Sunday, January 25, 2009

Hitler Youth : Growing up in Hitler's Shadow

Guten Morgan, (good morning in german)
After giving out the "book of the month" award, it is time to start anew. Next month's award most likely will be given on Monday, February 23.
Anyway. After reading The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, I couldn't help but want to know more about the holocaust, and to know how historically accurate the book was. In order to find out, I went to the young adults non-fiction book (as I usually read mostly children's books) Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler's Shadow, by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. In this absolutely horrifying book, Bartoletti describes some of the brainwashing that Hitler used on many teenagers of Germany, in order to gain their support and self sacrifice. To think that teenagers died happily for Germany, thinking that what Hitler was doing is right, and that Germans are the best people, and all others are inferior is quite scary.

I do not rate non-fiction due to the fact thet there is no storyline to rate.
Ages 13 and up
I just wanted to mention that I usually do not recommend that children undar a certain age SHOULD NOT read something, as I believe that if people do not know what mistakes were made in the past may make them again (this is why I am such an anti-censorship advocate), I don't think that this book is approriate for kids younger than at least 11, due to the horrors within.

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