Hania’s War

About this book

WWII as experienced by a perceptive and wise child. We follow eight-year-old Hania/Ania to a small cellar in the Warsaw Ghetto, where she reads Gone with the Wind in Polish. Saved from the Nazis by being spirited away to a convent, she survives the fall of Warsaw and flees to Germany with a nun and another Jewish child. There they find temporary but tenuous safety as farm workers. Frequently required to make life or death decisions, Hania keeps a cool head and a sense of self-worth which is nothing short of heroic. As gripping as a thriller and beautifully written.

Product details

Category

Child Survivors

Publisher

Makor Jewish Community Library

Published

2003

ISBN

1876733039, 9781876733032

Country

Australia

Pages

257

Author

Halina is a Holocaust child survivor, born in 1934, and relates her vivid childhood memories of family and friends in Warsaw before the war. As she was very young, she mainly recalls her many pleasant holidays with her parents and extended family and the great love she felt for her parents. Ajzner’s happy childhood ended on 1st September 1939, when she was woken by an air raid over Warsaw, which marked the beginning of her Holocaust. Ajzner attempted this autobiography at several stages in her life, but finally completed it in her later years. It was published in 2000.