Playing for the Commandant

The world of 15-year-old Hanna Mendel—a Jewish Hungarian concert pianist in training who longs to follow in the footsteps of her idol, Clara Schumann—turns menacing when Hungary falls to Germany in 1944. New laws require Jews there to wear yellow stars on their clothes and live in ghettos, and, before long, she, along with many others, is sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Zail, whose memoir The Tattooed Flower recounted how her father survived the Holocaust, poignantly conveys Hanna’s mounting losses—at first, her home, piano, suitcase, and clothes; then, when men are separated from women in the camp, her father; and even her hair and her name. Strengthened by Erika, her spirited sister, Hanna holds onto her one remaining possession: a black C-sharp piano key, and the hope it represents. Although she witnesses much cruelty and degradation, Hanna also discovers courage, integrity, and ingenuity in surprising ways; in particular, through Karl, the quiet, musical son of the cruel commandant for whom Hanna plays piano, who calls her “by my name, not my number.” An elegant, disturbing portrait of one of history’s bleakest moments, offset by the subversive power of love. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)