Surviving WWII

As we see in The Painted Birds, the narrator goes through many horrible situations in order to stay alive and even stay hidden. Although this particular story may or may not be completely true, I do think that the author is trying to make a point. I feel that even if this is a work of fiction for the author, these same situations could have been happening to other people/children in Poland during the war. I believe that he is just trying to draw attention to that because many people do know what happened to the people who were captured and put in concentration camps, but little is known about the ones who moved from village to village to stay hidden until the war was over. I wanted to learn a little more about people in these situations. I did some searching and came across a book, They were just people: Stories of Rescue in Poland during the Holocaust, by Bill Tammeus and Jaques Cukiekorn. This book was written in 2009 documenting some of the stories of people who survived in Poland. I also found a link to a video of a woman who describes some of the things she went through while she was in hiding. I just feel that it is important to realize that even if the book is true or not, people still went through hard times and they should be recognized for their stories.

video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRbam0owuI4

book preview: http://books.google.com/books?id=PUslvs8kT_YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22OCLC317623464%22&as_brr=3&ie=ISO-8859-1&cd=1&source=gbs_api#v=onepage&q&f=false