ALA Booklist (Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 1997)

In a graphic present-tense narrative, this Holocaust memoir describes what happens to a Jewish girl who is 13 when the Nazis invade Hungary in 1944. She tells of a year of roundups, transports, selections, camps, torture, forced labor, and shootings, then of liberation and the return of a few. For those who have read Leitner's stark The Big Lie (1992), this is a much more detailed account, with the same authority of a personal witness. Horrifying as her experience is, she doesn't dwell on the atrocities. There is hope here. Unlike many adult survivor stories, this does not show the victims losing their humanity. The teenager and her mother help each other survive; they save each other from the gas chambers. Even in the slaughter of the cattle trucks strafed by machine-gun fire, words of comfort emerge from every corner. The occasional overwriting about drowning in a morass of pain and helplessness is unfortunate. The facts need no rhetoric. On every page they express her intimate experience. After the war, the teenager finds her brother, hears how her father died. She wonders whether she dare enjoy the luxury of being a girl, of having hair. final brief chronology of the Holocaust adds to the value of this title for curriculum use with older readers. (Reviewed March 15, 1997)

Horn Book (Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 1997)

In 1944, when the Germans occupy Hungary, life for thirteen-year-old Elli Friedmann (the author's birth name) begins a descent into the worst nightmares of the Holocaust. Through the unfathomable darkness, Elli's determination to keep her mother alive and the rare moments of help and kindness offered by a few people at the risk of their own lives shine through. This is a memorable addition to the searing accounts of Holocaust survivors.

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

PW's starred review called this memoir, of a 13-year-old Hungarian Jewish girl's incarceration in Auschwitz, """"an exceptional story, exceptionally well told."""" Ages 12-up. (Mar.)