The Cat With The Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin
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List Price:
$6.95
Czech Hotels Travel Price: $6.95
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Manufacturer: Holiday House
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5318083094371
EAN: 9780823421541
ISBN: 0823421546
Label: Holiday House
Manufacturer: Holiday House
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 40
Publication Date: 2008-01-02
Publisher: Holiday House
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Studio: Holiday House
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Editorial Reviews:
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Ela Stein was eleven years old in February of 1942 when she was sent to the Terezin concentration camp with other Czech Jews. By the time she was liberated in 1945, she was fifteen. Somehow during those horrendous three-and-a-half years of sickness, terror, separation from loved ones, and loss, Ela managed to grow up. Although conditions were wretched, Ela forged lifelong friendships with other girls from Room 28 of her barracks. Adults working with the children tried their best to keep up the youngest prisoners' spirits. A children's opera called Brundibar was even performed, and Ela was chosen to play the pivotal role of the cat. Yet amidst all of this, the feared transports to death camps and death itself were a part of daily life. Full of sorrow, yet persistent in its belief that humans can triumph over evil; this unusual memoir tells the story of an unimaginable coming of age.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A 2007 Association of Jewish Libraries Notable Book for Older Readers
Comment: Author Susan Rubin presents the true story of survivor Ela Weissberger, born Ela Stein, whose family's Holocaust journey ends in Terezin, the Nazi camp famous for the art and music that was sustained there by the inmates and that was used by the Nazis to fool the Red Cross into believing they had given a model town to the Jews. Beginning at age 11, Ela survives physically by working in a garden, emotionally by bonding with the other girls in Room 28, and artistically by performing in the children's opera, Brundibar, a story of triumph over a bullying organ-grinder. Ela plays the role of the cat. Later, as an adult, she attends performances of the play around the world, telling her story and explaining how "music, art, good teachers, and friends" were her resistance against the Nazis. She also keeps in touch with the surviving girls from Room 28. Although a story about a child, the book does not shy away from describing the round-ups, deportations, transports, disappearances, disease, and starvation witnessed by Ela. Because of these harsh but accurate details, the book is not for younger readers. The abundant photos, color reproductions, and exhaustive source notes and references (a source is given for each and every quotation) make this book an outstanding resource for students of Terezin and the now-famous Brundibar. This book is a good companion to Brundibar by Maurice Sendak and Tony Kushner as well as Fireflies in the Dark: The Story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the Children of Terezin. REVIEWED BY SUSAN BERSON (DENVER, CO)
Customer Rating:
Summary: The rare younger non-fiction title
Comment: A couple of years ago, Maurice Sendak and Tony Kushner collaborated together to bring the world a picture book by the name of "Brundibar". Based on the opera that the Jewish children of the Terezin concentration camp had to sing, the book was filled to brimming with good intentions and sadly lacking in any and all factual information. It was more a labor of love than a book meant to enlighten children as to the significance of its content. When "Brundibar" came out, it felt as if it was reliant on a book that had not yet come to exist. Where oh where was the children's work of non-fiction that would tell younger kids what Terezin was, why "Brundibar" was important, and what it all meant? Three years later, Holiday House publishes Ms. Susan Goldman Rubin's, "The Cat With the Yellow Star" and a gap in children's collections everywhere is filled. And quite frankly, no other book could have felt quite as satisfying as this.
The story of young Ela Stein begins on Kristallnacht in Sudetenland, after it was annexed to Germany. Ela was eight when that terrible night occurred, and she and her family soon ran away to Czechoslovakia. Then, in 1942, Ela was sent with her mother to Terezin from their home. A converted fortress, the camp was a place where Ela and the other children who lived with her in Room 28 would secretly study, learn art, and cast themselves in the opera Brundibar. In the show, Ela was cast as The Cat and the Nazi leaders of the ghetto decided that they would use the children's show as an example to the Red Cross of how well they treated their Jewish prisoners. Of course, of the 10,632 children sent to Terezin, only 4,096 survived. Ela was one of those survivors and the book shows how she grew up, met her friends from that time period years later, and has participated in Brundibar productions ever since. The end of the book shows a magnificent series of shows performed by children and Ela's presence at them over the years.
