Faces of Courage: Young Heroes of World War II

Ian A. Andrews is editor of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association’s Focus and co-author of Becoming a Teacher.

Faces of Courage contains 12 short stories about young people and groups
who resisted Nazi domination in France, Denmark, Poland, Greece, and
Germany during World War II.

A blind French boy who creates a resistance newspaper is betrayed and
sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp; but he survives and becomes a
teacher in America. A Jewish boy from Poland survives by working in
German factories before immigrating to Israel. German Mormons (the
Helmuth Hьebener Group) distribute leaflets based on BBC radio reports
to inform fellow citizens about what’s actually happening in the
war—as opposed to the Nazi-controlled propaganda that is the only
“information” available through their own country’s media. These
three stories are based on authentic episodes of survival.

The remaining nine stories are based on factual material, but use
fictional composite characters to portray documented happenings. From
the Edelweiss Pirates (young working-class Germans who refused to join
the Hitler Youth, mocking Nazis with graffiti), to a Danish girl who
helped Jewish children escape to Sweden, to a Gypsy boy who led downed
British pilots to safety across the Pyrenees, tales of selfless heroism
are told. Whether male or female, able-bodied or disabled, Jewish or
non-Jewish, the heroes had only one common denominator: their courage.

Author Sally Rogow has produced compelling stories. Her only drawback
here is the emphasis on the three “true” stories of “real”
people. Does this mean that the other stories, although based on
documentation, are not “true” and the people portrayed are not
“real”? A more careful use of terminology would correct this minor
deficiency in an otherwise very readable book for middle-school
children. Recommended.