2 December 2023 RUN AND HIDE: HOW JEWISH YOUTH ESCAPED THE HOLOCAUST by Don Brown, HarperCollins/Clarion, October 2023, 192p., ISBN: 978-0-35-853816-5

“In a land that’s known as freedom, how can such a thing be fair?”

– Graham Nash (1971)

“As chaos spread, the Nazis' power grew. Hitler promised to bring order, promote prosperity, and restore glory to the German military. People listened: a hundred thousand people thronged a Nazi rally and Hitler swore he’d make Germany great again.”

“If you’ve read the news lately, you’ll know that Trump went to New Hampshire on Veterans Day, and delivered a news-making speech that included a ‘pledge to root out the communists, Marxists, Fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie, and steal and cheat on elections.’

As I argued in a recent Lucid essay, violence is now Trump’s brand. To that end he conjures existential threats to the nation from non–white immigrants and an expanding cast of internal enemies, calls the thugs who are in prison for assaulting the Capitol on Jan. 6 ‘political prisoners,’ and praises autocrats like Xi Jinping and and Vladimir Putin who depend on propaganda, corruption, and repression to stay in power.  But to get people to lose their aversion to violence, savvy authoritarians also dehumanize their enemies. That’s what Trump is doing. Hitler used this ploy from the very start, calling Jews the “black parasites of the nation” in a 1920 speech.

– “Trump’s latest speech echoes fascist rhetoric” by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, ProtectDemocracy website (11/14/2023) 

For more than a dozen years, Don Brown has been writing and illustrating award-winning, history-based nonfiction picture books for older readers. His latest historical nonfiction graphic novel, RUN AND HIDE is filled with anecdotes about how a large number of Jewish children escaped the Holocaust. (If you can call surviving, after seeing your parents for the last time before they are carted off and murdered, “escaping.”)

RUN AND HIDE: HOW JEWISH YOUTH ESCAPED THE HOLOCAUST begins with an overview of a century-ago Germany, when Adolf Hitler succeeded in rising to power: 

“In the years after Germany’s loss of World War I in 1918, Communists and Nationalists battled for the future of the country.

Communists saw workers at the heart of society, deserving of all loyalty. Nationalists held loyalty to Germany to be central and beyond question. The difference was deadly; violence and murder followed.

The Kaiser, or king, had been swept aside after the war and replaced by a constitutional republic with elected officials, The new Weimar Republic–its name taken from the town where the new government was born–faced storm after political storm. Germany’s economy sank under the weight of the debt for war damage it owed the victorious powers, England, France, and America.

The mark–the German version of the dollar–lost so much value that a wheelbarrow filled with them…could barely buy a loaf of bread.

Children even made kites with marks.

[Germans] had lost their fortunes, their savings; they were dazed and inflation-shocked and did not understand how it had happened to them.

The leader of a small, splinter political party of the Nationalist movement blamed the misery on Weimar leaders. He declared a revolt and tried to seize power in 1923, but failed and was jailed for nine months.

Waiting for his release were his followers in the National Socialist German Workers Party: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. From NAtionalsoZialistsche sprang its shorthand name, Nazi.

In jail, the Nazi’s leader wrote Mein Kamph (My Struggle), outlining political ideas, future plans, and hatred of Jewish people.

The ideas, plans, and hatred of the ‘modest looking, slender man of medium height’ would seal the fate of millions of people.

The man was Adolf Hitler.”

RUN AND HIDE recounts Hitler’s military successes, as Nazi Germany conquers a sizable portion of Europe and murders millions of Jews, before finally being defeated by the Allies. The tales enlighten young readers through depictions of the many ways in which people of good conscience risked and sometimes sacrificed their own lives in order to save the lives of young people whose only crime was being born Jewish. 

“We can change the world, rearrange the world”

– Graham Nash

My hope is that RUN AND HIDE will engender empathy and inspire young people to consider someday sticking their necks out to help those who are being bullied at school, or are being demonized by Trump. Or by anyone seeking to achieve power through the scapegoating a segment of the population.

“In 1933, there were about nine million Jews in Europe. By 1945, two thirds–six million–of those, more than one million were children. Nearly 90 percent of Jewish European children did not survive the war.”

This bears repeating: “Nearly 90 percent of Jewish European children did not survive the war.”

In the afterword (“Uninterrupted”), the author/illustrator puts the story into a heartbreaking perspective, listing the most horrific genocides that have taken place since WWII. He also points out how Jewish Americans “comprise only about 2 percent of the population…but suffer 60 percent of [America’s] religious-based hate crimes.”

RUN AND HIDE is a quick-but-bitter read. It is an outstanding title for reluctant readers, and an important addition for all collections serving tweens and teens. It will also serve as an excellent supplemental resource for middle- and high-school world history curriculums.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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