Thanks to Monique Polak for writing the story, to Orca Book Publishers for publishing it, and to NetGalley for making it available to me.Īnneke Van Raalte and her family are taken from their home in the book, What World is Left by Monique Polak. I think that it would be a good book to explain the holocaust to children 12 and older. It was very sad in spots but not so violent that it would be too much for a child. This was an interesting historical book written for young people so that they could understand this time in history.

It focuses on the hoax that the German's portrayed to the world in the camp of Theresienstadt and how they actually had the world believing their lies. It is a picture of what it must have been like for a child to be uprooted from her home and all she knew and transported to the worse place on earth where hunger is so great that a rotten potato is a treat and a crust of bread can mean life or death. As she experiences loss of friends and the cruelty in the camp she becomes cold toward her father, until she finds the other picture her father has drawn. So she cannot figure out why her father is helping them by drawing pictures and signs for them. The Nazi's are making a pretend model camp of Theresienstadt to fool the Danish Red Cross into thinking they are treating the people in the camp good which is not at all true. She is more privileged than most as her father draws signs and pictures for the Nazi's in the camp which means the family is allowed to stay together.Īnneke is conflicted by her father's work and it causes her to question her father. She learns to live the cruel life of hunger and work in the camp. In 1942 that came to an end when the Nazi's invaded Holland and deported Anneke and her family to Theresienstadt. Her father drew cartoons for the newspaper. She was a happy pampered child living in Holland before the war. Inspired by a true story this is the story of a young girl, Anneke, coming of age in the German concentration camp Theresienstadt.

What world is left by monique polak