A review by postitsandpens
The Upstairs Room by Johanna Reiss

5.0

Memoirs about people's experiences during the Holocaust are always hard to rate and review, because their stories are being written and shared so that others can learn what they went through, in the hopes anything like this happening again can be prevented. This book was clearly written for children to digest, so a lot of the horrors that were revealed to have happened are a bit more glossed over or implied, rather than recounted explicitly on the page. The author was 8 years old when World War II began, and spent two years hiding in a Dutch family's upstairs room along with her older sister, Sini. It's told from her childhood point of view, which actually made it more impactful to read as an adult. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who is remotely interested.