His stories have integrity and humour, while his characters learn a loving, accepting attitude towards others--the lesson of how to accept being different in an alien world."
The alien world of which Orlev writes so eloquently in his novels is a nightmare realm of childhood memories of war-torn Poland. When Nazi leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, the author was a toddler living in Warsaw, as yet unaware of his Jewish identity. In the years that followed, the true horror of Hitler's anti-Jewish policies became evident even to children as Jews living in Germany and then other countries occupied by the German army were forced to endure a multitude of injustices, including losing their jobs or their businesses because of their heritage. In 1939 Hitler's troops invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II and the onset of severe persecution of Polish Jews.
Orlev's family, like Jewish families throughout Poland, was forced to leave their home and move into a wall-enclosed section of the city, called the ghetto. There, the living accommodations were crowded, with food rationed and unemployment widespread. In an effort to eliminate the European Jewish population, the Germans soon built concentration camps, some with facilities for gassing inmates, and began mass deportations of the Jews out of the ghettos and into the camps.
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