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It is the last winter of World War 2 and the people in Holland are cold and hungry. Their country has been devastated by the occupying German forces. For Michiel Van Beusekom, the war is about to get much more dangerous, and now, at 15, he feels ready to actively work against the Germans.

And it looks liked his chance quickly arrives in the form of his neighbor and friend Dirk Knopper. Michiel knows Dirk is in the Dutch Resistance, and Dirk knows he can trust Michiel. On evening, Dirk tells him there is going to be a raid on a distribution center in order to obtain ration cards and identify papers for people in hiding. He give Michiel a letter and tells him to make sure he give it to another Bertus Van Gelder, another friend and resistance member, if anything goes wrong.

And everything does go wrong. Dirk is arrested with his two companions, as is Bertus Van Gelder. Puzzled at how the Gestapo knew what was going on and who was involved, Michiel doesn’t know what to do with the letter. He finally decides reads the letter himself. Inside are instructions for finding a hiding place in the woods, in which Dirk has hidden an injured British pilot named Jack.

Michiel finds the hideout and Jack, and promises to bring him food every other day. But Jack’s injuries are not healing well, so Michiel is forced to let his older sister Erica, a nurse, in on his secret. He didn’t want to expose Erica to any danger, especially since so many things were going wrong lately.

Meanwhile, when the body of a dead German soldier is discovered, it is assumed by the Gestapo that he was killed by one of the Dutch residents of the village of Vlank. They demand that the person come forward and confess, but when that doesn’t happen, they change tactics. They round up a group of 10 random people, including Michiel’s father, the Mayor of Vlank, and announce that they would be publicly hung if the culprit didn’t come forward. When there was still no confession of guilt from anyone, five people are released, but five are shot to death, including Michiel’s father.

While Winter in Wartime is essentially a coming of age story, it is also a suspenseful and tense story that realistically depicts the dangers many people in Nazi occupied countries faced. Although Michiel willingly takes of the resistance activities of a grown man, he does have his moments of question. For example, his plan for sneaking an elderly Jewish man and his son past the Germans guarding a river crossing works brilliantly, until innocent victims are made to pay the price. And yet what becomes clear in this story is also the willingness of people to risk their lives to help those who are even more oppressed and despised, no matter what.

The book was originally published in Dutch in 1972, and issued in translation in 1976. In 2008, an apparently not very good movie (I haven’t seen it yet) was made, also in Dutch, with English subtitles. And in early 2011, the novel Winter in Wartime was re-released. Oddly enough, I cannot find the translators name. The translation is a little awkward and a little abrupt at times, but it certainly does not diminish the quality and impact of this book.

The author, Jan Terkouw, was born in 1931, son of a clergyman. I am sure that many of his experiences in the war are included in Winter in Wartime. The vivid impressive portrayal of the cold, bleak winter weather, the constant stream of people wandering the roads in search of food to bring back to their chi

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Eleven year old Felicity Bathburn Budwig isn’t really happy about being transplanted from her parent’s flat in London to her grandmother’s coastal house in Bottlebay, Maine because of the blitz in 1941. To begin with, her grandmother, known as The Gram, and her father’s brother and sister, Uncle Gideon and Aunt Miami, are all angry at her dad Danny and her English mom Winnie, and Felicity doesn’t know why. And they are a strange bunch. Aunt Miami (really named Florence, but that has no 'pizazz') is obsessed with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; Uncle Gideon has a weird sense of humor and is up to something very secretive; The Gram simply rules with a kind but iron hand.


Then, Felicity, or Flissy as The Gram immediately nicknames her, is told she must never go into a certain locked room nor is she to disturb a mysterious person called Captain Derek, locked away in his own room, until he is ready to come out.

Gradually, however, Flissy begins to adjust to the strange Blackburn household and even begins to like it. Until one day when a mysterious letter arrives, postmarked from Portugal but definitely written by her father. What is he doing in Portugal? He is supposed to be in London with Winnie. And why did Uncle Gideon immediately take this letter and go into the forbidden-to-enter room. And each time one of these letters arrives, he does the same thing, but then Flissy notices that he would later cross the beach outside the house and disappear. A mystery indeed and she is determined to get to the bottom of it.

By now, Flissy also has an accomplice. The elderly sea captain she imagined behind the closed door turns out to be a boy named Derek, a little older than she is, who had been quarantined while he was being treated for an apparently mild case of polio. It has caused him to lose the ability to use his left and so he is reluctant to leave his room or go out in public. When another letter arrives from Portugal and Uncle Gideon goes into his mysterious room with it, Flissy talks Derek into pretending he needs help and crying out for his uncle. The hope is that Uncle Gideon will come running, forgetting to lock the door and Flissy can sneak in a see the letter.

