Putting herself and her entire village at risk, Magda takes in the children, feeds them, and acquires Christian identification for them. They happen upon an old "witch", or healer, with a Gypsy background, named Magda. Mean stepmothers, dark forests, witches with massive ovens that want to cook and eat children?! Perhaps it is fitting, then, that Louise Murphy puts a clever spin on this fairy tale, and weaves it into a fictional and terrifying account of the survival of two Jewish children during the Holocaust.Ī 10-year-old girl and her 7 year-old brother, named "Hansel" and "Gretel" by their father and stepmother to disguise their Jewish heritage, are encouraged to run and hide in the ancient, primeval forests of Eastern Poland to escape capture by the Nazis. We've all read the story about Hansel and Gretel as children.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |