Book Descriptions
for Never to Forget by Milton Meltzer
From The Jane Addams Children's Book Award
A collection of letters, journals, diaries, songs, poems, and first-hand accounts creates a Holocaust story drawn from the words of its victims and survivors. Amid facts, numbers, charts and maps, individual acts stand out: the SS Lieutenant who tried to warn governments and resistance movements about the Nazis' extermination methods, or the twelve-year-old blonde girl who snuck Jews out of the Minsk ghetto. Taken together, all of these stories reveal the nature of resistance, the frightening efficiency of hatred, and the importance of memory. Holocaust stories have become a genre unto themselves now, and powerful stories are still published every year. But Never to Forget's emphasis on the individual and its use of primary sources ensures its status as a landmark documentary work.
The Jane Addams Children’s Book Award: Honoring Peace and Social Justice in Children’s Books Since 1953. © Scarecrow Press, 2013. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
Six million-- a number impossible to visualize. Six million Jews were killed in Europe between the years 1933 and 1945. What can that number mean to us today? We can that number mean to us today? We are told never to forget the Holocaust, but how can we remember something so incomprehensible?
We can think, not of the numbers, the statistics, but of the people. For the families torn apart, watching mothers, fathers, children disappear or be slaughtered, the numbers were agonizingly comprehensible. One. Two. Three. Often more. Here are the stories of thode people, recorded in letters and diaries, and in the memories of those who survived. Seen through their eyes, the horror becomes real. We cannot deny it--and we can never forget.
‘Based on diaries, letters, songs, and history books, a moving account of Jewish suffering in Nazi Germany before and during World War II.’ —Best Books for Young Adults Committee (ALA). ‘A noted historian writes on a subject ignored or glossed over in most texts. . . . Now that youngsters are acquainted with the horrors of slavery, they are more prepared to consider the questions the Holocaust raises for us today.’ —Language Arts. ‘[An] extraordinarily fine and moving book.’ —NYT.
We can think, not of the numbers, the statistics, but of the people. For the families torn apart, watching mothers, fathers, children disappear or be slaughtered, the numbers were agonizingly comprehensible. One. Two. Three. Often more. Here are the stories of thode people, recorded in letters and diaries, and in the memories of those who survived. Seen through their eyes, the horror becomes real. We cannot deny it--and we can never forget.
‘Based on diaries, letters, songs, and history books, a moving account of Jewish suffering in Nazi Germany before and during World War II.’ —Best Books for Young Adults Committee (ALA). ‘A noted historian writes on a subject ignored or glossed over in most texts. . . . Now that youngsters are acquainted with the horrors of slavery, they are more prepared to consider the questions the Holocaust raises for us today.’ —Language Arts. ‘[An] extraordinarily fine and moving book.’ —NYT.
Notable Children's Books of 1976 (ALA)
Best of the Best Books (YA) 1970–1983 (ALA)
1976 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Nonfiction
Best Books of 1976 (SLJ)
Outstanding Children's Books of 1976 (NYT)
Notable 1976 Children's Trade Books in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC)
1977 Jane Addams Award
Nominee, 1977 National Book Award for Children's Literature
IBBY International Year of the Child Special Hans Christian Andersen Honors List
Children's Books of 1976 (Library of Congress)
1976 Sidney Taylor Book Award (Association of Jewish Libraries)
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.
