Response to Number the Stars

Response to Number the Stars

By Johntesh

     This book, Number the Stars is about Danish Jews in World War 2. The two main characters are Annemarie Johanson and Ellen Rosen. Ellen was a Jewish at that time so Annemarie’s job was to keep Ellen from being captured because the axis force at that time were taking control of Denmark and soldiers stationed there were order to capture as many Jewish people as much as possible. So Annemarie and her Johanson family did a lot of work protecting Ellen and planning for evacuation. This story was is historical fiction.

The main characters of the story are Annemarie Johanson and Ellen Rosen and two of their family. The setting was in World War 2. It’s time was 3 years after Denmark surrender to the German arm force. The conflict of the book was that the German force was ordered to capture all of the Danish Jews if they spot them. The Rosen doesn’t want to get capture and get “relocated”. So the underground resistance, Peter Neilson, and the Johanson family were helping them to get evacuated to Sweden.

There were two themes in Number the stars. One was bravery and one was friendship. The bravery happened to every part of the story as the friendship only happened to small part. Bravery happened to Annemarie because she was facing the God of death because she was facing a bunch of German soldier and she did not know what she will encounter. She sacrifices and helped so much for Ellen. She thinks of this thing like, “Will she die to protect them? Truly? (26)” Because she did so much rescuing her friend and helping her friend so much, it was considered also friendship too.  Ellen didn’t do much.

Annemarie Johanson is a brave, selfless and helpful girl. She will always try her best to do the work she is assigned to. She do things fearlessly and she share happy things and good thing to other, including she was willing to sacrifice her life.Bravery. For example, Annemarie is brave because she didn’t show her fear feeling even though she was super scared when she first meet up the German soldiers. Ellen has the same thing because there was a part like when the Germans were just outside of her bedroom, she wasn’t making any sound like crying, shouting, yelling, to make the German force wonder. But she was not as effective as Annemarie, when the Germans were at the door; Annemarie torn of Ellen’s necklaces when there was not much time left before the soldiers spotted her.

These books reminded me of the book called Darkness over Denmark. It was about the story of those Jewish people who had suffer or gotten captured by Hitler’s army. The underground resistance fought secretly against Germany. This also happened in Number the Stars, when Peter Neilson, the imaginary resistance member gave uncle Henrik a small packet of chemical that ruins the military dog smells for several hours  to let Ellen Rosen’s family to get across to Sweden. I learned that it this did happen because 3 Danish transport ship have been captured of not taking those chemical.

I think that the book was good to understand, not because I have the background knowledge. It’s because the author Lois Lowry make the complicated part simpler. And she always uses the chapter title to make us wonder what will happen next to the story.

If You like historical fiction and World War II related book you will sure want to read Number the Stars you will love it for sure if you read it!