The Anne Frank Case: Simon Wiesenthal's Search for the Truth

Front Cover
Holiday House, Incorporated, 2009 - Juvenile Nonfiction - 40 pages
The postWorld War II publication of Anne Frank's diary made her the icon for all the murdered Jewish children during the Holocaust. In 1958, an Austrian performance of the play based on the diary was disrupted by teenage neo-Nazis who had been taught that the Holocaust was a fraud. Simon Wiesenthal was a Holocaust survivor who gathered information about the whereabouts of Nazis in order to bring them to justice. Called to the theater, he vowed to find the Gestapo officer who had arrested the Frank family, thus proving that the diary was not a fake. This lengthy picture book carefully details the horrors of Wiesenthal's life, from ghetto to concentration camps to liberation, and emphasizes the phenomenal memory that made possible his determination to"tell what it was really like." It is a painstaking, long, frustrating piece of detection, hampered by postwar political realities and aided by phone books. Rubin, who has authored other titles on the Holocaust, has crafted another notable contribution. Farnsworth's full-page paintings in dark hues are stark and haunting. (author's note, resources, glossary) (Picture book/biography. 10 up)(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

About the author (2009)

Susan Goldman Rubin is the author of the award-winning "Fireflies in the Dark" (Holiday House) and "Searching for Anne Frank" (Harry N. Abrams. She wrote this book at the suggestion of her friend and colleague, Adaire Klein, the archivist at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, California, where the actual flag is on display.

Bill Farnsworth has been illustrating books for more than twenty years. Among the many books he has illustrated for children are The Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate by Janice Cohn, Mississippi Going North by Sanna Anderson Baker, and THE BUFFALO jump by Peter Roop. He is a resident of Venice, Florida.

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