1. Title: When Hope Prevails: The Personal Triumph of a Holocaust Survivor (May 2005) by Sam Offen; ISBN 1-928623-58-1; Livonia, Michigan; $18.95 120pp.

2. Genre: Nonfiction—memoir/historical; grades 9-12

3. Characters: Sam Offen is a young, Jewish teen when Germany invades Poland and occupies his hometown.

4. Plot: Offen details his loved ones, neighbors and hometown, and then vividly illustrates how everything changed under Nazi occupation. Friends and relatives are deported, slaughtered or gassed, and those who are not summarily sentenced to death are forced to labor for the Nazi cause (including manufacturing munitions used to kill Jews) and at times for no purpose at all (such as moving heavy rocks and chunks of concrete from one place to another and then the next day moving them back), all while facing starvation and the constant threat of an unpredictable death. Offen tells of several instances of when he was nearly killed, and speaks of the fate of the rest of his family and loved ones, taking his story through his liberation at the hands of U.S infantry troops to his immigration to the United States.

5. Touchy Areas: There are graphic depictions of violence, including references to torture, and detailed explanations of Nazi genocide against Jews.

6. Related Titles: Maus I: My Father Bleeds History (1973) by Art Spiegelman, Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began (1986) by Art Spiegelman, We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust (1995) by Jacob Boas, A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present (1997) by Ward Churchill

7. Movies: Schindler’s List­ (1993), The Devil’s Arithmetic (1999), Anne Frank—the Whole Story (2001), Jakob the Liar (1998), The Grey Zone (2000), Holocaust (1978)

    Music: Strange Fruit (1939) by Billie Holiday

    Related Web sites: http://www.classroomhelp.com/holocaust/books.html

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/billie+holiday/strange+fruit_20017859.html

http://www.unitednativeamerica.com/aiholocaust.html

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2000/oct/09/oz_author_sought/ (quote by author of ‘Oz’)

www.fallsapart.com(official Sherman Alexie Web site)

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/dp/pennies/sitting_bull.gif&imgrefurl=http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/dp/pennies/1890_sioux.html&h=453&w=400&sz=75&hl=en&start=20&tbnid=uHY3Sy_x5sVFCM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=109&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwounded%2Bknee%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG

     Related Photos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ThomasShippAbramSmith.jpg

http://history.grand-forks.k12.nd.us/ndhistory/LessonImages/Sources/Pictures/holocaust%202.jpg

http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/gifs/18192.gif

http://www.holocaust.com.au/mm/images/nazi_campmedipic.gif (nudity)

http://isurvived.org/Pictures_Isurvived/holocaust-romania.GIF

http://www.iwchildren.org/eagle1/yelobird3.jpg

      Art: The Sowers (1942) by Thomas Hart Benton, Threesome (1944) by Felix Nussbaum, Unable to Work (undated) by David Olère, Gassing (undated) by David Olère

      Poem: Grass (1918) by Carl Sandburg, Frozen Jews (1944) by Avrom Sutzkever, Tale of a Sprinter, in the Winter of 1938 (1938) by Sudeep Pagedar

      Classic Work: Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (1947) by Anne Frank, Elenor Roosevelt (Introduction), B. M. Mooyaart (translator), The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988) by Jane Yolen

8. Evaluation: Sam Offen gives a well-written account of his experiences during the Holocaust that comes straight from the heart. This book is ideal for the classroom—it is emotional, wrapped in historical details students can easily look up, and short, not dwelling on one topic for too long, leaving less chance for a bored student to put it down. Some may have trouble with depictions of wanton Nazi violence and exterminations (such as methods for murdering Jewish babies). The way this book is written makes it easily relatable to American History regarding blacks and Indians. Rating: 9 out of 10

9. Reviewed by: John E. Johnson IV, University of Toledo