Sad but sweet, Olivia Vriens
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