Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust

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Synopsis
A Junior Library Guild selectionClaiming My Place is the true story of a young Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by escaping to Nazi Germany and hiding in plain sight.Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrko´w Trybunalski. As the war escalates, Gucia and her family, friends, and neighbors suffer starvation, disease, and worse. She knows her blond hair and fair skin give her an advantage, and eventually she faces a harrowing choice: risk either the uncertain horrors of deportation to a concentration camp, or certain death if she is caught resisting. She decides to hide her identity as a Jew and adopts the gentile name Danuta Barbara Tanska. Barbara, nicknamed Basia, leaves behind everything and everyone she has ever known in order to claim a new life for herself. Writing in the first person, author Planaria Price and Helen Reichmann West, Barbara's daughter, bring the immediacy of Barbara’s voice to this true account of a young woman whose unlikely survival hinges upon the same determination and defiant spirit already evident in the six-year-old girl we meet as this story begins. The final portion of this narrative, written by Helen, completes Barbara’s journey from her immigration to America until her natural, timely death.Includes maps and photographs
Copyright:
2018

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
272 Pages
ISBN-13:
9780374305307
Related ISBNs:
9780374305291
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Planaria Price, Helen Reichmann West
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Teens, Biographies and Memoirs
Grade Levels:
Seventh grade, Eighth grade, Ninth grade, Tenth grade, Eleventh grade, Twelfth grade
Reading Age:
12–18
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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