Review: Remember My Story: A Girl, A Holocaust Survivor, and a Friendship That Made History

Remember My Story: A Girl, A Holocaust Survivor, and a Friendship That Made History

by Claire Sarnowski with Sarah Durand

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2024

Category: Middle Grade

Reviewer: Sandy Wasserman

Buy at Bookshop.org

This book is a treasure! It’s the story of the unlikeliest of friendships. The author, Claire Sarnowski, a Christian girl, started a friendship with Alter Wiener when she was only 9 years old, invited by her aunt to hear a Holocaust survivor who was then 89 years old, speak in their very non-Jewish community in Oregon.

Soon after they meet, a bond forms between Claire and Alter, a survivor of five work camps and concentration camps. He shares his life story with Claire through their meetings during her middle and high school years, and during those visits she shares her own daily issues with him, speaking frankly as best friends would. She learns from him that just as her education is beginning, it coincides with the time when Alter’s formal education ended abruptly in Poland at age 14 when he was enslaved. He leaves nothing left to the imagination regarding his daily life during the years he lost everything and she is a patient, empathetic listener. They laugh and cry together.

There are additional parts to Claire’s story as an activist, all inspirited by this friendship. As they sit and chat, she relates to Alter incidents of antisemitism that have occurred at school, and together they discuss how to deal with them. She learns that Oregon does not have mandated Holocaust education; only ten states did at that time. The book describes how she and Alter work together to change things and Oregon becomes the eleventh state, with both of them invited to speak before the Oregon state legislature. Claire explains how they accomplished this and her feelings about it, in a manner that a middle school reader can totally understand and replicate.

I remain in awe of this young woman, both as an author at age 20 and as an educator, because this book can do much to create conversations on how to deal with antisemitism and all kinds of hate. Though we learn that sadly Alter dies by the end of the book, at 92 and because of a car accident, his life and story are not over. Claire has internalized Alter's story and transports it to each reader of the book.

The book is catalogued and shelved in the history section but is part memoir, part autobiography, part Holocaust history, part ‘how to deal with antisemitism and bullying in schools,' part civics education.  This book definitely falls into the category of Jewish representation, as a Holocaust story alone and as an inspiration for readers to follow in the author’s footsteps, to be an activist for Holocaust education. It speaks to a middle grade child in language they can relate to, and can inspire so much.

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Reviewer Sandy Wasserman is a retired teacher of Gifted and Talented students. She taught for 35 years in both public schools and at a Solomon Schechter Day School. She's a wife, mother of two adult daughters, and grandmother to two fantastic 'first readers' of her manuscripts. Her published book, The Sun's Special Blessing [2009], was her first serendipitous and fun experience in the publishing world. She loves to read and swim, though not at the same time.