National Network for Equitable Library Service

From the bustling city of Paris to the quaint, countryside village of Champlost, France, Where Courage Lives follows ten-year-old Muguette Szpajzer and her family as they sought refuge from the war. Written in vignettes with child-like charm and innocence, Muguette’s memoir provides rich insight into rural life during wartime upheaval, honouring both her indomitable mother and the courage of the people of Champlost.

Nate Leipciger, a thoughtful, shy eleven-year-old boy, is plunged into an incomprehensible web of ghettos, concentration and death camps during the German occupation of Poland. As he struggles to survive, he forges a new, unbreakable bond with his father and yearns for a free future. But when he is finally liberated, the weight of his pain will not ease, and his memories remain etched in tragedy. Introspective, complicated and raw, The Weight of Freedom is Nate’s journey through a past that he can never leave behind.

An only child, fifteen-year-old Zuzana Sermer did what she could to protect her father and ailing mother when the Nazis set up a fascist regime in her native Slovakia in 1939. Four years later, after fleeing to the supposed safety of Budapest, Zuzana and her fiancé, Arthur, instead navigated one treacherous situation after another. Survival Kit is both Sermer’s thoughtful reflections on the miracles of her survival and a testament to the power of courage, love and determination.

An epic journey across borders, The Vale of Tears chronicles close to two years in the life of Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung as he seeks an escape route from Nazi-occupied Europe. In this rare, near day-byday account, Rabbi Hirschprung illuminates what life was like for an Orthodox rabbi fleeing persecution, finding inspiration and hope in Jewish scripture and psalms as he navigates the darkness of wartime to a safe harbour in Kobe, Japan.

With these last words from their mother, two little girls, Marguerite and her older sister, Henriette, started a long and wandering journey that lasted three years. Given new identities, they had to forget everything about their former, familiar lives. Taken from farms to convents, they learned how to remain silent, to pretend, to lie in order to survive. This story is beautifully illustrated by the author.

Fred Mann’s incredible story traces his family’s long journey of exile from Germany through Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Jamaica and finally to a new home in Canada. A Drastic Turn of Destiny is also a lament for a brave boy who had to grow up far too fast.

A young boy who loved soccer as much as he loved to write, John Freund found his joyful childhood shattered by the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. John’s family suffered through the systematic erosion of their rights only to be deported to Theresienstadt – en route to the Auschwitz death camp.

In the fall of 1941, as the situation for Jews worsens across Europe, Ibolya (Ibi) Grossman learns she is pregnant. She is scared and confused – a baby during wartime? But her husband, Zolti, assures her, “We need this baby, you will see.” When András (Andy) is born, Ibi realizes her husband was right. Andy gives her a reason to go on during the worst of times in the Budapest ghetto, and to persevere in their escape from Hungary after the war.

The son of an Antwerp diamond merchant, Paul-Henri Rips was ten when the Nazis invaded Belgium and ended his “golden childhood” forever. Guided by his father’s admonition to “Sei a mensch” (Be a decent person), Rips managed to hold onto his humanity in the face of unfathomable inhumanity.

When Germany occupied Hungary in 1944, fifteen-year-old Miklos Friedman drew on his wits to survive. Recruited into forced labour, sent to a ghetto and, ultimately, to the Nazi camps of Auschwitz and Mühldorf, Miklos never stopped fighting to change his fate. After the war, he risked everything in order to leave his past behind. Decades later, a chance meeting in Toronto led Miklos, now Michael Mason, to discover the power of his new name.