The title is a rare creation: A children's book memoir under fifty pages. As with her other 2006 publication, "Andy Warhol: Pop Art Painter", Ms. Rubin is particularly good at writing factual biographies for younger readers. She knows that you can pen a book without growing overly reliant on chapters of fifty pages or more. As such, a lot has been left out of "The Cat With the Yellow Star". The book makes the assumption that kids reading this will already be familiar with Hitler, the Holocaust, and The Final Solution. "The Cat" concentrates primarily on Ela's tale, and explanations will not be forthcoming for those kids that don't already have some of the basics of this story down. A person could learn so much from this book too. The fact that in 1945, "the Nazis turned Terezin over to the International Red Cross" as a way of liberating the prisoners amazed me. Ela's mother even stayed on when her daughters left because she had been hired by a female Russian officer as a maid. Rubin carefully culls all the information she has been given, then keeps the book moving seamlessly from page to page. You may not be able to remember all the names of the girls as Ela befriended them, but you care for them just the same.
The level of documentation in terms of pictures, photographs, records, and images in this book is also astounding. Paintings created by the children of Room 28 are reproduced here and are sometimes able to shock because of what they leave you to figure out on your own. For example, there is a watercolor created by Ela's friend Helga called, "Arrival In Terezin" that shows families walking past a guard into the camp. Look closely at the picture and you'll see that everyone in the picture is smiling pleasantly, as if this were just a Sunday stroll in the park. Why would Helga present the people in this picture this way? Was it because she worried that the guards might see it and hurt her if they thought it was anti-Nazi propaganda? Was she just automatically making the smiles without thinking about it? Pictures of this sort raise all kinds of interesting questions suitable for debate amongst child readers. Of course, it would have been nice to be able to get a little more information from some of them. There's a photography of the "special ghetto money" printed specifically in Terezin that shows an old man with a beard holding two stone tablets with Hebrew writing on them. The bills themselves even have small stars of David on them. Why would the Germans have taken this level of care in creating money for people they were just intending to kill anyway? Was this a part of the Nazi effort to fool the Red Cross into thinking that people were being taken care of? Maybe just a little more info here and there wouldn't have been out of place.
Not that Ms. Rubin ever skimps on the quality source material. The Acknowledgments alone are worth the price of admission. Ms. Rubin's Source Notes are of equal interest, to say nothing of the excellent list of Publications, Articles, Videos/DVDs, Sound Recordings, Interviews, and Internet Sites all clearly presented and beautifully aligned. If I'm going to get picky I might suggest that Ms. Rubin could have placed her four sentence Author's Note at the beginning of the book (where it would have put everything to follow in context) rather than at the end, but that's neither here nor there.
All in all, this is a truly impressive piece of work. It pairs rather nicely with Kushner and Sendak's, "Brundibar" (which only makes sense in conjunction WITH this book, to be frank) as well as the recent Jennifer Roy title, "Yellow Star". "The Cat With the Yellow Star" really makes an effort, though, to show how life in a concentration camp wasn't the be all and end all in Ela's life. She made friends, left, created a life of her own, and is still speaking about what happened to this very day. This book is a testament to her strength, and it tells an important story to an audience that might otherwise never hear it. Certainly worth eyeing, at the very least.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: The Cat With the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin
Comment: Susan Goldman Rubin's work does much to broaden young readers' understanding of the Holocaust. Again she succeeds with this sensitive and passionate non-fiction book on a little known Holocaust era figure. While Rubin was researching for her award-winning book, Fireflies in the Dark: The Story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the Children of Terezin, she attended a performance of Brundibar, the children's opera staged at Terezin. In the elevator, she recognized Ela Weissberger as a woman who as a child had played the cat in the Terezin production. From that chance meeting, after years of communication and collaboration, this book evolved.
Using photographs, along with full-color drawings by the children of Terezin, Rubin presents a poignant, matter-of-fact account of what it was like for Ela to be a Jewish child living with fear, yet able to escape for hours at a time through the power of friendship, music, art and learning. Rubin, who also wrote The Children of Terezin (2000) for older readers, never glosses over the daily threat of transports and the fact that some of the prisoners did not survive. But she also documents that, even in that traumatic time, devoted adults and determined children could forge close bonds, using art and music to help them endure and even grow. Includes numerous interviews with Weissberger and others, detailed source notes, print and non-print resources, and an index. Ages 9-12. Reviewed by Rita Berman Frischer
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