NO PRETTY PICTURES

A haunting look back by Lobel, a Polish Jew who “was born far, far away, on a bloody continent at a terrible time.” Lobel writes of her life as a young girl, who “was barely five years old when the war began.” She and her three-year-old brother did not understand when her father disappeared in 1939 (to Russia, she later learned), but very soon they understood the words “transported, deported, concentration camp and liquidation.” Taken from a Benedictine convent that sheltered Jewish children, Lobel and her brother (by then, ten and eight) were first in Montelupi Prison, then in RavensbrÅck, where they were sick with lice, diarrhea, and tuberculosis. They were rescued and sent to Sweden to regain their health and eventually to be united with their parents. This is an inexpressibly sad book about a young girl who missed her childhood, yet survived to say that her life “has been good. I want more.” (b&w photos, not seen) (Memoir. 10-14)