What do you think?
Rate this book
Signs of Survival: A Memoir of the Holocaust
RENEE: I was ten years old then, and my sister was eight. The responsibility was on me to warn everyone when the soldiers were coming because my sister and both my parents were deaf.
I was my family's ears.
Meet Renee and Herta, two sisters who faced the unimaginable -- together. This is their true story.
As Jews living in 1940s Czechoslovakia, Renee, Herta, and their parents were in immediate danger when the Holocaust came to their door. As the only hearing person in her family, Renee had to alert her parents and sister whenever the sound of Nazi boots approached their home so they could hide.
But soon their parents were tragically taken away, and the two sisters went on the run, desperate to find a safe place to hide. Eventually they, too, would be captured and taken to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Communicating in sign language and relying on each other for strength in the midst of illness, death, and starvation, Renee and Herta would have to fight to survive the darkest of times.
This gripping memoir, told in a vivid "oral history" format, is a testament to the power of sisterhood and love, and now more than ever a reminder of how important it is to honor the past, and keep telling our own stories.
I was my family's ears.
Meet Renee and Herta, two sisters who faced the unimaginable -- together. This is their true story.
As Jews living in 1940s Czechoslovakia, Renee, Herta, and their parents were in immediate danger when the Holocaust came to their door. As the only hearing person in her family, Renee had to alert her parents and sister whenever the sound of Nazi boots approached their home so they could hide.
But soon their parents were tragically taken away, and the two sisters went on the run, desperate to find a safe place to hide. Eventually they, too, would be captured and taken to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Communicating in sign language and relying on each other for strength in the midst of illness, death, and starvation, Renee and Herta would have to fight to survive the darkest of times.
This gripping memoir, told in a vivid "oral history" format, is a testament to the power of sisterhood and love, and now more than ever a reminder of how important it is to honor the past, and keep telling our own stories.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published November 2, 2021
129 people are currently reading
4628 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 425 reviews
March 29, 2022
LOVED:
TRUE story of the rarely shared about the Deaf community in WW2
The sisterhood. Renee had to make adult decisions for her and Herta at such an early age.
The girls’ courage and spunk. I laughed at what they told the Nazis!
LIKED:
Both girls’ perspectives.
The after story of them going back to the area and finding closure.
MEH:
The transitions were sometimes choppy and jarring.
TRUE story of the rarely shared about the Deaf community in WW2
The sisterhood. Renee had to make adult decisions for her and Herta at such an early age.
The girls’ courage and spunk. I laughed at what they told the Nazis!
LIKED:
Both girls’ perspectives.
The after story of them going back to the area and finding closure.
MEH:
The transitions were sometimes choppy and jarring.
January 23, 2023
I wanted to love this book, but while I appreciate the story within... it fell a bit flat.
And look, it's not surprising. This book isn't your typical memoir. Basically, it's a transcript from a video interview with the older sister in this story. Unfortunately, it reads like it.
I get why they chose to do it, but I don't think it worked well.
That said, I think this is an incredibly important story and I am glad I read it. Stories from survivors are important--to be told, to be written down, to be read, and to be kept safe. We can only learn from history if it's there for us to know.
And look, it's not surprising. This book isn't your typical memoir. Basically, it's a transcript from a video interview with the older sister in this story. Unfortunately, it reads like it.
I get why they chose to do it, but I don't think it worked well.
That said, I think this is an incredibly important story and I am glad I read it. Stories from survivors are important--to be told, to be written down, to be read, and to be kept safe. We can only learn from history if it's there for us to know.
August 7, 2021
Such an important piece of history that should never be lost or forgotten. Heavy content carefully crafted for ages 8-12 with pictures that help humanize during a time when a major goal was to dehumanize.
January 5, 2022
As an adult, this was a quick, yet powerful and raw read about two sisters and their memoir of living through the Holocaust. As a teacher, this is a great book to use with students (especially my DHH students) when they are learning about World War II and the experiences that people went through.
May 18, 2023
Esta historia es relato sobre el Holocausto nazi contada por Joshua a través de los vídeos que se publicaron de los sobrevivientes contando su historia, entre ellos estaban Renee y su hermana.
Es un historia muy cortita y que va directamente al grano, no entra en muchos detalles, pero refleja muy bien la historia de las hermanas y por todo lo que pasaron.
