Education Insights • 2024 • Volume 2 • Issue 1 32 private pain. Rosel is equally captivated by David, a Jewish boy whose entire family was murdered at Auschwitz. David pours out his grief and loneliness in his daily clarinet solos, and Rosel finds comfort in the mournful music that is also somehow hopeful. While she finds comfort in these new relationships, Rosel’s family relationships are central to her story. Each one has helped her to survive and has impacted her in a way that allows her to move forward. Her little sister Eleonore is her example of hope against all odds. In the years of their separation from Papa, Eleonore never loses faith that they will be reunited again. In her mother, Mutti, Rosel sees someone who has grown stronger through hardship. At first Mutti is frantic and incapable of making decisions, but she becomes the steady and determined rock that both Rosel and Eleonore need to make it through. Throughout their endless trek around Germany as they search for safety and Papa, Mutti takes out her battered copy of the Scriptures before they go to sleep every night and reads a favorite passage: “[Rosel] wondered if Mutti’s quiet humility and faith had allowed her to endure when so many others more able than her had fallen.”1 Perhaps Papa has the greatest influence on Rosel, since it was he who instilled in her the sense of her American identity. Even as a young girl, she is conscious of how her American ways set her apart from her German relatives. She is often chided for questioning adults and for expressing herself too boldly, but she is unapologetic and proud. After all, her Papa had encouraged this American spirit. Though she must keep her citizenship a secret during the war, her dream of returning home never dies, and as feeble as Papa becomes after the war, he has also kept the dream alive. Rosel realizes that he has passed on the responsibility of guiding the family back home to her. American Shoes captures a real story with its horrors and nightmares, but it still provides hope. The harsh realities of war and, in particular, the descriptions of atrocities committed against Jews make this appropriate for readers aged 13 and up with caution, as it contains mild profanity and veiled suggestive themes. The extensive backmatter includes an epilogue, the authors’ personal reflections and acknowledgements, questions for discussion, a glossary of German words, and the authors’ commentary on historical events. Although organizations such as the United States Holocaust Museum and the Jewish Virtual Library are named as sources for the extensive research that took place, the inclusion of a bibliography would have been beneficial. American Shoes: A Refugee’s Story is a worthy addition to the myriad of books on World War II. It presents a unique perspective since few books describe the war as experienced by ordinary Germans. Rosel’s story examines human endurance in the worst of circumstances, as well as the people and ideals we turn to as sources of hope and deliverance. 1 Rosemarie Lengsfeld Turke and Garrett L. Turke, American Shoes: A Refugee’s Story (Portland: Beyond Words, 2022), 220.
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