Rachel’s Legacy
Julie Thomas
HarperCollins
2016

Rachel’s Legacy is a story based on a young Jewish girl’s letters to her baby, during WWII. Her letters contain the heartbreaking reality of the treatment of Jews during this time, and also the difficult decision to give her baby up. Rachel did this to keep working in Berlin with the resistance and to “carry out her family’s honor”. Rachel worked for an organisation called The Red Orchestra, an anti-Nazi movement that put their lives on the line to help Jews in hiding. While Rachel’s Legacy is a work of fiction, Thomas greatly reflects the dangers that organisations like this would have had to face daily during the war, and that “no one was safe”.  Read more

Rachel’s Legacy
Julie Thomas
Harper Collins
2016

When Dr Jakob ‘Kobi’ Voight is given a pack of letters by his mother just before he leaves for a trip to Berlin, Germany, he has no idea the turmoil, discovery and mystery he will be surrounded by once he discovers what secrets lie in the letters and what ties the letter writer has to Kobi and his own family.

The letters, written in Hebrew and illustrated with exquisite little illustrations, are penned by a young Jewish girl in the midst of WWII who calls herself Ruby. Ruby’s letters are to her young child, who Ruby had to give up for fear of the Gestapo discovering both her baby, herself and the resistance – ‘The Red Orchestra’ that fought Hitler and his Nazis that Ruby was a part of.  Read more