Es no es muy dura, lo cual la hace perfecta para los más jóvenes, les acerca a lo que fue todo aquel horror y cómo lo vivieron ellas sin necesitad de que lo pasen mal y se les haga pesado, ya sabéis que estas historias suelen un poco descriptivas y hacen bastante pupa.
Es un historia muy cortita y que va directamente al grano, no entra en muchos detalles, pero refleja muy bien la historia de las hermanas y por todo lo que pasaron.
Es no es muy dura, lo cual la hace perfecta para los más jóvenes, les acerca a lo que fue todo aquel horror y cómo lo vivieron ellas sin necesitad de que lo pasen mal y se les haga pesado, ya sabéis que estas historias suelen un poco descriptivas y hacen bastante pupa.
December 17, 2022
Not only did Renee have to grow up during a time where the Germans were making the Jews’ lives hell, but she was the only hearing person in her family. At ten years old, it would have been a huge responsibility for Renee to have to be relied on to warn the rest of her family if the Germans were coming. Not to mention the annoyance of having her little sister following her around all the time. At Renee’s age, I can imagine her wanting to spend some time with her own friends, alone, but with her sister being the only deaf kid in their town, she didn’t have her own friends to play with.
It was a brave move for Renee to make to willingly turn her and her sister into the police as Jews, but I get it. They had nowhere else to go and they were probably missing their parents terribly. I don’t know how the Germans did their paperwork at this time, but trying to locate their parents to send them to the same camp was surely close to impossible. They likely just put them on a truck to send them away and simply told them it was going to take them to their parents.
When the Holocaust ended, and Herta got to go to her first school for the deaf, I think it was probably good for both her and Renee that for once they were living in different towns. Nether of these kids had ever been to school before because the Nazis had prevented it from the Jewish kids, and with Herta being the only deaf kid in her hometown, she always tagged along with her big sister because no one else knew how to communicate with her. Finally having some time apart to both make their own friends and just grow as separate individuals was probably a very positive thing for them at the time.
It was a brave move for Renee to make to willingly turn her and her sister into the police as Jews, but I get it. They had nowhere else to go and they were probably missing their parents terribly. I don’t know how the Germans did their paperwork at this time, but trying to locate their parents to send them to the same camp was surely close to impossible. They likely just put them on a truck to send them away and simply told them it was going to take them to their parents.
When the Holocaust ended, and Herta got to go to her first school for the deaf, I think it was probably good for both her and Renee that for once they were living in different towns. Nether of these kids had ever been to school before because the Nazis had prevented it from the Jewish kids, and with Herta being the only deaf kid in her hometown, she always tagged along with her big sister because no one else knew how to communicate with her. Finally having some time apart to both make their own friends and just grow as separate individuals was probably a very positive thing for them at the time.
May 30, 2023
3,5 ✶ ✶
March 31, 2024
This is a different perspective of the Holocaust that I appreciate, and told in a voice that is great for young readers. I like that this true story, transcribed from a 1979 video testimony, can be heard at Yale's Fortunoff Video Archive.
Read
April 11, 2025Very powerful story about two sisters, one Deaf and one hearing, who shared un unbreakable bond during the Nazi occupation of Bratislava and their time at Bergen-Belsen. This book was written with young readers in mind, and it does a good job at not shying away from the truth but framing things factually and briefly for kids to safely understand. I was very lucky to first hear about this story through the Teach the Shoah event hosted at Flower Mound Public Library where Renee's story about the Nazi boots was performed from memory.
January 22, 2022
This is a piece of oral history transcribed into a book. Two sisters, one deaf, share their experiences as Jews under Nazi rule. It's not too graphic.
2022 A book by a living author 70 or older
2022 A book by a living author 70 or older
March 29, 2022
Powerful, authentic and strong sign language and deaf culture. You may need a tissue as it's true, sad story.
June 9, 2024
3.50 ★
a devasting memoir of the author & her deaf sister surviving the holocaust but the formatting made it extremely choppy & disjointed.
it's also worth mentioning that the author & her husband's efforts to record survivor testimonies are truly incredible and commendable 💛 history is doomed to be repeated if not recorded for us to learn
➸ Trigger warnings for .
▷ Representation: Deaf & Jewish Slovakian authors.
