Hania’s War

WWII as experienced by a perceptive and wise child. We follow eight-year-old Hania/Ania to a small cellar in the Warsaw Ghetto, where she reads Gone with the Wind in Polish. Saved from the Nazis by being spirited away to a convent, she survives the fall of Warsaw and flees to Germany with a nun and another Jewish child. There they find temporary but tenuous safety as farm workers. Frequently required to make life or death decisions, Hania keeps a cool head and a sense of self-worth which is nothing short of heroic. As gripping as a thriller and beautifully written.