Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

VOYA Award

Ratings Explanation

Sexual Content:  Nudity.  The children of Lidice are inspected by doctors to see if they meet the “Aryan ideal.” They are stripped down to their underwear for this examination.  Before the inspection begins, a German nurse yanks down a boy’s pants to show the rest of the children what is expected.

Violence:  In Lebensborn a 6 year old girl has her underpants pulled down and her skirt pulled up by a teacher before she is struck on her bare bottom several times.  Soldiers carry firearms and use them to threaten people.  An old woman spits on a young girl. The old woman is beaten with a club by a teacher until she collapses. There is blood on the snow where she falls.  Two girls secretly practice shooting a gun.  Two girls get in a fight.  Families are separated by force. They are “pulled away” from each other.  A husband slaps his wife.

Adult Themes:  Toxic relationship between an unsympathetic and cruel teacher and her students.  A sometimes loving, sometimes troubled relationship between an adopted and biological daughter.  One girl asks another girl in an accusing tone, “Are you a Jew?”  Two girls go into a church and discuss being catholic before they were kidnapped.  There are several references to Hitler’s picture being put up in churches in place of other religious symbols such as pictures of Christ, the cross, or the Virgin Mary.  A grandmother calls Hitler “Satan himself.” This same grandmother rips Hitler’s picture off the door of a church. Grandmother also carries rosary beads and prays with them.  Milada mentions that her adoptive mom seems to be praying to Hitler when the Russian bombs are getting closer.  Soldiers smell like whiskey.

Synopsis

In the Spring of 1942, Milada and her family lead a happy life in Lidice, a small town in Czechoslovakia. Because of food rations during the war, getting enough sugar for a birthday cake takes a little cooperation between neighbors, but other than that, life is good. One terrible night Nazi soldiers come and take away her father and older brother, then Milada, her mother, grandmother and younger sister are taken to a school with all of the other women and children of Lidice. Milada undergoes an exam in which her captors measure her nose, match her hair color to blonde hair samples and examine her blue eyes. When the Nazis tear her from her family, Milada holds onto her grandmother’s parting words, “Remember who you are, Milada. Remember where you are from. Always.”

Potential Discussion Topics: Why did Hitler want to kill the Jews?  Why did he think that people with blonde hair and blue eyes were better than anyone else?

©2010 The Literate Mother