YELLOW STAR

“Two hundred and seventy thousand people lived in the Lodz ghetto. In 1945, the war ended. The Germans surrendered, and the ghetto was liberated. Out of more than a quarter of a million people, only about 800 walked out of the ghetto. Of those who survived, only twelve were children.”
“I was one of the twelve.”
-Excerpt from interview with Sylvia Perlmutter,
March 2003

Imagine being forced out of your home, away from your friends, and away from the life you know just on the account of religious differences. All shudder at the thought, but then imagine if you were four-years-old. Yellow Star, by Jennifer Roy is the story of the Lodz Ghetto in Lodz, Poland. Created in free-verse poetry Roy tells of her aunt’s life story through the memory and eyes of four year old Syvia.

September 1, 1939. World War Two has started. For young Syvia Perlmutter, life consists of talking to her doll, playing with friends, and hiding behind the couch listening to her aunts and mother talk. Her life has remained unaffected since the Nazis invaded, except for the increasingly agitated conversations of her family. Her mother and father decide to flee Lodz since being Jewish during the invasion of Nazis has become a dangerous threat.

Traveling under the cover of darkness in the back of a wagon, the Perlmutters leave Lodz for the faraway town of Warsaw to seek refuge. No one will give them place to rent or a job; isolated for the fact that they are Jews.

Yellow. The past color of happiness now turns to the color of hatred. To step out without the donning of the Star of David means arrest. Nazis close down a small section of Lodz due to disease and order all the Jews of Lodz to move there. Upon arrival people are given jobs. Unemployed Jews are viewed by Nazis as unessential and bothersome mouths to feed. Since Syvia remains too young to work she is forced to stay secretly tucked away inside her windowless, two-roomed apartment.

Syvia’s friend Hava has a little brother sick with cancer and he is getting worse, but medical attention is not given to Jews. Hunger too prevails as Itka, Hava, and Syvia try to cheer each other up with dolls to take attention away from their growling stomachs. Every person gets a meager ration of black bread, and sometimes vegetables from the feeble private gardens that people have planted. Occasionally, a valuable piece of meat is given, which is later discovered to be horse.

Walking outside becomes very dangerous. Nazi guards stand with guns at the ready up and down the streets. Stories are told in Syvia’s house about the boy who was shot because the guard didn’t like the way the boy looked at him, how a man was dragged in front of his children and shot for no reason. Syvia sees a pool of blood on the street, on day, which they step around. “‘More shootings,’ Papa says quietly.” Hava’s brother dies from lack of medical treatment.

The daily ration is now one bowl of thin soup, a slice of bread, a little vegetable and watery coffee. Hava has disappeared. She took a short walk up the street and never came back. Itka and Syvia pretend she is having tea with the queen while playing with their dolls. The sad thing is, they know she isn’t.

January 1942. Nazis begin dragging people from hospitals, homes and off the streets since they need “workers”. Suspicions arise in the ghetto when these valued “workers” are stuffed in cattle cars with hardly any room to breathe. The “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem has arrived. Extermination camps. Lodz ghetto deportees were directly transported to the Chelmno Extermination camp where “workers” were gassed and cremated.

Itka gets deported and the Nazis have made a new announcement. All Jewish children are to report to the trains immediately. They tell the parents that their children are going to “be fed and given fresh air; that they won’t have to worry about them while they are at work”. Night comes and Nazis bust into houses dragging hiding children off to the empty trains. If the parents try to stop the soldiers, they are shot. One mother wouldn’t let go of her two children and would have been shot, had the guards not been low on bullets and needed one more child to take in alive that night. She is forced to choose which child she will keep.

Every night the shots and crying step closer to Syvia’s apartment until one day they hear the jeeps stop at their door. Heavy boots pound the ground, and their door shakes under the pressure of the beating hand. OPEN UP!! Syvia’s parents look at her. They’re here.

Does Syvia get sent to an extermination camp? What happens to the children? How does Syvia escape with her life? I can’t bear to give the ending away, but I urge you to read this book. It’s a fast read, and the incredible story kept me riveted. I was in awe of the events that led to her rescue and survival; having to remind myself that the book was NOT fiction and that every horrible event I read had really occurred in history and Syvia’s life. I hope Syvia’s story reminds you of what has happened in history so that horrible murderous events, like the Holocaust, can be prevented from ever happening again.