Authors‎ > ‎Jennifer Roy‎ > ‎

Yellow Star

Yellow Star is an extremely touching story about a young Jewish girl who lives in the period of the Second World War, when all the Jews were forced to wear yellow stars on their clothes. The story tells about courage, sacrifice, cruelty — just about everything that went on during that war. It is told from the viewpoint of a little child, Syvia. She's the aunt of the author, Jennifer Roy. She was one of the twelve children to come out of the Lodz ghetto after the war. Little Syvia asks many puzzling questions, because she is puzzled by everything that happens around her. 
She has to hide in a cemetery to escape the Nazis who want to take all the children to concentration camps.
Syvia's dad is extremely smart, and carries out risky plans to make sure that many people survive.

My favourite part of the book is the end, where—
all the survivors of the Lodz ghetto (this was towards the very end of the war) see a plane coming towards them, going to bomb them. They lay face down, with the yellow stars glinting in the sun, and that's when the plane lands beside, and a Russian walks out, and says that they recognized the yellow stars, and so did not shoot. I feel that the Nazis' plan to show their hate towards the Jews (by making them wear yellow stars) backfires. And that's why I like the end. I also like it because it's written very beautifully.