UNDER THE IRON BRIDGE

In the months before Kristallnacht, a German teen, hating the Hitler Youth, finds a youth club of freedom fighters.

Paul, a White, Christian 15-year-old in 1938 Düsseldorf, wishes pretty Analia still went to his school. They’ve shared one kiss, and she’s been his friend for years—but Analia, like other Jews, is no longer allowed to attend classes. Paul still has his best friend, but Harold is increasingly obsessed with the Hitler Youth; Paul loathes Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and antisemitism, but what can he do? He still joins the Hitler Youth, because in a world where his own classmates inform on their parents to the Gestapo, is there any other way to be safe? But is Paul imagining things, or did he hear some brave—or reckless?—kids singing anti-Hitler songs? In fact Paul has discovered the Edelweiss Pirates, a real-life group of teens who met illegally across Hitler’s Germany to resist Nazism. Paul joins them, running increasingly risky schemes to cause petty annoyances for the Nazis, until he sees Analia on Kristallnacht, a series of concerted attacks on synagogues and Jewish homes and businesses. This leads to a climactic moment in their relationship. Although the real Pirates were predominately working class, Paul is the child of two doctors. Though the historical danger and torment are muted, this is a tense, exciting adventure about vital resistance.

An accessible, well-paced story about courageous young people resisting the Nazis.