Blog • Trigger Warning Database • StoryGraph
a devasting memoir of the author & her deaf sister surviving the holocaust but the formatting made it extremely choppy & disjointed.
it's also worth mentioning that the author & her husband's efforts to record survivor testimonies are truly incredible and commendable 💛 history is doomed to be repeated if not recorded for us to learn
➸ Trigger warnings for .
▷ Representation: Deaf & Jewish Slovakian authors.
Blog • Trigger Warning Database • StoryGraph
January 16, 2023
Signs of Survival is both a brief account of the Holocaust and also packed with info, and it makes me want more of their stories in an adult nonfiction book. That a deaf child survived Bergen-Belsen when the Nazis wanted to use her for experimentation is nothing short of amazing. This is a great introduction to the Holocaust for young readers and a unique memoir as there aren't many if any, from those who are differently abled. This might just be one of my many soapboxes, but I can make a pretty solid case for why sign language should be offered in schools and not just offered at the college level. Also, something helpful to know before going into this is that it's transcribed from video recordings, which helps explain the brevity.
Read
July 17, 2022“The Holocaust was a tragedy so vast, so immense, that even those who experienced it have a hard time accepting what their eyes have seen.”
So interested to read at the conclusion of the book that the story itself was the interview of Renee by Yale University.
“This book is an attempt to restore to Renee and Herta the voices, identities, and memories that the Nazis sought to destroy.”
So interested to read at the conclusion of the book that the story itself was the interview of Renee by Yale University.
“This book is an attempt to restore to Renee and Herta the voices, identities, and memories that the Nazis sought to destroy.”
July 4, 2022
A short but powerful memoir told by two sisters, one deaf and one hearing. The book is based on oral interviews that were given for a repository at Yale, so it is not as detailed as it might have been.
April 19, 2022
A thoughtful story based on actual interviews with the survivors. Clearly written for young readers.
I borrowed this one from the library.
I borrowed this one from the library.
June 8, 2024
Escrito como si fueran viñetas o trozos de conversaciones, solo al final entendí que este libro es una especie de transcripción de extractos de testimonios grabados en vídeo. Adaptado a un lenguaje para niños, cuenta la historia de Renee y Herta, dos niñas checoslovacas que por su condición de judías sufren la persecución de los nazis. Esto se ve empeorado por el hecho de que Herta es sorda. Estas "viñetas" cuentan de forma resumida su historia.
May 10, 2022
I'd give this book a three-and-a-half star rating. It was a very interesting book, and I learned quite a bit from it. However, I was a bit disappointed, because I did think it would be longer. But it was still a pretty good book! In it, two sisters, Renee and Herta, recall their story of World War II. As a family in Czechoslovakia, all of her family is deaf, except for her. So, when WWII comes knocking on her door, she has to be her family's ears to keep them all safe. Unfortunately, the Nazis still found them, and sent them to a concentration camp. The sisters rely on each other to survive, but will they be able to make it out alive?
May 22, 2022
It’s a young reader book which I didn’t realize when I ordered it, but still an interesting and important story about a Deaf survivor and her sister during the Holocaust.
September 13, 2022
I wish I knew that the book was a transcription of their video testimonies before I read it. Getting that context helped me to reframe the writing style and appreciate it more.
June 12, 2024
This book was amazing!!!!
Read
April 10, 2023I didn't realize this was a youth book when I checked it out. Nonetheless I found it compelling. I was able to read this in ~3 hours.
Memorable quotes:
"The next morning, my father came quietly into our room and kissed us on our foreheads.
'Why are you waking me up?' I asked him.
He just kept kissing me and hugging me. I didn't know that this would be the last time I would ever see my father. I have always regretted that I was sleepy and didn't hug him back. I'm sure my father understood I didn't mean to ignore him, but that is one regret I will have for the rest of my life."
"During roundups, the police hit people to make them move faster, especially old people, sick people, and children. It was a way of behaving that I had never witnessed, not even in nightmares. Bad dreams were mild compared to what the Germans did. What made it worse was that the Nazis abused the very people to whom the Jewish religion says you should show the greatest kindness, namely the old, the sick, and the young. Everything I saw being done was the opposite of the values I had been taught."
"Right across from the children's barrack was a building filled with dead bodies, not just inside but overflowing outside as well. I lived and walked beside dead people. After a while, we had to say to ourselves, I'm not going to look at who this is. I'm not going to recognize a person lying here.
