Faraway Home

Karl and Rosa's family watch in horror as Hitler's troops parade down the
streets of their home city -- Vienna. It has become very dangerous to be a Jew
in Austria, and after their uncle is sent to Dachau, Karl and Rosa's parents
decide to send the children out of the country on a Kindertransport, one of the
many ships carrying refugee children away from Nazi danger.
Isolated and homesick, Karl ends up in Millisle, a run-down farm in Ards in
Northern Ireland, which has become a Jewish refugee centre, while Rosa is
fostered by a local family.

Hard work on the farm keeps Karl occupied, although he still waits desperately
for any news from home. Then he makes friends with locals Peewee and Wee Billy,
and also with the girls from neutral Dublin who come to help on the farm,
especially Judy. But Northern Ireland is in the war too, with rationing and
air-raid warnings, and, in April 1941 the bombs of the Belfast Blitz bring the
reality of war right to their doorstep.

And for Karl and Rosa and the other refugees there is the constant fear that
they may never see their parents again.

Based on a true story -- there was a refugee farm at Millisle and among its
occupants was a young boy called Karl.
Children's Literature
In 1938, shortly after the Nazis declared their intentions against the Jews
with Kristallnacht, Jewish parents in Naziheld countries were forced to make an
unconscionable choice. The choice (which was not a choice at all) was to send
their children on the socalled Kindertransports, trains that carried infants to
seventeenyearolds to safe havens in Great Britain. Ten thousand Jewish children
were fostered out or placed in hostels throughout the British Isles, including
some sent to a working farm in Northern Ireland. There is an intriguing story
in this situation, Jewish children finding safe haven in the unlikely oasis of
Protestant Ireland. Karl and his little sister, Rosa, are two of the children
who are separated in their new country. Rosa, adorable and young enough to be
appealing, is quickly taken in by a wealthy family who showers her with
material things, but cannot deal with her homesickness. Karl is sent to a
working farm, and it is his adjustment to a new country, culture and language
with which readers will more easily identify. Karl carries the additional
burden of being old enough to feel responsibility and guilt for the family he
left behind in Austria. It is this 'survivor's guilt' which is the most
captivating part of Karl's character. There are, however, some problems with
the book. In an effort to acquaint the reader with the progression of events
that led to the Nazi's ascension to power, Taylor resorts to cramming history
lessons into the character's casual conversation. It is not an appealing form
of exposition. Also, the character of Judy, Karl's Irish Jewish girlfriend, is
a stereotyped princess who evolves, rather unbelievably, into a good sport and
adept farmhandin just a chapter or two. Another problem is the cover art which
shows two children who appear, at most, to be age ten. These youngsters
couldn't possibly be the emotionally involved adolescents Taylor describes in
her story. Despite these flaws, this is a new chapter of history to be added to
World War II study guides, one where the question might be posed, 'What if this
happened to you?' 1999, O'Brien Press, Ages 10 to 14, $7.95. Reviewer: Lois
Rubin Gross

KLIATT
This Irish import offers a fictionalized account of the way some European
Jewish refugee children escaped the Holocaust through the Kindertransport
project to Northern Ireland. Faithful to the details and events of the time,
Taylor is less successful in rendering fiction from her facts; there is a
paucity of character development and the plot plows along without thematic
tensions explored or motifs expanding it from story line to story. She does
provide an accessible version of the dynamic issues faced both by a refugee
teen and by an Irish teen. Karl, a thirteen-year-old from an assimilated
middle-class Viennese family, arrives aboard one of the war's last
Kindertransports in charge of his seven-year-old sister Rosa. He has already
witnessed the breaking of his once-vibrant uncle at the hands of the Nazis and
knows that his parents are in grave danger. In Ireland, he is among a large
group of older refugee children placed on a working farm while Rosa is to be
fostered by a childless couple. Judy, an Irish-Jewish girl from Dublin, is sent
to the farm while her older sister recuperates from tuberculosis. Judy and Karl
vary in their experiences with and understanding of the war, of course, but
their personalities, too, are considerably different. Taylor doesn't develop
the viewpoints of these two main characters so much as she reports on their
actions across time, with minimal reference to their perceptions of each
other's apparent changes. A lot happens to and through these characters: Karl
protects Rosa from the probable reality of their family's demise, Judy becomes
less self-centered, and together they befriend an Irish Catholic family that
has no awareness of what being Jewishmeans (understanding only that one is
either Protestant or Catholic), and so on. Because the factual history is
interesting and little known, especially to younger readers, it is"