Resistance

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Paper Book, 2018

Description

In 1942 sixteen-year-old Chaya Lindner is a Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied Poland, a courier who smuggles food and documents to the isolated Jewish ghettos in southern Poland, depending on her forged papers and "Aryan" features--but when a mission goes wrong and many of her colleagues are arrested she finds herself on a journey to Warsaw, where an uprising is in the works.

Status

Available

Call number

813.6Fic

Genres

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

New York : Scholastic Press, 2018.

User reviews

LibraryThing member MrsDruffel

This book was action-packed. Jennifer Nielsen is one of my favorite middle-grade authors. You know you are getting a book that will keep you wanting to read well past your bedtime. Kids love her books because they can learn about history in a way that relates to them. You will not regret purchasing

any of her books!

Show Less

10 more

LibraryThing member rgruberexcel

RGG: Character development weak. Reads like an action thriller. But treatment of Jewish resistance seems to denigrate those who died without "fighting back." Not recommended, John Hersey's The Wall is much better. Reading Interest: 12-YA.

LibraryThing member rgruberexcel

LibraryThing member HandelmanLibraryTINR

Chaya Lindner is a teenager living in Nazi-occupied Poland. Simply being Jewish places her in danger of being killed or sent to the camps. After her little sister is taken away, her younger brother disappears, and her parents all but give up hope, Chaya is determined to make a difference. Using

forged papers and her fair features, Chaya becomes a courier and travels between the Jewish ghettos of Poland, smuggling food, papers, and even people.

Show Less

LibraryThing member acargile

This historical fiction suspense novel is set during WWII and is a 2019 Lone Star selection

Chaya is Jewish, but she doesn’t look Jewish, which allows her to fight in the resistance against Hitler’s Germany. She lives in Nazi-occupied Poland. As their rights are one by one pulled from them,

Chaya’s family loses more and more. One day her sister is forcibly removed and sent to a death camp. Her brother disappears. Chaya’s parents have no fight in them; they give up because they lose their two kids. Chaya refuses to give up; she is a fighter. She joins the resistance because she can pass as non-Jew. It’s terribly dangerous, but she has fake papers to enter the Jewish ghetto. She brings food and information for other resistance members. After a bombing chaya participates in, everyone seems to have been caught. Chaya feels alone and lucky to still be free.

Chaya discovers a few who have survived, one of whom is Esther. Chaya doesn’t trust her and doesn’t feel safe with Esther, feeling she will do something that will hurt the resistance or get them caught. Esther tells her that they have to get a message to the Warsaw Ghetto. There’s been an uprising there and Hitler will be sending in his men to destroy the resistance there. As they travel, they enter other ghettos and learn about the resistance or lack of resistance in each one. It’s dangerous every step of the way. Esther refuses to reveal the package/message to Chaya, but as they encounter danger after danger, they become close and Chaya loves Esther like a sister. Once they arrive at Warsaw, everyone knows that most won’t survive. There are many surprises, which I won’t reveal here--read the book!

I personally think Ms. Nielsen is a better fantasy writer than a historical fiction writer. I wanted to read this novel after hearing her speak about it. The information is heart-wrenching and you learn so much about life for Jews. It was brutal and the people who resisted were beyond brave. I don’t know that I could fight like this. Her writing style, however, gives me a distance. I never feel like I’m “in” the story. It’s still a good story. Give it a try.

Show Less

LibraryThing member LibrarianRyan

Historical fiction has the power to teach the reader about topic, or areas of topics not covered by history class. In my history classes the Holocaust has been a topic. However, the main subject is the German Jews and Hitler’s atrocities. The Polish stories are always left out, which bothers me

since the big name extermination camps were in Poland. According to additional reading there is controversy over even saying “polish concentration camps”. They were German concentration camps in occupied Poland. But the book made me realize that although Poland was occupied, there were people that agreed or sided with the occupiers.

I thought the extermination camps you learn about in school were horrible enough. I never learned of the ghettos. The jewish sections of town that were walled off so that people were held like prisoners. It’s a horrible part of history that I wish was taught more in school.

It is one of the reasons I am happy that books like this exist. It brings to light new facets of history you may not have learned of before. In this story we follow Chaya Lindner in her pursuit of a free people and an unoccupied country. She is Jewish, but she looks German enough to “pass” and become a courier for the resistance. Her job was to get messages, food, weapons, and even people across the walled off borders of the ghettos. Sometimes to even be the messenger between ghettos. It’s a dangerous job, but if you are sentenced to die anyway, you might as well die fighting. Fighting for peace, fighting for a free way of life, fighting to allow differences in all people because no person is better than another.

In this book, people will live, people will fight, and people will die. The search for an answer of WHY is a constant, and a hope of a better tomorrow is always lurking on the next page. But this book is about survival, and not everyone makes it out alive. The author does not pull punches, does not sweeten the ending, but leaves you as many are in the midst of a war.

Apparently this is not the first Holocaust story the author has written, I know her more from her fantasy books, but she easily engrosses the reader in a part of history some would like to forget. She makes the reader wonder how so many in today's society can still believe that these events did not take place. And even better, she shines a light on what is happening in our current society, and how similar it was to history, with never movie the story past 1943.

#MountTBR
#Booked2019 #Soldier’s Story
#LittenLoveBingo #BlameitonLitsy
#NancyDrewChallenge #Prisonerforatime
#KillYourTBR #aboutincarceration

Show Less

LibraryThing member ewyatt

Chaya is separated from her family after her family is moved to the ghetto. She wants to fight back against the Nazis and what is happening. She joins a resistance group, Akiva, as a courier - sneaking stuff into ghettos and sneaking people out. After her cell is destroyed. She and Esther work on

new missions and eventually end up in Warsaw and are part of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The book is intense.

Show Less

LibraryThing member wagner.sarah35

For all the histories and fiction I've read about World War II, it's somewhat surprising I didn't encounter more about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (or even the Warsaw Uprising that followed in 1944). With so many stories focused on the horrors of the concentration camps and others about escaping

Europe, this story of a young Jewish woman who joins the resistance feels unique in an otherwise familiar landscape. Chaya Lindner begins as a courier, helping people to escape the Polish ghettos. But she and her resistance cell grow more daring, starting Chaya on a journey that leads her to the Warsaw ghetto, where an uprising is underway and fighters determined to resist the Nazis with violent force. While this book had plenty of the horrors one might expect from a novel set during World War II, it was also hopeful and filled with action as the character actively fought for the world they wanted.

Show Less

LibraryThing member campbell_m76

Taking place during WWII, this book shares the experience of those involved in the Resistance movement. The young woman in this story joins the resistance movement, carrying letters and then working to foil efforts made by the Nazis. Her skin and eye color allow her to go in and out of the ghettos

unnoticed and help people in the ghettos escape. Read this book to find out what happens to this young lady as she works against the Nazi officers, getting herself into all sorts of difficult situations.

Show Less

LibraryThing member jennybeast

There are a lot of great WWII books out there, and I have to say this one suffers by comparison. I find the narrator too modern, too aware of the big picture of death in the camps (which seems inaccurate to me), too world-weary and self-righteous. It just assumes a knowledge of history and context

that strikes me wrong for the time period. I also don't understand why an underground cell would move _into_ the ghetto -- that's hampering their own movements in a strange way. Can you tell I didn't get very far into the narrative? It just didn't work for me.

Advanced Readers Copy provided by Edelweiss.

Show Less

Fewer