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  • 28 Days: A Novel of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto by David Safier
  • Natalie Berglind
Safier, David 28 Days: A Novel of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto; tr. from the German by Helen MacCormac. Feiwel, 2020 [416p]
Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-250-23714-9 $18.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-250-23715-6 $9.99
Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 9-12

It’s 1942, rumors are circulating in the Warsaw Ghetto that all Jews will be killed, and sixteen-year-old Mira joins up with a smuggling crew to make ends meet for her family. After Mira’s family is killed, she joins the resistance and initiates a romance with Amos, who once saved her life by pretending to be her boyfriend, and she enlists the help of Polish resistance groups and tries to evade capture. This German import covers fairly familiar ground about the Warsaw ghetto and the uprising, though it’s more candid than some accounts about the ever-present threat of sexual violence, as seen through Mira’s friend Ruth, who survives in the ghetto by sex work and later by becoming an SS man’s favorite toy, and through Mira’s own experiences. As in other books about this subject, the populace is in denial about the severity of the situation and surprised by its escalation; prejudice exists between the gentile Polish people and the Polish Jews; and people choose between fighting in a hopeless situation or taking cyanide tablets. This could make a useful fictional counterpart to Marrin’s A Light in the Darkness (BCCB 9/19), and collections looking for additional books about the Polish Holocaust may still want to add this to their collections. An author’s note includes information about fictional liberties taken with the novel.

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