The plan works but Flissy and Derek are no closer to knowing anything – the letter is written in code - nothing but a bunch of numbers. They spend the rest of the summer trying to work out the code. They do find out where Uncle Gideon goes after receiving a letter when they successfully follow – the problem here is that you need a boat to get to the small lighthouse island he rows to. And they do manage to talk the mailman into taking them over one day, so that they are finally able to solve one part of the mystery.

But then the letters from Portugal stop coming, and both Flissy and Uncle Gideon are worried about that. Has something happened to her parents? Now, Flissy is more determined than ever to solve the mystery of the number code.  But how?

While all this is going on, Flissy finds out that Aunt Miami has won a raffle she that she had carelessly entered aunt’s name in. The prize is 20 minutes of stage time at the town’s talent and variety show. The problem is that even though Aunt Miami constantly performs Romeo and Juliet at home, she has terrible stage fright.

The Romeo and Juliet Code is a fun mystery in the same vein as a Nancy Drew book, and being a big Nancy fan, I liked that about this book. The mystery is there t

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If you think that Europe’s Jews passively met their fate during the Holocaust, then you are seriously misinformed. There were a number of known occurrences of organized resistance, as well as who know how many individual acts of resistance that also took place. One of those who spent a great deal of time researching and studying cases of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust, beyond the most well-known of these – the Warsaw Uprising – was Yuri Suhl. He has documented those cases of partisan activities in his non-fiction work They Fought Back, a very worthwhile book for readers age 14 and up.

Mr. Suhl also wrote the novel Uncle Misha’s Partisans about a group of Jewish fighters living in a Zhitomir forest in the Ukraine.

When 12 year old Mitek comes home from his violin lesson one day, he finds his mother, father, and beloved sister Basha have all been shot to death by Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen, or death squads.* He decides to run away and find the group of armed Jewish resisters he has heard about called Uncle Misha’s Partisans. On his way there, the Luftwaffe flies overhead spraying the area with a shower of bullets. They are after the two partisans, Yoshke and Berek, who have just blown up a German troop train. The two men find Mitek, but are hesitant because his name is Ukrainian and he speaks that language fluently. His family, he explains, had passed for being non-Jews until someone found out the truth and reported them. The men take him to the camp where the partisans live, where he can once again be Jewish and go by his Yiddish name Motele.

Yoshke takes Motele under his wing and introduces him to everyone, including Uncle Misha. Even though Motele wants to be a partisan, he finds he must work at the camp, at first with Avremel in the supply tent. There he learns how to care for weapons, including the Vyntovka or Vintovaka, a high powered military rifle which Motele covets as a symbol of a true partisan. Motele loves camp life and quickly grows very attached to Yoshke. He is taught some of the songs they like to sing there, figuring out how to play them on his violin, providing much appreciated entertainment to the partisans.

Not long after settling in, however, Motele is allowed to go out on a mission with Yoshke and several others including a nurse named Luba. They are transporting a seriously wounded partisan to the family camp where there is a hospital and a doctor. Hidden in Motele’s violin case is a Vyntovka. On the journey, they are forced to stop at the house of a village elder. The elder is out, but his wife lets Luba in. She finds the house is filled with furniture, clothing, jewelry and other items, which the woman proudly shows Luba and explains the things were taken from the homes of the Jews in the area that have been shot by the Einsatzgruppen. Sadly, by now the wounded man has died, so when her husband returns, the partisans take him in custody, tell his wife to get their two girls out of the house quickly and as they depart, they blow it up.

Unfortunately, Motele ends up in the family camp hospital himself after suffering a case of “forest” a mystery disease involving high fever and chills. At family camp Motele befriends Chanele, a young girl who with her sister Surele had been rescued by Avremel. The two become very close and she teaches him the Partisan’s Song so he can play it on his violin for everyone’s pleasure when there is a wedding in the camp. His growing friendship with Chanele and his new job with the

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Hitler invaded Norway in April 1940 for two reasons. The first reason was because he needed the port of Narvik in Norway for transporting much needed iron ore from Sweden to help him wage a successful war. The second reason had nothing to do with war. Hitler believed that the Nordic people were, particularly the Norwegians, a perfect example of the Aryan race and he hoped that the Norwegians and Germans would intermarry. But the Norwegians did not exactly welcome the Germans with open arms, though some did and became traitors to their country, or quislings**, collaborating with the enemy.

This is not the cover to my book, I found it online.

On the Edge of the Fjord, written in 1944, begins shortly after Norway is invaded. Petra Engeland, 14, is home alone when a group of Nazis come knocking at the door. Petra’s mother is helping a sick neighbor when this happens, and her 15 year old brother is away at school.

