The Broken Mirror, Novel

A timeless tale of loss and faith recovered by actor/author Kirk Douglas.

After World War II ends a Jewish boy whose family has been killed by the

Nazis lies to his American liberators, telling them that he is a Gypsy

rather than a Jew. Sent to a Catholic orphanage, Moishe runs away after his

best friend there is adopted. When all seems utterly hopeless, Moishe finds

solace in the light of the Sabbath candles and in his abandoned Judaism.

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From Publisher's Weekly:

One of the more egregious examples of celebrity publishing, this

relentlessly melodramatic and clich-ridden novel sets out to explore one

boy's experience of the Holocaust. In the first of many unconvincing and/or

under-researched episodes, Moishe is six when he and his father, a

mathematics professor in Munich, are almost killed on Kristallnacht; until

then Moishe has been apparently unaware of Nazis and his parents blind to

their precarious positions as Jews (never mind the passage of the Nuremberg

Laws in 1935 or Munich's prominence in Hitler's rise to power). Moishe's

family runs away to the country, where they are later betrayed by the hired

hand at the very moment they decide to escape to Switzerland. The family is

incarcerated in a concentration camp (complete, again unconvincingly, with

crematorium, execution squads and tattoos) that is located in Trieste, of

all places; Moishe's parents die and his sister and her boyfriend are

killed just as the camp is being liberated. The rest of the book concerns

Moishe's temporary rejection of his Judaism and his improbable placement in

a Catholic orphanage in Syracuse, N.Y., where, in suitably cinematic

fashion, he finds his way back to his own faith. With the availability of

so many powerful and heartfelt accounts of the Holocaust (including

Memories of Anne Frank and The Beautiful Days of My Youth, both reviewed

below), it's hard to imagine why young readers should be offered such

hollow fare. Ages 8-up. (Sept.) -Publisher's Weekly

From School Library Journal:

Gr 4-7Historical facts are presented with a heavy hand throughout this

story about Moishe and his family. The disparate reactions of Jews to what

is happening in Germany in 1939 is clearly represented by the boy's

mother's assurance that these "hooligans" (the Nazis) will soon go away,

his father's caution in relocating the family to a farm, and their

neighbors' exodus from the country. Characters are two-dimensional, except

for Moishe, who is only slightly more fleshed out. His older sister is

angelic even to the point of her understanding response to her family's

betrayal by the German handyman who is responsible for their removal to a

concentration camp. Moishe is the only family member to survive; he is

rescued and winds up in a Catholic orphanage in the United States after

denying that he is Jewish. Conveniently, the story ends with him finding

his Jewish identity once again as he wanders into a synagogue and is

miraculously taken in and ultimately adopted by the rabbi and his family.

This book is far too contrived and peopled with representational characters

to compete with the many fine Holocaust stories such as Ida Vos's Hide and

Seek (1991), Anna Is Still Here (1993), and Dancing on the Bridge of

Avignon (1995, all Houghton), and Renee Roth-Hano's autobiographical Touch

Wood (Puffin, 1989).Renee Steinberg, Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJ

-School Library Journal

From The Publisher:

Growing up in Munich in the 1930's, young Moishe loves to hear his sister,

Rachel, read him his favorite story: a fairy tale about an evil mirror

broken and scattered by Satan. He wonders whether shards of that mirror,

which have the power to turn people's hearts to ice, still exist. A few

years later, when the Nazis imprison his family in a concentration camp, he

knows that they do.

By the end of the war, Moishe is the only one of his family still alive,

and he no longer wants to be Jewish. He tells the AMerican liberators he is

a Gypsy named Danny and i sent to a Catholic orphanage. WHen his best

friend at the orphanage is adopted, Moishe is unable to bear yet another

loss in his short life. He runs away. Yet when all seems utterly hopeless,

he learns that the light of Sabbath candles is warm enough to melt the ice

that has formed in his own heart.

In this moving story of a young boy's flight from his past, legendary actor

and acclaimed author Kirk Douglas reminds us that sometimes we must embrace

our most painful memories to uncover a brighter future. He tells a timeless

tale of loss of faith and its recovery.