The Promise: The Moving Story of a Family in the Holocaust

by Eva Schloss and Barbara Powers

Book Overview

Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss retells her own story specially for younger readers.

This is the remarkable true story of a young Jewish girl and her brother caught in a world turned upside down by the Nazis during the Second World War. Eva Schloss describes her happy early childhood in Vienna with her kind and loving parents and her older brother Heinz, whom she adored. But when the Nazis marched into Austria everything changed.

Eva's...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0141320818
• ISBN13: 9780141320816
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Puffin Books
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Endearing story of a Jewish family during the Holocaust for young readers

This is an endearing account by Eva Schloss about her idyllic childhood in Vienna in a tolerant and peaceful pre-Nazi Austria, with her parents and brother Heinz, before the family was forced, as Jews, by the invading Nazis in 1938 (When Eva was 9, to flee to Belgium and then the Netherlands. It then tells of the family's hiding and arrest by the Nazis, before describing Eva's survival in the death camps. Her brother Heinz and father did not survive. The author tells the story with love and hope throughout. Eva was guided by the memorable words of her father: "Children, I promise you this; everything you do leaves something behind; nothing gets lost. All the good you do have accomplished will continue in the lives of the people you have touched. I twill make a difference to someone, somewhere, sometime, and your achievements will be carried on. Everything is connected, like a chain that cannot be broken". After the war, Eva's mother married Anne Frank's father Otto, making Eva Anne Frank's posthumous step sister. Anne Frank had been Eva's friend in the Netherlands before the war. For younger readers aged 10 and up.

Sad and inspiring

A simplified version of "Eva's Story: A Survivor's Tale by the Step-Sister of Anna Frank" by the same author about the horrors of the holocaust. A remarkable personal testimony, recounted in a gentle way, free of any vengeance feelings. I would suggest this book for readers aged 12+.