THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

In 1941, the Nazis conquer the small town of Terezin, Czechoslovakia.  Heinrich Himmler, in need of a Jewish safe harbor to placate the Red Cross, designs the Theresienstadt Ghetto. 

The Terezin Ghetto becomes the Nazi controlled camp the Red Cross can visit.  The book represents a collection of pictures and poems written and drawn by the children in the Terezin Ghetto, or Theresienstadt Ghetto, from 1942 to 1944 during the Nazi reign.  The pictures and poems express the children’s fears, dreams, desires, memories and realities.  They wrote of and pictorialized their starvation, deprivation, sorrows, loss of family, as well as the hope for a future and the ultimate wish to be free.

The children were sent from Terezin to Auschwitz. None of the children under fourteen survived.

Of the 15,000 children that passed through the Terezin Camp during the years from 1942 to 1944, less than 100 children survived.

 

The Foreword is written by Chaim Potok.