Book Description
for When the Soldiers Were Gone by Vera W. Propp
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
During World War II, eight-year-old Henk had always felt secure growing up as the youngest child in a Dutch farm family. But as soon as the war had ended, his lifewas suddenly turned upside-down when a man and a woman arrivde in a wagon, claiming to be his parents, and took him home to Germany. Although Henk doesn’t initially remember anything about his life as a small Jewish boy named Benjamin, he comes to a gradual understanding of his situation, as will young readers: the family in Holland were actually family friends who had been hiding him from the Nazis. Children will not need to have any prior knowledge of the Holocaust to understand Benjamin’s story. Propp skillfully provides just enough background information, little by little, to unfold this spare novel, based on a true story. (Ages 8-11)
CCBC Choices 2000. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2000. Used with permission.