quasar's Full Review: Jane Yolen - Devil's Arithmetic
This is probably one of the hardest things I've ever written. I am not sure why I felt compelled to share all of this today, but I did so now you get to listen.
This is the story of a social outcast, a pariah singled out for no other reason than her religion. When other children were playing, laughing, having fun, she was in a corner alone. Or worse, in a crowd being laughed at. Or literally getting run over by older kids because she was Jewish and Jews don't matter and they don't really have feelings anyway. We all know children are mean. But so are adults. No, the adults do nothing to stop this. In fact, some took a particular delight in participating.
Yes people, anti-semitism is alive and well and thriving in the US. No, you won't hear much about it on television, and most people will talk a good talk in public, but I assure you that there are children to this very day being subjected to the horrors I was as a child in the 1980s growing up less than an hour from one of the largest concentrations of Jews in America. One hour from Philadelphia, in a small town that invited the Klan in to march, a small town with teachers who taught that the swastika is the symbol of Germany, a small town where people put live snakes in my mailbox and sang "The Karin family started when Mr. Karin farted they all came out retarded, the Karin family" to the tune of the Addams Family theme on the schoolbus every day.
Why am I telling you all of this? Yes there is a point, and it's not just to make you uncomfortable or to make you feel sorry for me. My point is this: We brush away tales of horrors because they are unpleasant and we don't want to think about them. Someone needs to think about them.
A while ago I agreed to participate in a writeoff where we chose an important book, reviewed it, then donated it to a library. I totally forgot about this commitment until I saw other reviews this morning by Hypotenuse, amykhar, gracef, msiduri, wovengold, soxfan, and murasaki. Oops. I went over to my bookshelf to choose a book and The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen popped out at me. It immediately brought to mind all of the stories and newsreels and movies I've see about the Holocaust. It also brought my past gushing back to the surface. I see the book and I cannot forget, even before I read a word of it.
I do not mean to compare the unpleasantness of my childhood to the Holocaust. I know there is no comparison. But to me they are intertwined. I got a glimse of the cruelty and inhumanity that still lives today, and it makes me realize just how real hatred is, and how wrong people are when they say it could never happen again.
I actually saw the movie based onThe Devil's Arithmetic before I ever read the book. It was on Showtime two years ago during Passover. I saw it without really knowing what it was about, and by the end of the movie I was sobbing. I didn't know it was based on a fairly famous children's book until a few months later when I saw the book in the store. I immediately bought it and read it that night. Again, I was in tears.
The Devil's Arithmetic is the story of Hannah Stern, a fairly well off Jew from New Rochelle who is forced to go to Seder at her grandfather's. She isn't really interested in her religion, and she finds the constant references to the Holocaust there unpleasant at best. Hannah's parents force her to go. Hannah is elected to open the door for Elijah during the Seder. When she does, she is somehow transported back to Poland of 1942. Everyone speaks Yiddish and no one is willing to accept the hushed stories they've heard about the Nazis who are starting to relocate Jews.
Hannah, now Chaya, gets transported to a concentration camp with the unsuspecting villagers soon thereafter. Chaya knows what is coming, but no one will believe her. It is too mind boggling. It cannot be true. But soon they find out it is.
The bulk of the book takes place in the camp, mostly in the women's quarters. A great deal of attention is paid to the details of life in the camps, especially how children are treated. This is a book for children about the Holocaust. It is gruesome, honest. It is not for the faint of heart, yet it is a book that I believe every child should read.
Chaya turns from a typical American thirteen year old (whatever that is) to an integral part of the network of camp residents all managing to "organize" little treats like worn out shoes and bits of extra food. Camp life is difficult, and very removed from reality. No one dies, they are processed. There is a sense throughout that if the words aren't spoken then it isn't real. No one publicly spoke of death. People just didn't return at the end of the day. This is an important point, I think the most important point. This book really highlights how something can not exist if it isn't talked about. If no one knows something bad is happening then it isn't happening - unless you are the unfortunate person it is happening to, in which case it is all too real.
Remembering is an important theme of the book in another way as well. At times Chaya not only has difficulty remembering where she came from in Poland, but she also forgets her life in America and the knowledge she has about the future. She is constantly struggling to remember, to not forget. In many ways she loses her identity. Life in the camp is about surviving one day at a time, one killing at a time, one quota at a time. It was all about numbers. X number of people must die to make room for more people who will most likely also die. It truly is the Devil's arithmetic. Surviving one day plus another day plus another day until the devil calls you out and you die. It's Russian roulette with five bullets and someone else holding the trigger.
When I was younger I was fascinated by the Holocaust. I read every book, watched every movie, went to the two or three museums I could. These were adult books, adult movies, adult exhibits. They held nothing back, they painted horrible pictures of unthinkable events. That is as it should be, for their subject was horrible. The Devil's Arithmetic is no less powerful, but it has a different focus. It shows how one girl, one person was affected. Someone initially more interested in hanging out with her friends than going to a family gathering. Someone most children can identify with. By telling her story, the Holocaust becomes personal, a living breathing evil we can still feel. It makes it less likely for today's children to forget. I know I will never forget Chaya and The Devil's Arithmetic. You shouldn't either.
Hannah resents the traditions of her Jewish heritage until time travel places her in the middle of a small Jewish village in Nazi-occupied Poland.More at Barnes & Noble.com
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