Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust – by Doreen Rappaport
Candlewick Press, 2012

Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, on the Jewish calendar. It seems almost redundant to point out that high-quality educational materials for young readers about this tragedy are essential. Now, as fewer survivors are here to tell their stories, and as a political climate of hatred and repression escalates antisemitism, we are even more obligated to continue telling the truth about the genocide of Europe’s Jews. (I have written many reviews in this area; a few relevant interviews can be found here and here and here and here and here).

Doreen Rappaport is a distinguished author of non-fiction for children (see, for example, here and here). I recommend Beyond Courage for many reasons. It is meticulously researched, carefully and accessibly presented, and illustrated with photographs, maps, and other documents. The book does not presuppose previous knowledge, but is also written, like all her work, in an intelligent tone that never patronizes the reader. There are five sections, each one focused on the heroism of those who defied death in their acts of resistance. The chapter titles encompass different components of these acts, from motivation, “The Realization,” and “Saving the Future,” to locations, “In the Ghettos,” and “In the Camps,” to dramatic depictions of the ultimate results, “Partisan Warfare.”

The choice to write about resistance is a crucial one. First, it allows children ten and older to process one part of the Holocaust; graphic descriptions of mass murder may be inappropriate for readers this young. Most importantly, it refutes the lie that Jews went, as the expressions states, like sheep to the slaughter. Examples of the true meaning of courage are not abstractions, especially as we live in a time when alleged leaders have chosen to abdicate all responsibility to their countries and allow dictators to seize total power.

Rappaport ends the book with a poem. (There is also extensive backmatter with further information and additional resources. In the notorious concentration camp of Theresienstadt, which the Nazis designed as a “model camp” to deceive the world about the Final Solution, many inmates created paintings and literature. Franta Bass, who was eleven years old at the time, wrote:

I am a Jew and will be a Jew forever.
Even if I should die from hunger,
never will I submit.
I will always fight for my people,
on my honor.
I will never be ashamed of them,
I give my word.”