Resistance (Scholastic Gold)
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
New York Times bestseller Jennifer A. Nielsen tells the extraordinary story of a Jewish girl's courageous efforts to resist the Nazis.
Chaya Lindner is a teenager living in Nazi-occupied Poland. Simply being Jewish places her in danger of being killed or sent to the camps. After her little sister is taken away, her younger brother disappears, and her parents all but give up hope, Chaya is determined to make a difference. Using forged papers and her fair features, Chaya becomes a courier and travels between the Jewish ghettos of Poland, smuggling food, papers, and even people.
Soon Chaya joins a resistance cell that runs raids on the Nazis' supplies. But after a mission goes terribly wrong, Chaya's network shatters. She is alone and unsure of where to go, until Esther, a member of her cell, finds her and delivers a message that chills Chaya to her core, and sends her on a journey toward an even larger uprising in the works -- in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Though the Jewish resistance never had much of a chance against the Nazis, they were determined to save as many lives as possible, and to live -- or die -- with honor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sent away from her Krakow home in April 1941, 16-year-old Chaya Lindner becomes an activist in the Jewish armed resistance movement Akiva by October 1942. With features and coloring that belie her ethnicity, as well as fluency in Polish and a smattering of German, she can pass as the Polish Catholic Helena Nowak, which makes her the perfect courier. Confident Chaya is dismayed when she is paired to work with seemingly timid Esther, who possesses "every possible look and mannerism to radiate her Jewishness" and who is to blame for a failed Akiva mission. As they travel from a ghetto in Krakow to one in Lodz, the young women witness horrific events and undergo harrowing experiences before arriving at their ultimate destination: the Warsaw Ghetto, where the action culminates in the historic uprising of April 1943. Suspense mounts continually as Chaya survives her ordeals, gaining strength and faith in her mission. The courage and self-sacrifice of many characters is inspiring, but the book is unapologetically grim and violent, like the events it so persuasively depicts, and may not suit readers at the younger end of its stated range. Ages 8 12.
