Review: Chance: Escape from the Holocaust
Chance: Escape from the Holocaust by Uri Shulevitz Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Rachel Fremmer Buy at Bookshop.org Chance: Escape from the Holocaust by Uri Shulevitz is a tour de force, a culmination of his life’s work, in which he traces his family’s journey from Poland to various locations in the Soviet Union during World War II. In direct, simple, and yet beautiful prose, he matter-of-factly recounts the horrors and the hunger - such hunger! - of those days. The book also traces his personal evolution as an artist, reader, and writer. In a particularly appropriate choice of words, he says that, as a refugee, his “only refuge was drawing” and that drawing was his “home.” The title of the book reflects Shulevitz’s belief - dare I say theology? - that he and his parents were saved by chance alone. He asks why he and his non-observant parents were saved while his deeply devout grandfather was not and concludes “I have no answers.” This philosophy, hard for anyone to accept, ma...