Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf

Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf is set during 1942 in Lidice, Czechoslovakia. Eleven year old Milada and her family are proud Czechs who do not agree with Hitler and his Nazis and are hoping for a fast end to the war. Their hopes are dashed when Nazi soldiers break into their home in the middle of the night and arrest everyone - Milada, her mother, father, grandmother, older brother and baby sister. All of the men and teen-aged boys in the neighborhood are separated and taken away, while the women and children are transported to a nearby town and held. Because she has blond hair and light eyes, Milada is selected, along with several other children, to be relocated to a Lebensborn center in Poland, leaving all of the rest of her family behind. There, Milada is forced to change her name to Eva, speak only German, and learn to "become" an upstanding German girl. Several times during her two years at this "school" Eva nearly forgets who she is and where she's from - the very things her grandmother pleaded with her to never forget as she was being taken away. Eventually, all of the girls are adopted by German families hoping to further the Aryan race. Eva works hard to remember who she truly is, despite the years it's been since she's seen her family. She prays for the war to come to an end and hangs on to the hope that she'll eventually be reunited with her real family.

This was a really good book. I actually cried at the end! The author's note was really interesting - I didn't realize the Nazis took non-Jewish, non-German children who had the right facial features and coloring and "repatriated" them as German children. This was a side of World War II I have never read about.

The Dog in the Wood by Monika Schroder

The Dog in the Wood by Monika Schroder is set in Germany just after Russia invaded at the end of World War II. Ten year old Fritz lives with his grandparents, mother, sister on his grandparents' farm. They've lived there ever since Fritz's father was killed in the war. Fritz's grandfather is a NAZI sympathizer and is convinced that he and Fritz will need to fight for the farm when the Russian soldiers arrive. Fritz is terrified - he wants to do what his grandfather tells him to do, but he isn't sure he is courageous enough to fight. He takes solace in carving his little wooden dog in the barn, with Lech, the Polish hired hand. But, Fritz doesn't have to fight alongside his grandfather - when news comes that the Russian soldiers have arrived, Fritz's grandparents commit suicide. Then, the townspeople and the soldiers force Fritz and his family (including Lech) to give up their farm! They have to travel with just a small cart, leaving most of their possessions and livestock behind, to their other grandmother's house in the south. When they arrive, things go from bad to worse... the Russian soldiers come to arrest Fritz's mother on weapons charges - even though she has no weapons! Trying to defend her, Lech is also arrested. Now it is up to Fritz to save them... can he do it in time?

This was a great book! I've never read a book about WWII from the perspective of a German civilian. It was a very interesting look at what happened to regular people that got caught up in the war while just trying to survive. The author's note at the end was also quite interesting. Much of this story was based on events from her own father's childhood!

The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti is about Helmuth, a young German boy growing up during WWII. Helmuth becomes increasingly troubled with the ways people are being treated by Hitler and the Nazi's, so he starts to do something about it. He uses a short wave radio his brother left behind when he went off to battle, to listen to the British broadcast of the war. This information completely differs from the information the German radio broadcast gives, which is the only radio broadcast that is legal. Helmuth begins creating leaflets with the new information and distributing them across the city of Hamburg, Germany, with the help of his two best friends, Rudy and Karl. Eventually they get caught by the Gestapo and endure hours of torture. Helmuth is sentenced to death after taking all of the blame, and Rudy and Karl each get prison sentences.

This was a very good book. It is historical fiction, in that the author created some of the thoughts, conversations, and internal dialogue for the characters, but it is based on a real person. Susan Campbell Bartoletti got much of her information for this book from interviewing Karl and Gerhard (Helmuth's older brother). The story is told in flashbacks, which makes it seem as though there are two different stories combining at the end.