Scan barcode
A review by katykelly
The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig
5.0
If you want a fuller picture of human tragedies of World War Two, you have Anne Frank, I Am David, and really, you need to read The Endless Steppe.
It wasn't just the Nazis committing atrocities in this period. Easy to forget this, and I had. When I realised that Esther and her family are not taken from their home and shoved onto cattle trucks by Germans but by the Russians in 1941, I was shocked at my ignorance.
It's a story not unlike the train journeys heading to concentration camps. Esther's Polish parents are accused of being capitalists, and taken to Siberia, where they then live and work for five years.
Being a true account, we know that Esther as author is going to make it back alive. But this doesn't stop her story being any less horrifying, sad and moving. Friends and acquaintances die around her - from the freezing conditions, starvation, the work.
The conditions of Esther's new life are tragic, their existence unbelievable, and seeing her become used to her surroundings, eventually attend school and grow up feeling all those feelings we've all experienced (jealousy over a nice pair of boots, feeling for a boy, craving success in the talent show) - she could be any teenager anywhere.
It isn't a long novel, and she doesn't dwell on any one incident for long, the book moves along to a swift conclusion of how she makes it back to Poland at the end of the war (a little too quickly, I thought).
I'm glad I've finally discovered this, and hope to encourage the age group this would be best used with to read it - 11-15 year olds, ideally in school. It would work well alongside studies of World War Two, Anne Frank and twentieth century European history.
It's a very human account of an adolescent caught up in horrific circumstances, and how she and her family did their best to pull through together. Uplifting and desperately sad.
It wasn't just the Nazis committing atrocities in this period. Easy to forget this, and I had. When I realised that Esther and her family are not taken from their home and shoved onto cattle trucks by Germans but by the Russians in 1941, I was shocked at my ignorance.
It's a story not unlike the train journeys heading to concentration camps. Esther's Polish parents are accused of being capitalists, and taken to Siberia, where they then live and work for five years.
Being a true account, we know that Esther as author is going to make it back alive. But this doesn't stop her story being any less horrifying, sad and moving. Friends and acquaintances die around her - from the freezing conditions, starvation, the work.
The conditions of Esther's new life are tragic, their existence unbelievable, and seeing her become used to her surroundings, eventually attend school and grow up feeling all those feelings we've all experienced (jealousy over a nice pair of boots, feeling for a boy, craving success in the talent show) - she could be any teenager anywhere.
It isn't a long novel, and she doesn't dwell on any one incident for long, the book moves along to a swift conclusion of how she makes it back to Poland at the end of the war (a little too quickly, I thought).
I'm glad I've finally discovered this, and hope to encourage the age group this would be best used with to read it - 11-15 year olds, ideally in school. It would work well alongside studies of World War Two, Anne Frank and twentieth century European history.
It's a very human account of an adolescent caught up in horrific circumstances, and how she and her family did their best to pull through together. Uplifting and desperately sad.