Irena Book One: Wartime Ghetto

by Jean-David Morvan

Other authorsDavid Evrard (Artist), Séverine Tréfouël (Author)
Hardcover, 2020

Status

Available

Call number

J F MOR

Series

Publication

Magnetic Press (2020), Edition: Illustrated, 136 pages

Description

"The true tale of Irena Sendlerowa, a social worker in the Warsaw ghetto in the early 1940s, during the early days of German occupation. She is credited for saving the lives of 2500 Jewish children by gradually and quietly smuggling them to safety in small groups. While she is eventually arrested by Gestapo, imprisoned, and tortured for her actions, she refuses to reveal her network and is condemned to death. She is ultimately saved from death by other members of her organization. After the war, she retrieved the names of all children she saved (kept in a glass jar buried under a tree behind her house) and attempted to locate each of their parents for reunion. And while most of the parents had been gassed in the Holocaust, she made it her mission to help those orphans find new homes."--Publisher's description.… (more)

Barcode

6463

Language

User reviews

LibraryThing member pomo58
Irena Book One: Wartime Ghetto from Jean-David Morvan is a powerful graphic biography of one of World War II's true heroes.

Irena's life was an amazing combination of humble valor and brave compassion. The portion of her life covered by this book should serve as a wake-up call to people today, we
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need to find it within ourselves to care about all people even while our governments do everything possible to harm and isolate groups of people. We must fight the hate of those in power and those still supporting them.

The artwork is, I think, a positive aspect of this volume. It is not real intricate or overly stylized, and definitely not as if drawn for children. I think simple clean drawings serve to illustrate what is happening while also keeping the emphasis on the story rather than the artwork. There is plenty of detail to allow the pictures to add to the narrative but it is done without drawing attention to the art itself.

I would highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in WWII history and the Holocaust in particular. Also for anyone seeking inspiration for standing up to the illegitimate and immoral government we currently are suffering under.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss.
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LibraryThing member LibrarianRyan
If you were just to look at the illustrations of this book and not the story, you might think it will be a happy tale. The illustrations are reminiscent of Charles Schultz and Ziggy. That soft rounded style of cartoon characters, but inside the pages it holds a sad and heartfelt story about a woman
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who helped rescue kids from the Ghettos of Poland during the war. While Irena was a real person, the tale is told as fiction because the authors admit that there are conflicting “facts” of her story. Either way this is an excellent read. It can fit in with books like Maux, The Diary of Anne Frank, and the Devil’s Arithmetic. It is approachable for any age of reader, and extremely well done.
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LibraryThing member jennybeast
Well done historical graphic novel biography about the Polish heroine, Irena Sendlerowa and her circle of friends and family. Chilling depictions of live in the Warsaw ghetto, astonishing rescues. Translated from the french.

ISBN

1549306790 / 9781549306792
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