After the Holocaust, by Howard Greenfield

(0688177522)

I had bought this book awhile back "for my son" so he could do reports. But even at the time I was buying it for me. As much as I've read over the years about World War II, I had not really seen an overview of what happened after the fighting ceased. This follows 8 kids, ranging in age from 11 to 16 at war's end, who somehow had to find a way to restart their lives. Written for the middle grades.

Now I'd like to read something geared toward grownups, because there were clearly a lot of omissions in this book, things that aren't really reasonable to expect a 12-year-old to read. It's horrifying enough as is. One of the most heartbreaking memories is from the woman who was barely 11 and on her own in 1945. She was told by the orphanage that took her in after the war to just go back to her old house (in Budapest). She did. When she knocked at the door she was told that if she didn't leave immediately, the new owners would set the dogs on her.

There's also a scene where someone recognizes two former SS officers on the street outside the Displaced Person's camp. The mob does what mobs do; although one escaped without too many injuries, the boy who watched this was sure the other one went directly to the hospital morgue.

It's easy to forget that even though the war ended in 1945, it took another 5 years to resettle the majority of the displaced people, mostly due to politics. Britain wouldn't open immigration to Palestine, and the U.S. and other countries were slow to raise the immigration quotas for their countries too.