Birchwood - more commonly known as Auschwitz, is where we meet 14 year old Ella, starting her first day as a seamstress in The Upper Tailoring Studio, making beautiful dresses for Officers wives and female Guards.
Ella was snatched from the streets on her way home from school. She was walking in the gutter at the time, because as a Jew she wasn't allowed to walk on the pavement. In Auschwitz she is a non - person - insignificant, names are not allowed, everyone is identified by a number. She soon discovers that to stay alive she must work hard, but with watery coffee for breakfast and watery soup for supper it's difficult to maintain the energy needed to keep going. Some prisoners ( or Stripeys as they are known ) are much worse off, having the same meagre diet but with really hard physical work to carry out. However if a Stripey doesn't prove their worth they are put on a List, and everyone knows that those on the List are taken away and never seen again.
This a place where it's not just the Guards that you have to watch out for though, as there is a hierarchy among the Stripeys, and each hut as it's own boss who rules over the others.
Ella becomes friendly with some of the other girls in the sewing room, but her special friend is Rose. Rose irons the clothes in the sewing room, and is an eternal optimist, she loves making up magical stories to help them escape the reality of where they are. The girls talk about owning their own dress shop when all this is over, but there is no certainty any more, just hope, that's all they have - hope.
This is a lovely story of two friends just trying to survive one of the darkest periods in history. It was well written in a sensitive manner, and the main protagonists were engaging. We're all aware of the unspeakable things that happened in Auschwitz, but because 'The Red Ribbon' falls into the YA genre we're spared the details.
On arrival at Auschwitz, families were separated - wives from husbands, babies torn from their mother's arms, and if just one sentence in this book epitomised this horror for me, it was this - 'There - already sprinkled in dust - a single shoe - for a baby's tiny foot'. Can't add anything after that.
Ella was snatched from the streets on her way home from school. She was walking in the gutter at the time, because as a Jew she wasn't allowed to walk on the pavement. In Auschwitz she is a non - person - insignificant, names are not allowed, everyone is identified by a number. She soon discovers that to stay alive she must work hard, but with watery coffee for breakfast and watery soup for supper it's difficult to maintain the energy needed to keep going. Some prisoners ( or Stripeys as they are known ) are much worse off, having the same meagre diet but with really hard physical work to carry out. However if a Stripey doesn't prove their worth they are put on a List, and everyone knows that those on the List are taken away and never seen again.
This a place where it's not just the Guards that you have to watch out for though, as there is a hierarchy among the Stripeys, and each hut as it's own boss who rules over the others.
Ella becomes friendly with some of the other girls in the sewing room, but her special friend is Rose. Rose irons the clothes in the sewing room, and is an eternal optimist, she loves making up magical stories to help them escape the reality of where they are. The girls talk about owning their own dress shop when all this is over, but there is no certainty any more, just hope, that's all they have - hope.
This is a lovely story of two friends just trying to survive one of the darkest periods in history. It was well written in a sensitive manner, and the main protagonists were engaging. We're all aware of the unspeakable things that happened in Auschwitz, but because 'The Red Ribbon' falls into the YA genre we're spared the details.
On arrival at Auschwitz, families were separated - wives from husbands, babies torn from their mother's arms, and if just one sentence in this book epitomised this horror for me, it was this - 'There - already sprinkled in dust - a single shoe - for a baby's tiny foot'. Can't add anything after that.