Age: 8-12 years
Between 1941 and 1945, Nazis turned the town of Terezin, Czechoslovakia, into a ghetto for thousands of displaced Czech Jewish people. Ruth Thomson provides a brief summary leading up to ghetto life, followed by the intensely dismal living conditions that demoralized and deteriorated the prisoner's health. With an ever growing population that cramped living conditions and expedited disease and living quarters that separated families, combined with sudden transports away from the city in the middle of the night, life in Teresienstadt was stressful on the mind, body, and soul, leading up to a terrifying transport to a concentration death camp.

Informative text accompanied with direct quotes give this book an authoritative and real quality necessary for documentation (and for a child's research project). Thomson place particular emphasis on the artists, the children, and the Nazi deception to outside groups such as the Red Cross. Thomson's interest in the Czech ghetto arose during research on Holocaust art (she also has an MA in museum and gallery learning), which doesn't show a strong specialty on the Holocaust but the existence of culture and art during historical time periods. The organization is easy to follow, filled with artwork, artifacts,and some photos--not trying to disturb the young audience but informing them on a tragic period in history. Timeline, glossary, sources, and index provided.