What World is Left

Polak, Monique. What World is Left. 2008. 215p. ISBN 978-1-55143-847-4. Available as an eBook from Overdrive.

In the First World War the Dutch were neutral, and they fully to retain the same status if Germany went to war against France and England again. Only that wasn’t the case, and Hitler’s armies invaded Holland, Belgium and France. The Dutch bravely resisted for five days but then surrendered in the face of overwhelming force. Suddenly, the Jewish population of the Netherlands was under Nazi subjugation.

For Anneke Van Raalte and her family, life doesn’t change much at first. Sure, there are food shortages, and they now have to wear the yellow star, but her father still works as an artist for the newspaper. Soon, however, strict rules are implemented. Her father loses his job, and the entire family receives orders to report to the train station to be deported to a Nazi model city for Jews, Theresienstadt.

Packed in cattle wagons, Anneke can’t believe that things will get worse. But concentration camp life is hard on her and her little brother. Working hard every day, Anneke soon loses hope of ever seeing freedom again. As more and more people are brought into the camp, trains collect even more people to take them to the East, and an uncertain fate spoken in whispers. As the tide of war turns and Germany is put on the defensive first on the Eastern Front, then in the West with the Allied landing, German leaders attempt to put a better public face on their camps. The Danish Red Cross requests a visit to Theresienstadt, and Anneke’s father is coerced into participating in the sprucing up of the camp with new paints and “public works” that will make life appear better than it is.

While this bold faced lie the Nazis purport to present to the world bothers Anneke, her father’s participation in this propaganda effort bothers her more. What is more important? Keeping one’s family alive at all costs, even if it means helping the enemy conceal the true conditions of the camp, or stand up for what is right, even if it may cost you your life? Anneke has a life or death choice to make if she hopes to survive the war.

Partially based on the life of the author’s mother in Theresienstadt during the Second World War, Anneke’s story is one of survival and its costs. For another story of Dutch citizens caught in the webs of the Second World War, take a look at The Girl with the Blue Coat. Monique Polak also wrote a great contemporary story about a girl who loves boxing, Straight Punch.