Jordana's second review of "The Devil's Arithmetic"

Hannah, now named Chaya is shoved into the train car along with eighty other Jews from the wedding ceremony. They are in the cramped car for four days with no food, water, and very little air. Hannah being from the future knows whats coming, and tries to warn the others in the train. No one believes her though and she even starts to doubt herself, as she finds she is losing her memory of being Hannah. When she gets to the camp the women and men are separated, then Hannah and the others are made to strip and shower. After that their hair is cut and their arms are tattooed with identification numbers. They are given raged clothes and worn shoes, then taken to their barracks where bare wooden shelves serve as beds, and they cries of women and children put you to sleep. Over the next few days life at the camp becomes routine for Hannah; wake up, go to role call, eat breakfast, scrub dishes, clean barracks, eat lunch, load wood, eat dinner, roll call, go to bed. Through this, Hannah learns the spoken and unspoken rule of the camp. To keep your head down, to not ask questions, that eating comes before anything, and if you give up hope you will lose your mind. Hannah becomes close friends with a girl named Rivka, who teaches her the rules and to understand the number on her arm. Each number represents something or someone you have or you have lost, the devil's arithmetic. As Hannah lives the life of Chaya she forgets her true self entirely, except for certain phrases which trigger vague memories which she can not begin to understand. One day Hannah, Rivka, and two other girls are caught talking by a young Nazi guard. The guard selects Rivka and the other two to the smoke stack, an inferno where those that are "chosen" are sent to die. Hannah suddenly realizing who she is takes Rivka's place and walks into the fire. She is back at her families Passover Seder opening the door for Elijah the profet as if nothing had happend. When she sits back down she notices the number on her aunt Eve's arm and realizes is the same as Rivka's. After the two talk for a while Hannah learns that Eve had changed her name from Rivka to Eve when she came to America, and that a girl named Chaya had saved her life in the camp.

"The Devil's Arithmetic" is a perfect book if you have never read about the Holocaust before, and surprisingly informational without being stuffy. You really start caring about the characters and after some thought I think I know why. All of the characters (with exemption of Hannah in the beginning of the book) are noble, kind, and good. When they are in the camp the prisoners are always helping each other out, and all being molde citizens. Unfortunately that is no how life works, for example there is a scene in the "The Devil's Arithmetic" where a women is screaming and crying and someone comforts her. While in the much more mature Holocaust book "Night", a women in the same situation would have been beaten by her fellow prisoners for that. Sudle though it may be "The Devil's Arithmetic" can get away because it is a children book. So children please read it.