Book Review Module 1

Orlev,Uri. Run, Boy, Run. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. ISBN 0-618-16465-0
Originally published in Hebrew, the book was translated by Hillel Halkin.

Summary
Run, Boy, Run is the story of a young Jewish boy hiding from the Nazis during World War II. Eight year old Srulik Frydman is taken with his family from their Polish village to the ghetto in Warsaw. Srulik and his mother are trying to find food in a dumpster when Srulik becomes separated from her. When soldiers discover him, he escapes into the woods. Amazingly Srulik finds his father on the run and his father tells him that he must do whatever it takes to survive. He must change his name and learn to act like a Christian. Srulik becomes Jurek Staniak, a Polish orphan, rather than a Jewish boy on the run. Will his new identity help him survive the war?

Analysis
Srulik is told to forget his identity as a Jewish boy, but there are cultural markers that prevent him from hiding it. He is told never to take his pants off. Srulik doesn't understand why and it is explained to him that only Jews are circumcised. This cultural marker comes up several times in the story. When he knocks on a farmhouse door, half-dead, a woman gives him a bath and feeds him. He was afraid that she would not help him after giving him a bath. Later in the story when Srulik injures his arm a doctor in the hospital refuses to operate on his arm because he is Jewish. Eventually he develops gangrene and his arm is amputated. At the end of the story when Srulik is taken to a children's home for Jewish orphans, the fact that he is circumcised convinces them that he is Jewish.

Most Holocaust books are very emotional, but this book is not. The book is written in a very matter of fact way. The boy doesn't expand on his emotions or even explain how he feels. It feels more like the boy is just trying to survive and doesn't have time to sort out his feelings.

Amazingly, this book is based on a true story. Srulik Frydman (Jurek Staniak) grew up and moved to Israel where he became a college professor. The author of this story, Uri Orlev, heard the story and was moved to tears. He decided to write about it. Orlev is a Polish man who spent time in the Warsaw ghetto as a child. In 1943 he was taken with his brother and aunt to Bergen-Belsen Concentration camp. After the war, he went to Paris with other orphaned children and eventually to Israel. Besides being interesting and well written, the experiences of the author, Uri Orlev, help make this book very authentic.

Review Excerpts
"Part survival adventure, part Holocaust history, these novels tell their story through the eyes of a Polish orphan on the run from the Nazis. Orlev is a Holocaust survivor, and his award-winning novels about being a child in the Warsaw ghetto, including The Man from the Other Side (1991), are widely read. This new story is not based on his own experience, but it does come from real life--the experience of an illiterate ghetto survivor who escaped into the Polish countryside, stealing, foraging, begging, working (Hazel Rochman, 2003)."

"Orlev tells his tale with few flourishes, the straightforward narration oddly unemotional; it is through Srulik/Jurek's actions that the reader divines his inner state, not narrative revelation. As declarative sentence leads to declarative sentence, the story marches to its conclusion, Srulik/Jurek's ultimate inability to sort out his own fact from the fiction he has been living speaking quiet volumes (Kirkus Reviews, 2003.)"

Connections
This book can be used in a Holocaust unit. Many Holocuast stories for kids take place in concentration camps and this book doesn't. it can be used to compare and contrast different World War II experiences.

Works Cited
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2003 (Vol. 71, No. 20).

Rochman, Hazel. 2003. Booklist, Oct. 15, 2003 (Vol. 100, No. 4).