I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust

by Inge Auerbacher and I. AUERBACHER

Book Overview

Inge Auerbacher s childhood was as happy and peaceful as that of any other German child until 1942. By then, the Nazis were in power, and because Inge s family was Jewish, she and her parents with sent to a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. The Auerbachers defied death for three years, and were finally freed in 1945. In her own words, Inge Auerbacher tells her family s harrowing story and how they carried with them ever after the strength and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140364013
• ISBN13: 9780140364019
• Release Date: February 1993
• Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 7.6"
• Age Range: 10 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 5 and higher

Customer Reviews

Great book for everyone

This is a great book of WWII. It has great information of what happen and at the end it has a timeline. It's a must read for everyone and to not forget what happened so it doesn't happen again.

A Must Read for EVERYONE

I definitley recomend this book for anyone. Written very well and is greatly informative. We should never forget the sins of the past. Inge Auerbacher lived through what most people could never imagine. As a mother, I want to protect my children from so many evils in the world. I can't imagine the fear and helplessness Inge's parents had to have felt. I had the privelege and honor to meet Inge Aurbacher when she was a guest at my hotel. She is truely a wonderful and inspiring person. I would like to personally thank her for writing this book and for sharing her experiences with the world. She speaks to young people from all over about tolerance. It is so important for people to know the atrocities and evils committed in the past so that it won't ever be tolerated again. It's so important to know what hate can lead to. Thank you again, Inge, for everything you do and for who you are. An amazing woman. Cindy Coles

Wonderful Heartwarming Holocaust Survival Story.

Inge was 3 yrs old on Nov, 9 1938, when the Night of the Broken Glass took place. She was six when she was forced to wear the yellow star....then it really got bad. At seven she was sent to Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Inge got to live with her Mother and father due to the fact that her father was a decorated war hero from WWI. She is one of the few children to survive the camp. All thru her journeys she has her doll with her which is a miracle as most of the time the Jews got to keep nothing of their fromer lives. The doll is now in the National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. Inga tells us what it was like being a little girl in Terezin concentration camp. If her families name had not been circled on the list of the last transport out of Terezin she would not be here today. I love that Inge includes some pictures of herself and family in the book. It really helps you connect with her. I so could FEEL everything she describes. When Inge and her family were liberated she finally got to be a child. She wanted to play with dolls when other girls were growing out of dolls. But she had not gotten to be a child. Her young childhood was in hiding and just staying alive. Watching other children for payment of a potato which was a treasure. Inga expains anti-Semitism for young readers, and why Hitler so hated the Jews. As an adult it is the best explaination I have ever heard. Though to me it is so unbelievable how anyone could think this way. She includes also poetry she has written in the book. After being so moved by the book I went to her website listed in the book. I wrote to Inge and she wrote back. What a treasure she is. We now communicate by email and I have been blessed to even talk with her on the phone. We must never forget. We give honor to those who died by keeping the truth alive so that this may never happen again. I highly recommend this book to all ages.

Good book for WWII history

of the Holocaust. The poems in this short biography are so inspiring. I read this as part of a unit study for the Holocaust and we enjoyed the message the author brought through her life experience and poems.

Survival of a little star

Inge Auerbacher was only three years old,in 1938, when the massive pogrom called Kristallnacht, or the Night of the Broken Glass took place. At the age of seven she was sent to Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. In this incredible little book, Auerbacher tells of her experiences of being a little girl in Terezin concentration camp, one of the few young children who survived the death camps. As she recounts: "Of fifteen thousand children imprisoned in the Terezin concentration camps in Czechoslovakia, between 1941 and 1945, about one hundred survived. I am one of them. At least one and a half children were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. The reason most of these children died is that they were Jewish". Auerbacher takes the horror of these years, and imparts a message of hope. She has created an account for young readers of her experiences, in a book filled with moving poetry and with the aid of haunting illustrations by Israel Bernbaum. There are also several photographs of her home town and of Inge as a child and her family life. Auerbacher explains that the silent voices of the innocent children who died in the holocaust must be heard, and that is why felt compelled to trace the historical events that made this great evil possible and to tell her own story. The author talks about her home town, Kippenheim, a village in southern Germany, where she was born in 1934. She recounts the iddylic existance of her family and community in Kippenheim, until the horrific events of Kristallnacht. She traces the roots of anti-Semitism for young readers, and summarizes the rise of Hitler, and the holocaust, before talking about her own story. "We still feel the pain and we weep. This nightmare will not let us sleep. A page in history; one must learn. Yesterday us, and tommorow your turn?" She talks of her experiences of being forced to wear the yellow star at the age of six years old, the harsh circumstances of deportation, and the horrific conditions for children in Terezin in crowded and filthy cells infested with rats, mice, fleas and bedbugs, and of the other children who she befriended in the camp, such as Ada, a German Jewish child who longed to go to the Land of Israel, as did so many hundreds of thousands of Jews trapped in the Nazi inferno. Ada taught her a song about the Holy Land, and promised Inge that they would soon go to there, "Just hold on a little longer" she used to say. Ada's dream never came true-she died at the age of nine in Auschwitz. Another friend was Ruth, a beautiful blond little girl of mixed Jewish and Gentile blood, who was brought up as a Christian, and who loved to draw. Ruth died in Terezin because her Jewish heritage, even though she never considered herself Jewish. The final two chapters are about Inge's liberation from Auschwitz, and her hopes and afterthoughts: She closes with a wonderful poem about the horrors and deaths and the hopes and dreams of those who survived and th

deeply moving

"deeply moving and true...i cannot think of any book on this topic which i could recommend for this age group as i do this book." -Bruno Bettelheim