In our Holocaust Books by Survivors section, we have many outstanding memoirs. Yet we have never run into one written as a Holocaust survivor children’s book, by a survivor. The Story of Granny-Girl is exactly that: a child survivor’s own account of the camps in Ukraine, set down not as testimony for scholars but as a story her own grandchildren could understand and hold onto.

Its author, Susanne Ruth Raweh, wrote the book at her daughter Dafna’s request, so that the family’s history would not be lost between generations. Dafna illustrated it. What resulted is a small, gentle-voiced book that carries a hard history — written deliberately at a level a child can follow, without softening the truth of what happened.

The complete illustrated text — all 26 pages, in both Hebrew and English — is available here for students and educators. You can read the complete Granny Girl picture book online to view the full bilingual story exactly as Susanne and Dafna created it.

Since its original 2004 publication in Israel, the book has traveled further than most survivor memoirs of its size. It has been shared in Italian translation on Istoreto, the historical institute of the Piedmont region, where Susanne has used it as the basis for her own Holocaust education lectures in local schools since 2004.

It also appears in Hebrew and English on ehpes.com, the site of the Czernowitzer community, and one of its illustrations was chosen as the logo for International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2007.

In the words of the author:

“My name is Susanne Ruth Raweh and I am a child survivor from the concentration camps in Ukraine. I have written a children’s book in Hebrew called “HaSipur shel Savta Ialda” or in English” The story of Granny-Girl.” It has appeared in Israel in 2004 and on two sites on the web: www.Istoreto.it in Italian and one of its illustrations was the logo for the International Memory Day in 2007 www.ehpes.com  the site of the Czernowitzer in both Hebrew and English.