Friedrich ¦ I Was There

The explicit details of Holocaust literature tend to excite the voyeur in the most noble of readers. This is a trap which these two novels neatly avoid because they are written through a child's eyes.

In the first, Friedrich, his best friend tells the story of the systematic persecution of a German Jewish family in the Second World War. The language is simple, the story the more appalling for its matter-of-fact tone.

I was There traces Hitler's rise to power and the formation of the Hitler Youth. Three boys - the narrator, Heinz and Günther - join, the first two enthusiastically and Günther under social and political pressure. The book gives an inside view of the attitudes and events common in the third Reich. Not entertaining literature, but books which need to be read - by capable second and third years - possibly as a class set for the latter.