I had to close my eyes to a number of things. Otherwise I would not have survived."
"Maybe my most pronounced emotion as I revisited Bergen-Belsen was sadness over realizing that the world's worst catastrophes are often human-made and that the image of our world today as civilized is a myth. We just became more sophisticated at how we go about killing people."
"The most difficult part of returning to Bergen-Belsen had nothing to do with shortcomings in the museum exhibits, which overall were powerful and well done. Rather, most difficult for me was my own inability to understand what had happened and why. There was no religious or philosophical explanation that made sense. Nor could any museum, however well designed, explain how some people could turn so brutal toward their fellow human beings. No memorial will ever repair such deep losses."
Memorable quotes:
"The next morning, my father came quietly into our room and kissed us on our foreheads.
'Why are you waking me up?' I asked him.
He just kept kissing me and hugging me. I didn't know that this would be the last time I would ever see my father. I have always regretted that I was sleepy and didn't hug him back. I'm sure my father understood I didn't mean to ignore him, but that is one regret I will have for the rest of my life."
"During roundups, the police hit people to make them move faster, especially old people, sick people, and children. It was a way of behaving that I had never witnessed, not even in nightmares. Bad dreams were mild compared to what the Germans did. What made it worse was that the Nazis abused the very people to whom the Jewish religion says you should show the greatest kindness, namely the old, the sick, and the young. Everything I saw being done was the opposite of the values I had been taught."
"Right across from the children's barrack was a building filled with dead bodies, not just inside but overflowing outside as well. I lived and walked beside dead people. After a while, we had to say to ourselves, I'm not going to look at who this is. I'm not going to recognize a person lying here.
I had to close my eyes to a number of things. Otherwise I would not have survived."
"Maybe my most pronounced emotion as I revisited Bergen-Belsen was sadness over realizing that the world's worst catastrophes are often human-made and that the image of our world today as civilized is a myth. We just became more sophisticated at how we go about killing people."
"The most difficult part of returning to Bergen-Belsen had nothing to do with shortcomings in the museum exhibits, which overall were powerful and well done. Rather, most difficult for me was my own inability to understand what had happened and why. There was no religious or philosophical explanation that made sense. Nor could any museum, however well designed, explain how some people could turn so brutal toward their fellow human beings. No memorial will ever repair such deep losses."
November 28, 2022
It would have been helpful to know at the outset that these were taken from video testimonies - it would have helped me understand the story style better. Other than that, these sisters’ testimonies of their experiences of losing their parents, living in fear, surviving horrific conditions at the camp, etc. are succinct, to the point, and so heartbreaking.
Herta’s fear must have been exacerbated by not knowing what was happening, and Renee shouldered the immense responsibility of both looking out for her sister and telling her what was going on around them.
Herta’s fear must have been exacerbated by not knowing what was happening, and Renee shouldered the immense responsibility of both looking out for her sister and telling her what was going on around them.
July 4, 2022
Written for Scholastic Press-age readers, this is a fast, insightful and excellent memoir for adults as well. I was especially interested in this true account about a hearing sister and a deaf sister (with deaf parents) since my novel of a deaf friend and a hearing friend was recently released. I highly recommend this memoir.
May 5, 2023
Geared towards younger readers, I still found it to be informative. I decided to read it since I know ASL and enjoy stories that include the Deaf. I wish there were more details but I know it was kept simple for the intended audience. It is a great summary of what Renee and Herta experienced during WWII.
December 8, 2023
I love reading the stories of those who survived the Holocaust. The author's parents and sister were deaf. In Bergen Belsen, she needed to warn her sister when guards were coming, another example of things people did to survive.
January 11, 2022
Very touching and educational especially when many people don't know back then, n**is would do experiments on Deaf people and disabled people as well.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 18, 2022
Best book I have ever read I love the book I hope
You would like it to people who have not read it I think it is awesome 😍
You would like it to people who have not read it I think it is awesome 😍
June 21, 2022
my ELA teacher told me to read this. so i did.
April 7, 2022
I absolutely loved this! It was a little scary, and reallllllly sad, but it was great! I read this book really quick. I couldn’t put it down. I completely recommend this book 📕!!!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 425 reviews