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07/30/2004    
S. M. Smoller     e-mail

     This book is called Torn Thread. It is a novel fictionally written by Anne Isaacs.  This book is about a girl named Eva, her father and her two sisters.  It is 1943 in Poland and the Nazis have occupied it for two years.  Eva and her two sisters have been sent to Czechoslovakia to a work camp.  Eva's family have been taken from their home in Poland and have been forced to move into a tiny attic room in a Jewish ghetto.
     The setting of the book takes place in a Nazi work camp in Czechoslovakia for Jewish people.  Also it takes place in Eva's new home, which is a tiny room in the attic of an apartment building in a Jewish ghetto.  Eva is forced to work in terrible conditions while make uniforms and blankets for the German soldiers.  Eva is forced to sit at her work bench and spin thread all day at her loud machine.  At the end of a very long day, Eva gets to go home where she can share scraps of food with her family and other families that live in the ghetto.
     Eva is important in the story because the story is about her life.  Eva is twelve years old, she is Jewish and she is mentally strong.  She has high hopes of becoming free from the German soldiers.  Eva is a positive person and is always optimistic about her future.  Although she has to work long hours at the thread machine, she remains positive with her hopes that she will one day be free again. But even though she remains strong, she sometimes becomes torn like the threads on her sewing machine.
     When all the workers were let out of the factory for the day, a winter storm had been brewing.  Eva and her sisters were walking home to the ghetto when a strong wind came through and Eva's youngest sister, Rachel, was nearly lifted off the ground by the wind. 
      Rachel asked, "Could I be blown away?"
     Eva replied, "You won't be blown away, but hold to my hand tight."
      Eva and her sisters saw a Nazi truck pull up and they thought they were going to be taken away to the concentration camps, but the soldiers were just taking them to the different ghetto neighborhoods because of the storms.
     I though this book was excellent because it tells what life was like for people during the Holocaust and it told of the many hardships that they had to go through just to survive every day life.  The reading audience that this book would appeal to would be anybody that likes history and would like to learn about what happened to Jewish people during the Holocaust years.