Margins
We Had to Be Brave book cover
We Had to Be Brave
Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport
2020
First Published
4.06
Average Rating
368
Number of Pages

Sibert Honor author Deborah Hopkinson illuminates the true stories of Jewish children who fled Nazi Germany, risking everything to escape to safety on the Kindertransport. An NCTE Orbis Pictus recommended book and a Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable Title. Ruth David was growing up in a small village in Germany when Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s. Under the Nazi Party, Jewish families like Ruth's experienced rising anti-Semitic restrictions and attacks. Just going to school became dangerous. By November 1938, anti-Semitism erupted into Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, and unleashed a wave of violence and forced arrests. Days later, desperate volunteers sprang into action to organize the Kindertransport, a rescue effort to bring Jewish children to England. Young people like Ruth David had to say good-bye to their families, unsure if they'd ever be reunited. Miles from home, the Kindertransport refugees entered unrecognizable lives, where food, clothes—and, for many of them, language and religion—were startlingly new. Meanwhile, the onset of war and the Holocaust visited unimaginable horrors on loved ones left behind. Somehow, these rescued children had to learn to look forward, to hope. Through the moving and often heart-wrenching personal accounts of Kindertransport survivors, critically acclaimed and award-winning author Deborah Hopkinson paints the timely and devastating story of how the rise of Hitler and the Nazis tore apart the lives of so many families and what they were forced to give up in order to save these children.

Avg Rating
4.06
Number of Ratings
925
5 STARS
35%
4 STARS
41%
3 STARS
21%
2 STARS
3%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads

Author

Deborah Hopkinson
Deborah Hopkinson
Author · 63 books

I write nonfiction and historical fiction, picture books, and Golden Books. I speak at school, libraries, and conferences. I also love to garden and offer manuscript critiques. (Deborahhopkinson@yahoo.com) NEW books in 2023 include RACE AGAINST DEATH: The Greatest POW Rescue of WWII, which has three starred reviews; CINDERELLA AND A MOUSE CALLED FRED, illustrated by Caldecott Medalist Paul O. Zelinsky, which has a star from Kirkus; TRIM SETS SAIL and TRIM HELPS OUT, Junior Library Guild selections; THE PLOT to Kill a QUEEN and SMALL PLACES, CLOSE to HOME, a picture book inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I live in Oregon.

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