When The World Was Ours: A book about finding hope in the darkest of times

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This is a tour de force, a book about friendship and what happens when hate is institutionalised, but most of all it's a book about love -- Catherine Johnson As a child, I had a friend whose mother had numbers tattooed on her arm. Over the years, I had other friends who’d lost relatives in the Holocaust. And I once had a girlfriend whose dad, as a child, had been active in the Hitler Youth movement. These days, I have a connection to a nonagenarian who, as a teenager, jumped from a death camp-bound cattle car, escaping as the Nazi guards shot at her with rifles. Hartverscheurend mooi 💔 Het is zo makkelijk om te vergeten dat het nog maar kinderen zijn. De gruwelijkheden van de oorlog raakte iedereen en dat is in deze YA echt mooi en realistisch neergezet. Three Friends. Two sides. One memory. LEO must rely on the kindness of strangers to escape the rising threat to the Jewish people. ELSA, like Leo, is hated for simply being who she is. To be safe, she must run. MAX. As his father rises up the Nazi ranks, he suddenly finds that he is the danger his friends are trying so desperately to escape. You might also like... Leo, Elsa, and Max have been best friends for years. Since the day they met they’ve been a team of three. They spend a perfect day together, unaware that around them Europe is descending in a growing darkness. The Nazi’s have come, and their lives, once so tightly woven together, take very different directions.

Leo must rely on the kindness of strangers to escape the rising threat to the Jewish people. Elsa, like Leo, is hated simply for being who she is. To be safe, she must run. While Max suddenly finds that he is the danger his friends are trying so desperately to escape as his father rises through the Nazi ranks. This book completely broke my heart. I expected sadness, knowing that it was a book about the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, but it still was a gut punch. I appreciate that the author based one of the storylines on her own family's history. We follow Max, Elsa, and Leo, from their favorite memory together, straight through their teen years/WWII. Elsa and Leo are Jewish, and as such, obviously in great peril during the war. Max, on the other hand, has a father who is not only unsympathetic toward his friends, he's a straight up Nazi. The book does an unbelievably great job of illustrating how frighteningly fast and unfortunately, easy, it is for some people to end up on the wrong side. Liz has written twenty-three books in total, including two young adult novels and two Early Reader series.This story contains mature themes and depictions of violence and cruelty related to the Holocaust and we advise readers to be aware of difficult content that may cause distress. A list of resources with more information on the Holocaust and this period in history can be found at the end of this book. This book was amazing, I loved everything about it. The characters, the plot, the historical accuracy-it was perfection! You could tell that a lot of effort and research was put into the making of such a wonderful book. Powerful, heartbreaking, thought-provoking and timely. This story of three friends will be etched in my mind for a very long time. What an incredible novel The characters were all fantastic, and I loved the immensely powerful friendship they had. It's so depressing how their lives had to be torn apart from such a young age, and seeing them grow and mature over the years. Wow. Just wow. Each of the children has a very different war-time experience. Leo manages to flee to England with his mother, desperate for news of his father who was sent to Dachau. Elsa remains with her family through many of the indignities bestowed on her simply because of her faith, but she is separated from them when they are taken to Auschwitz. Max has always been desperate for his father’s approval, and his need to belong and gain admiration makes him susceptible to the indoctrination of the Nazi party. As his father rises in power, Max follows. He too ends up in Auschwitz.

Inspired by a true story, When the World Was Ours is an extraordinary novel that is as powerful as it is heartbreaking, and shows how the bonds of love, family and friendship allow glimmers of hope to flourish, even in the most hopeless of times. Three friends. Two sides. One memory. About This Edition ISBN: A powerful and heart-breaking novel about three childhood friends living during the Second World War whose fates are closely intertwined, even when their lives take very different courses. Inspired by a true story, this is the perfect read for fans of The Book Thief and Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl.This book has the honour of being the only book that has ever made me cry. I never cry, but this was different.

While this story will seem familiar in some ways, it offers an approach to the topic of the Second World War that will not fail to impact on readers. A powerful and heart-breaking novel about three childhood friends living during the Second World War whose fates are closely intertwined, even when their lives take very different courses.Seeing Max being raised as a Nazi broke my heart, I hated seeing his father force an innocent child from a young age to have these preposterous mentalities, but I guess this was the harsh reality of the time. Doch diese Zeiten sind vorbei, als Hitler in Deutschland die Macht erlangt und sich dadurch der Nationalsozialismus im ganzen Land ausbreitet. Betroffen davon sind alle drei der Protagonist:innen, wenn auch aus unterschiedlichen Gründen. Während Leo und Elsa beide jüdischer Abstammung sind und den zunehmenden Hass gegen Juden in ihrem eigenen Land zu spüren bekommen, bleibt Max davon verschont, gerät jedoch durch seinen Vater, einem ranghohen Offizier der deutschen Armee, ebenfalls in die Fänge des Nationalsozialmus.