Los otros ninos del pijama de rayas

In this well-researched compendium about the children of the Holocaust, Argentine writer López de Casenave recounts the internment of Jewish and other children during World War II. By relying on interviews, testimonies, and the diaries of children—while also reviewing the existing body of work on the subject—the author offers some sobering realities about the extent of Nazi brutality against children. This book—whose title is a riff on Irish writer John Boyne's novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, about a boy during the Holocaust—is broken into three compact chapters, each interspersed with photographs of interned children and concentration camps. Whereas others have focused exclusively on the plight of Jewish children, López de Casenave also sheds some much-needed light on the experience of children interned because of their parents' religious beliefs or political affiliations or because of their own physical disabilities. Such was the case of the Stojka clan, a gypsy family of Catholic persuasion torn apart after the annexation of Austria. The author does well to include the portraits of people like Irena Sendlerowa, a Polish woman who joined Zegota, a clandestine organization that aided Jews during the German occupation of Poland. These stories of survival, hardship, and tragedy are bookended by a brief but thorough guide of major events and key players and a detailed time line, bibliography, and glossary. Recommended for libraries with a World War II and/or Holocaust collection.—Michael Sosa, Brooklyn, NY