Inge Auerbacher is a happy German girl when the nightmare begins. Six-year-old Inge is made to wear a yellow star to identify her as a Jew. As the Nazis gain power, her family is subjected to greater and greater horrors. Their home and citizenship are taken away. Inge's relatives are sent away, and she and her parents are forced into the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Background material on Hitler, the Nazi plan, and WW II provides a helpful context for understanding Inge's experiences. But it is Inge's own story, told from a child's point of view, and sprinkled liberally with her poems, that makes this chapter of world history personal and compelling. I Am a Star will take its place among the classics of Holocaust literature-alongside such works as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Night. Narrator Suzanne Toren artistically conveys the book's full gamut of feelings-from playful innocence to utter horror.
n 1942, when she is seven, Inge Auerbacher and her family are torn from their comfortable home in Germany and sent to a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. In 1945, they are freed from the camp and emigrate to America. Their survival seems like a miracle. But once they settle in New York, Inge, who is now eleven, is imprisoned again. This time, instead of Nazi storm troopers, the enemy is within her own body. She is confined to a hospital ward for children with tuberculosis-a disease that was rampant in the camps. Beyond the Yellow Star to America is a story of rare courage, determination, and love. Told in her own words, it follows Inge's journey as she fights to survive a debilitating disease, earns a degree from Queens College, and dedicates her life to scientific research and writing. Inge Auerbacher has been featured in documentaries on the Holocaust and spends much of her time lecturing in schools as a witness to the dark period of history that branded her childhood.
