Nonfiction Essay
By Julia A. Keirns
There are three absolutely wonderful books on my shelf that all teenagers should read regarding World War II survival stories. I absolutely love The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, The Diary of Anne Frank, and thirdly is Sky by Hanneke Ippisch. Sky is a very simple text. It is an unknown, not as popular story from World War II. The subtitle of the book is “A True Story of Courage During World War II.”
I found this book by accident at the local recycling center one day. I was immediately drawn to it when I read the subtitle. Reading survival stories from this time period of the world’s history brings thankfulness for how far we have come as a race of human beings and hope for the future that we will continue to help each other. This book deserves to be just as popular as the other two books I mentioned.
As a history lesson regarding World War II, the three grades of 6, 7 and 8 could utilize these three books if they are allowed in schools today, reading one each year. I would start 6th grade with Sky. It is much shorter and easier to read with lots of pictures. Thirteen year old children always want to read about someone older than them.
Hanneke Ippisch is fifteen years old when the German army occupies her country of Holland. As a teenager she becomes a member of the Dutch Resistance, which is a group of young men and women who risk their own lives to help the Jews escape death from the Nazi’s. Hanneke changes her identity and makes secret scary trips across the border, sneaking Jews to safety.
“When we first became active Resistance workers, we were law-abiding citizens trying to help those who needed help. But as it became harder to help, we became less law-abiding. When I needed a better bicycle to enable me to help the Jewish people more efficiently, I immediately was provided a better bicycle, a “liberated” stolen one.”
She is eventually captured one morning by German soldiers and thrown into prison. As a young teenage girl in prison, her story is one that will resonate with 13 to 15-year-olds. She speaks of how the food smelled funny and later they found out that all of the young girls were given small amounts of camphor in their food to stop their monthly periods.
She gives a wonderful personal account in this book. It needs to read by anyone interested in learning more about this time in history. The sadness of wartime becomes so plain in the words of Hanneke, “Nothing that is normal in peacetime is normal in war, but all the horrible happenings during wartime become normal eventually.”
Many children today have no concept of struggle. They have no reason to be thankful for the easy lives they have and teaching them about times when children did need to worry about surviving can not be a bad thing.