What The Night Sings

This is listed as a Young Adult novel, written by Vesper Stamper.

This is a wonder story of what it was like after the war is over and the survivors are trying to rejoin the land of the living.  It is a story of the displaced persons camps that were created and the people who are living there.  How do you come to grips with your situation and learn to eat, accept life and love again.  A story of how we see ourselves and how we can remake ourselves.  If you have created an image of who you are and how you look to the world and then all that gets stripped away, how do you cope and recreate yourself?  The very idea that you can is the message of this novel.

I think so many of us come to a point in our early lives where we decide that we are going to be whatever profession we think is correct for us.  We pick a type of person we want to present to the outside and work to make that person walk in our shoes.  We think of a type of person we want as a mate and the kinds of friends we think are popular.  But what happens if somewhere along the way all that changes through no fault or thought of our own.  Then do we close down and give up or get up, dust ourselves off and recreate and redirect our energy in a new direction?

This is the story of Gerta Rausch, a young girl who grows up with her father and his friend Maria Buchner.  Maria is a diva, an opera singer who is teaching Gerta to sing even though she is technically too young to begin sining opera.  Gerta's father is a concert violist.  Gerta and father moved in with Maria when Gerta's mother died, though Gerta was so young she does not remember how.

Now the Nazis are taking over and Jews are slowly being driven away and have to identify with a yellow star on their clothing.  Gerta and her father go out of the house less and less often, but Gerta does not realize it is because they are Jewish.  When they are finally rounded up, she is confused.  She did not realize they were Jewish.  She is taken to the Theresienstadt camp first and plays her father's viola there.  Then later she is transferred to Auschwitz and plays the viola there so she is still alive when the camp is liberated.  

Now she is in her teens and alone in the world at the displaced persons camp trying to get healthy, and figure out how to move forward with her life.  This is a powerful novel with an incredible message.  Gerta shows the reader how to stay strong and determined in the face of adversity.  But along the way you need friends and support to really make it through.