4 out of 4 stars
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Roses in a Forbidden Garden: A Holocaust Love Story is an absolute must read. This is the inspirational survival story of a young, Jewish girl at a time when Jews were an Enemy of the State. The persecution starts off subtly enough. First, you call the Jews names and blame all your problems on them. Next, you ban them from going to school. After that, you make them wear stars identifying them as Jews, remove them from their homes, and relocate them so that they are all together. The final step is to use them as slave labor and kill off the ones that are not productive enough. So how does one not only survive this but manage to find true love? That is what we learn in this story.
This story follows the life of a young girl named Inge Katz as well as her family. We start off in November of 1938. Inge is no longer allowed to attend school, but she and her cousin Ruthie have found employment as apprentices. They work as seamstresses in a shop that makes dresses and dream of one day opening their own shop. The war grows ever closer, though, and the two girls are eventually separated. Inge finds herself in a labor camp called Theresienstadt along with her mother, father, and grandmother. She tries to stay upbeat, but every day is a struggle simply to stay alive.
This book is written by Elise Garibaldi, who is the granddaughter of Inge Katz. Because this is written by a family member one might expect the book to be of a lower quality or have many errors, but this is not the case. Ms. Garibaldi does a wonderful job relating all that her grandmother went through. The book is professionally written and edited making it very easy to read. In fact, Ms. Garibaldi does a great job capturing the thoughts and feelings as well as the general mood of that time. For instance, Inge is packing to leave her family home. She is scared but trying to remain positive for her family’s sake. Despite the fear, Inge takes the time to make sure that she packs matching shoes to go with her outfits. It’s the little details like this that make the story come to life.
I also enjoyed the pictures that were scattered throughout this book. There are pictures of Inge Katz, her cousin Ruthie, as well as others. My favorite picture was of Ruthie and Inge wearing hats that they made out of scraps left over from work. These images help to put faces to the names given in the book which again brings the whole story closer to home.
As I stated earlier Roses in a Forbidden Garden is a very well-written book with few errors. I must applaud Elise Garibaldi and her editor as they have left me with very little to discuss as far as the negatives of this novel. The only thing I can say is that there are a few formatting errors such as the caption on a picture being forced to the next page instead of directly underneath it. However, these are barely worth mentioning and in no way detract from the book.
Overall, I rate this book a 4 out of 4 stars. I highly recommend this book to everyone. Yes it talks about atrocities from history, but even in the midst of all that was going on, there was hope and optimism. I can only hope that the sharing and reading of stories such as this will keep this kind of cruelty from reoccurring!
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Roses in a Forbidden Garden
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