The Yellow Bird Sings

Beautifully written, this novel by Jennifer Rosner is another very moving story of the survival of Jews during the Holocaust.  The stories of people who survived that horrible time period in our collective history need to be recorded for the future generations.  This is a wonderful way to preserve the horror of the age, with the beauty of love and each person's experience written as a novel that makes the atrocities more bearable to read about.

The Yellow Bird Sings is the story that so many survivors tell from both  the mother and the child's perspective.  This story though a creation of the author's imagination combines some of these tales into a story from both the child's perspective and the parents's experience.  The camps and the crimes committed there are alluded to as the backdrop for this plot but in this novel we focus on a mother and her five year old daughter who have escaped as their family was killed in their small Polish town.

Now they are hiding in a barn for the night hoping that this man who had shopped in their family store will be kind to them when he finds them there.

Hidden in the hayloft days and nights turn into a year, as Roza and Shira stay hidden and silent. Communicating in whispers and made up sign language they spend their time together eating potatoes and other food scraps brought to them by the farmer, Henryk.  A few times when the rest of the family is away the wife, Krystyna, will take Shira out into the sunshine to see the chickens and the cow.  She will share some milk and an egg with her, but not for Roza.  

Shira has a secret pet bird who stays with her when she is happy and when she is scared.  "Shira's bird stays with her when Krystyna takes her out of the barn, and when the warning footsteps of the soldiers prompt Shira and her mother to bury themselves completely under the hay. When Shira is happy,..... he perches in the rafters or on a mound of hay nearby.  But when she is upset....he flies straight into her cupped hands."

When it becomes too dangerous to stay any longer, Krystyna offers to help get Shira to an orphanage. Roza fearing that she and her daughter cannot survive in the woods together through a cold harsh winter agrees.

Shira is taken without understanding what is happening to her to a catholic orphanage where the nuns rename her Zosia.  Her hair is dyed blond and she is taught her catechism.  But she is also introduced to the violin and her music ability is discovered.  though she is well treated by the nuns, as well fed as can be during a war and warm and dry, she misses her mother and is worried about forgetting her past.   But the music from her childhood comes through and reminds her of her Jewish background and family Shabbats.  these musical moments will be what saves her.

Roza, on the other hand, is out in the woods, surviving the elements, surviving on mushrooms and thistles that she cooks into soup, until she meets up with some other Jewish partisans hiding.  Life for her is hard and she misses Shira, and is always searching for her.  She is always conflicted with the question, did she do the correct thing sending her to the orphanage.  The rest of her life will be in search of her daughter.

This is a touching at times heartbreaking story from both sides.  There was good and evil but this story and so many others show, that in the end though, there are not always perfect endings there can be happiness, kindness and love.  People did help others, some more altruistically than others.  Each story is unique and incredible.