Author's family story illuminates Holocaust horrors
Jennifer Roy, author of the award-winning book, Yellow Star Syvia, will participate in a conversation on campus Tuesday, April 13. Scheduled to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, the event is scheduled at 5:30 p.m. in the Intercultural Center, Case Center. Admission is free and open to all.
Yellow Star Syvia is the story of a young Jewish girl living in Poland. When the Nazis invade, Syvia's family is forced to move into the Lodz Ghetto. For more than five years Syvia, her parents, and sister Dora struggle to survive horrific conditions and Nazi brutality. Yellow Star is based on the true story of Roy's Aunt Syvia, who spent her childhood in the Lodz Ghetto. While a quarter of a million Jews entered the ghetto, only 800 were left alive when liberation came in 1945. Twelve of the survivors were children, including Roy's aunt.
Yellow Star provides readers a rare look at family life inside the Lodz Ghetto. Syvia's story is profoundly moving, suspenseful, uplifting, even humorous. And it really happened.
The book won a number of awards, including the 2006 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, a 2007 Sydney Taylor Book Awards Honor Book citation, a 2007 citation as an ALA Notable Children's Book, being named a 2006 National Jewish Book Awards Finalist, the 2006 School Library Journal "Best Book," and in 2006, included among the New York Public Library "100 Titles for Reading and Sharing."
This conversation is a part of the Religious Life Dialogues that are co-sponsored by the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, the Office of Jewish Student Life, and Interfaith Programming. As with all of such dialogues, there will be a light vegetarian meal served.
