Someone Named Eva

January 1, 2012
Gr 5-8-Milada, an 11-year-old Czech girl, and her family are caught in Nazi retaliation against their town. The girl's idyllic life ends when soldiers separate girls and women from their menfolk, detaining the women in a gymnasium that has been converted into a holding facility. Milada's grandmother pins her treasured brooch inside the girl's clothing with the admonition: "Remember who you are, Milada. Remember where you are from. Always." Girls whose physical features meet Aryan eugenic standards are trained to speak German, forego their real names, and prepare for "adoption" into German families. Milada, now named Eva, is adopted by an SS officer's family living close to the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. Her life is lush, yet sad, as she struggles to remember her name and family, perpetually faced with the lie that her parents died in an Allied attack. Eva eventually reunites with her mother, but the men and Grandmother don't survive. Rachel Botchan delivers a youthful, if overly-articulated narration. Based on a true story, Joan M. Wolf's well-researched, heart-wrenching novel (Clarion, 2007) belongs in all libraries.-"Robin Levin, Holocaust Memorial Museum Teacher/Fellow, Fort Washakie School/Community Library, WY"

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 30, 2007
German war crimes are the basis for this historical novel, Wolf’s first, more noteworthy for its subject matter than for its execution. In 1942, in the small Czech town of Lidice, 11-year-old Milada has just finished celebrating her birthday when soldiers march into town in the middle of the night and order everyone from their homes. Separated from the men and boys, held for three days in another town, Milada and selected other children undergo a series of examinations; two of them, including Milada, are eventually transported to a special school where they are given German names and educated as proper German girls, eventually to be adopted by good Nazi families (Wolf models this part of the story on the Lebensborn program). Through all her ordeals, which grow to include secret knowledge of Czech prisoners held in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, Milada struggles to maintain her identity, hiding the star-shaped garnet pin her grandmother, Babichka, pressed into her palm that last night in Lidice (“Remember who you are, Milada. Remember where you are from. Always,” Babichka tells her with the prescience of old age). The drama of the events overshadows the serviceable characterizations, and because neither the razing of Lidice, explained in an endnote, nor the Lebensborn program will be familiar to the target audience, the history propels readers forward where the storytelling does not. Ages 10-14.