Witness: Passing the Torch of the Holocaust Memory to New Generations

Gr 6 Up—With many extant works on the Holocaust, this book stands out for its firsthand accounts from survivors. As the subtitle indicates, this work attempts to connect Holocaust eyewitnesses with young people who are long-removed in time and place from the Shoah. Rubenstein's volume commemorates the 25-plus years of the March of the Living, a program that brings secondary students to Poland to visit Holocaust-related sites. Students march from Auschwitz to Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day to honor the memory of Holocaust victims. Rubenstein has compiled moving comments from survivors and victims, March participants, and notables (Pope Francis, President Obama). The text and captions are generally clear (with some exceptions) and include prose and poem responses from the young marchers. The many photographs (both archival and contemporary) are compelling: individual faces help make the ungraspable numbers personal. Some may find that the oblong format makes holding this heavy volume awkward. Important topics—responsibility, resistance, prejudice (including quotas for refugees), and the basic goodness, or not, of humans—are raised.