descrip­tion of the hor­rif­ic con­di­tions in this sup­pos­ed­ly ​“mod­el” camp are vivid. Straus remem­bers that, although he was for­bid­den from bring­ing any pos­ses­sions with her, she kept one book, in which she proud­ly inscribed her name. She kept that book for the rest of her life. Not until the age of six­ty-six did Judy begin to pub­licly speak about her expe­ri­ences dur­ing the Holo­caust. Her les­son is ​“Fight for Your Life,” which also applies to her life­long com­mit­ment to democ­ra­cy and vot­ing. Her nar­ra­tive reveals how keep­ing that one book inscribed with her name rep­re­sent­ed a fight as well.

This high­ly rec­om­mend­ed book includes a glos­sary of impor­tant terms.