THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

This well known children’s horror story is elaborated upon and intertwined with the reality of the nightmarish events of the Holocaust.

As the story opens, a father and step-mother flee with their children from Nazis who relentlessly pursue them.  In a quick moment, the parents understand they must split up to survive.  The parents decide the children, a girl and boy, aged ten and eight must make their way to the small nearby village alone.  The step-mother tells the children not to use their given names and from then on they would be Hansel and Gretel.  The parents then flee in hopes of drawing away the attention of the German soldiers still chasing them.

The children wander cautiously to the village of Piaski, Poland, and find a house.  Hansel tosses breadcrumbs for their parents to follow.  Magda, an old woman, known as the village witch, finds the children and decides to keep them, informing her brother, the village priest.

The parents make their escape and soon come across partisans in the woods.  The father begs their case to join them assuring the partisans he can fix anything, including engines on trucks or tanks.  The step-mother searches for her children and spies them in the woods, but the Nazis have found them too.

 

Well written, richly symbolic; a nightmarish tale of a truly nightmarish period in history.  Murphy wrote of the Holocaust to educate and prevent war and racism.