Pausewang,+Gudrun.+Final+Journey.

__The Final Journey__ by Gudrun Pausewang, is a historical fiction book, about Alice, a Jewish girl who is growing up around 1938. This book has two main themes: courage and survival. Alice demonstrates courage when she is forced to be on the train alone because of circumstances in the book. Alice and her family demonstrate survival when they have to hide to stay alive, “…Every night Grandfather had carefully lowered the black blinds in front of the windows. ‘Against enemy bombers,’ he had said, and of course that was true, but above all it was so that no one should become aware that Jews were still living in the basement of the former ‘Jews’ house’. Not one gleam of light had ever shown outside.” This book is about Alice whose parents left her years ago when they were caught and sent to work at concentration camps. She lives with her grandparents and housekeeper in the basement because that is the safest place in the house. Her family is now in hiding because the Nazis are splitting up Jewish families and sending them east. Soon, men show up at her house and put her and her grandparents into a truck and put them on a train headed east. On the train, Alice is surrounded by women in labor, cranky children, anxious parents, and a dirty environment. In the train, there are no windows, people are diseased, and there are no lavatories. There is also no water to bathe, no provisions given, and no clue as to where you’re going. In the book, I really liked how the author wrote because he did a good job of putting a lot of detail into the main parts, such as the train ride, he made this story enjoyable to read, and made the writing very illustrative. What I did not like about the author’s writing is that the book was very short and had almost too much detail because three-quarters of the book is the train ride. This book gave me a lot of information on what it was like during World War II and I thoroughly enjoyed it, so I recommend it to anyone who likes historical fiction.

-Alexandra Bergman

Reply by Cassi Formolo: I must admit that I am not the biggest Historical Fiction fan, but this book sounds exciting. The Final Journey seems a little bit sad with Alice’s parents being taken away to a concentration camp, but it also seems intense because there is the train that Alice has no clue where it is going. Now I really want to know if she survives and where the train goes. I definitely think I am going to give this book a try.

Reply by Connie Chiang I sometimes find history books boring, but I'm really interested about what happened to the Jews in the concentration camp. I have once read a similar book, called __Number The Stars__. It also talks about Jews hiding from the Nazis, and how people helped each other in the country. It's a really sad book. __The Final Journey__ seems to be a really interesting and exciting novel. I would really like to read it.