The Nazi leader, Captain Ebert, demands to speak with her father. Captain Engeland, who is on a fishing expedition, is the owner of one large boat and a small fleet of excellent fishing boats. The Nazis wish to commandeer these boats for their own purpose, along with Petra’s father. In addition to this demand, Ebert and three of his officers billet themselves in the Engelbert home.

Petra decides that she must warn her father not to come home to Valcos. Early in the morning, she sets out with her little boat and fishing gear and sails down the fjord to the quay where her father’s business office is. Surprised at finding him there, she tells him what has happened in the village and warns him not to come home.

A week later, Martin comes home for a visit, and when Petra tells him what is happening, they decide to try to get some of their father’s boats out of Norway to England, where many escaped Norwegians are now training to fight the Nazis in their country. Martin stealthily spreads the word among the men and boys in the village, carefully avoiding Nazis and quislings. That night, two boatloads silently sail away down the fjord, but not before deciding how to get messages through. Sigurd Holm suggests using the signal fire they had always used to invite Petra and Martin up to their mountain house during the summer. His sisters, Margot, Inga and Karen Holm, are up there for the summer tending to the family’s goats and cows.

Eventually that fire signal comes and Petra hikes up the dangerous mountain trail to see what message had been received. On her way, Petra sees three German men, including Kurt Nagler, an old family friend who, though German, had lived in Norway his whole life. She knows enough German to understand that they are talking about something hidden in caves in the mountain. The Holm sisters verify that they heard these men speaking about this when Petra finally reaches them.

That night, a plane lands in the Holm’s cow pasture. It is Sigurd with a British flyer called Ruggles. They also know the Nazis are up to something, but don’t know exactly what. They decide to come back in a week after Martin has had time to investigate. After the

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My admiration for the people who survived the Holocaust knows no bounds. What brave people they were. Essie Shor is one of those who not only survived, but fought for the lives of other Jews and against the Germans.

Essie was only 16 when the Germans invaded Novogrudek, Poland (now Belarus) where she lived with her mother, father, two younger sisters, one younger brother and one older brother. At first, the Nazis simply ordered all Jews to bring anything of value to the town square, withholding was punishable by death. Next, a few days after Hanukah, all Jews were ordered to remain at home until further notice. Further notice came in the form of an order for all Jews to report to the town courthouse. The next day, families were sent out to the courthouse and into the courtyard. Essie’s father had been the only bookbinder in town and she recognized a Nazi officer as one of his previous customers. She went up to the officer and reminded him of her father and his job. The officer called her father up and the two of them, father and daughter, were taken back into the building and down to the basement with about 700 other Jews. Essie learned later that everyone in the courtyard was killed that day, about 4,000 people.

The Jews in the basement were soon taken to live in a ghetto, where they lived 10 people to a room, 40 people to a house.

In the ghetto, the Nazis put everyone to work. At first, Essie retrieved bricks from bombed out buildings. Later, she worked in the home of a Polish couple who were very kind to her. Although they provided Essie with a good midday meal, she could not take any back to her father, so they were forced to illegally barter to obtain food for him. Conditions in the ghetto were dreadful and the lives of the Jewish residents always hung in the balance: “aktions” could happen at any time.

One day, after Essie was no longer working for the couple, the wife came to the ghetto and offered to help Essie escape and join a partisan group. Despite misgivings about leaving her father, Essie decided to go, but four days later she returned to the ghetto and her father. Nevertheless, she continued to think about joining the partisans. Finally, one December day, Essie snuck out of the ghetto with 3 other people and walked 15 miles to find the Bielski Partisans hiding in a forest.

The Bielski Partisans were led by Essie’s cousins Tuvia, Asael and Zus Bielski. Life in the forest was hard and cold, but at least Essie felt free. After a month, she wrote her father and asked him to join her. This time he relented and even eventually adjusted to the difficult way of life in the forest. The number of Bielski Partisans began to increase as more and more Jews found their way there, preferring to die fighting for their lives. Essie was given a makeshift rifle, which she learned to care for and use and she became a guerrilla fighter at the age of 16.

But the life of a partisan was also uncertain and they had to be prepared to pick up and leave their camp in the forest and move to another area any time the Nazis got too close. Eventually, the partisan group grew to 12000 Jews and they decided to go deeper in the woods, so that they could build camouflaged bunkers or Ziemlankas. Here the partisans had only the most basic comforts and yet the new camp contained everything they needed. Members of the partisans often got food, blankets and even cows, taking them from the farmers in the area – but a cow was never taken unless the farmer had more than one. Shops were set up which included pl

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