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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Propp, V. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
At first Henk didn't believe what his Papa was saying. That the two strangers standing in the front room are his real parents, and now that the war is over they have come to take him back. He is told his name isn't even Henk, it's really Benjamin, and he's Jewish. But all Henk can remember is living on the farm with Papa, Mama, Miep, and Pieter. How can he possibly be expected to leave them?
Set in Holland just after the end of World War II, this is the moving story of a young boy adapting to life after the war with a family he doesn't remember.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6An uncomplicated account of a boy's readjustment after World War II in Holland. Eight-year-old Henk is stunned when he discovers that the family he has been living with are not his blood relatives. After being reunited with his biological parents, who are Jewish, Henk learns that his name is really Benjamin Van Sorg and that he was sent to live with a Christian family during the war. As he slowly adjusts to his new life and identity, memories from his early childhood gradually return, including the yellow star on his coat and a frightening encounter with a Nazi soldier. At the end of the book, when he and his parents return to their house, the place seems familiar and welcoming, and he finally feels that he is home. Propp's use of simple language helps the story flow smoothly. The author creates and sustains a mood that coincides with the readjustment phase that takes place after a trauma. Historical facts are successfully integrated into the narrative, and Henk's first-person telling makes the effects of the war tangible to readers. When the Soldiers Were Gone rates highly among other stories about the period, such as Jane Yolen's more sophisticated The Devil's Arithmetic (Viking, 1988) and David Adler's Hilde & Eli (Holiday, 1994). A moving, well-written novel.Adrian Renee Stevens, Beaver Creek School, West Jefferson, NC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
A dramatic true event turns pallid in this unconvincing first novel set at the close of WWII. Living on a Dutch farm with Mama and Papa, Henk has rejoiced with them at the defeat of the "bad soldiers"but his whole world turns upside-down when "Mama and Papa" tell him that they are not in fact his parents. Henk's real name, which he has forgotten, is Benjamin, and his real father and mother are David and Elsbet, Jews who have survived the war in hiding. The boy's reunion with his parents and his transformation from Henk to Benjamin should be exciting subjects, but the characterizations are so pat as to flatten the material. In attempting to narrate from Henk/Benjamin's perspective, Propp relies on artificial-sounding interior monologues with lots of wide-eyed questions: "It wouldn't be proper to call [David and Elsbet] by their first names. What should I call them, he asked himself. How do I know they are really my parents as they say they are?" The dangers of the war, revealed in flashbacks and through Elsbet's conversations with her son, never take on immediacy. Middle-graders interested in a more authentic treatment of problems Dutch Jewish children faced in coming out of hiding after the war should see Ida Vos's novels Hide and Seek and Anna Is Still Here. Ages 10-up. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Primary, Intermediate) Eight-year-old Henk lives happily on a farm with his loving Papa and Mama and his brother and sister, Pieter and Miep. Now that the war, and the German occupation of Holland, is over, Henk no longer has to hide in a hamper when the Nazi soldiers come; although he still doesn't go to school like his siblings, he can run and play outside his home. Propp disrupts this idyll in the first chapter-Henk's natural parents come to reclaim the child they had entrusted to Papa and Mama when the Jewish family was forced into hiding. Henk is a good boy, and he dutifully goes with David and Elsbeth when his anguished protests that he is not their son Benjamin prove futile. Slowly, won over by childlike pleasures as simple as eating cake (made with sugar saved for his homecoming) and as thrilling as the promise of attending school, Henk adjusts to his new life; and although he never stops loving Papa and Mama, he begins to remember joyful and sad events from his forgotten past that work to reunite him emotionally with David and Elsbeth. The miracle of this sweet tale, based on an actual wartime story, is the constancy of Henk's voice: in a limited third-person narrative, Propp never forgets her young protagonist, and we see his world entirely through his eyes. s.p.b. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Young Henk is shocked to learn that the two strangers at the door are his real parents, come to reclaim him from the Dutch farming couple who had protected him for three years from the Nazis. This fictionalized account of an actual ``hidden child's'' post-WWII experience is written in spare, ingenuous style, effectively capturing an eight-year-old's view of a reasonably familiar, comfortable world suddenly turned upside down. His initial upset calmed by the patient, loving adults around him, he gradually adapts to living in a war-damaged town, to answering to his real name, ``Benjamin,'' and to a new baby brother (actually an orphaned cousin) as his buried memories slowly begin to resurface. Propp's protagonist never develops a distinct personality, but his experiences at home, at school, and at play focus not so much on wider historical issues as on what would be important to a child: food, friends, a sense of belonging. Readers whose interest in hidden children has been sparked by such nonfiction works as Maxine B. Rosenberg's Hiding To Survive (1994) will find this an edifying look at the difficulties younger survivors faced in making the transition to peacetime. (Fiction. 10-12)
Booklist Review
Gr. 4^-9. The opening chapter is heartrending: an eight-year-old boy in Holland in 1945 is forced to leave the loving farm family that hid him during the war. He feels torn away from those he continues to call "Papa" and "Mama." He must go and live with strangers who tell him they are his parents. His name is Henk; why do these new people, David and Elsbet, insist on calling him Benjamin? Who is this baby, Carl, they call his brother? Based on a true story, this spare, beautiful, first novel captures the hidden survivor's trauma from the small child's bewildered point of view. Living in the city, he remembers the farm, the fun he had there, and also the terror as he hid absolutely still in a clothes hamper whenever the soldiers came looking for Jews. Elsbet shows him the shirt with a yellow star that he wore before he went to hide on the farm. He is glad to be able to go to school now in the city for the first time, and he makes friends there; he also encounters anti-Semitism, even after the Nazis are gone. Elsbet tells him how she and David survived in hiding and on the run, and he learns that Carl is really his cousin, whose parents died in the camps. Middle-grade readers will be swept up in Henk's personal story. They will also feel the sorrow and tenderness of the two groups of parents. The foster family cannot bear the parting. The Jewish parents speak softly to the child, leave him space, and try to bring him home. The violence is distanced but never sentimentalized, and, like Ida Vos' Hide and Seek (1991) and other stories of children who hid to survive, this is a dramatic story to introduce children to Holocaust history. --Hazel Rochman