The Diary of Laura's Twin: A Holocaust Remembrance Book for Young Readers.

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

Just three weeks before Laura’s bat mitzvah, her rabbi assigns her a special project: to read the diary of Sara Gittler, a young girl her own age who was imprisoned by the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust. Sara never had the chance to celebrate her own coming-of-age. Laura’s task is to learn about her life, and share her own bat mitzvah with her “twin” by speaking of her at the ceremony.

Laura undertakes the project reluctantly at first. However, as she reads, the story absorbs more and more of her time and thoughts, and she is in some ways very puzzled at its effect on her.

The diary describes Sara’s daily life in the ghetto, a world full of fear, confusion, tragedy, and, above all, courage. The insertion of installments of her diary in between Laura’s own reactions to it adds a further immediacy to the story. And from this brave story of the past, Laura finds her own courage to confront the possibility that a friend of hers might have been involved in the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in Toronto.

Kathy Kacer has written a number of books on Holocaust topics, intended for readers aged 9 to 14. The Diary of Laura’s Twin is well up to the standard of her other books, and Sara’s story is another of the many which need to be recorded for future generations. Highly recommended.