Summary Of I Will Plant You A Lilac Tree

Over my Thanksgiving break I read the book called, “I will plant you a lilac tree.” This book is about a teenage girl named Hannelore. Hannelore didn't live with her parents or other siblings. Her mother sent her a letter in the mail stating, "Yesterday the postman brought a letter and a small box postmarked "Buchenwald." The letter said the following: "Martin Wolff died of unknown causes on March 14, 1942. Urn contains his ashes." Hannelore, your papa is dead." Hannelore was extremely upset that Gestapo killed her father. Later on Hannelore's mother and two brothers got a letter stating that they were going to be deported into a concentration camp. Her mother wrote her a letter telling her this. She decided that she was going to write a letter to Gestapo
asking if she could be deported with her family. They replied back and said that she could. She met her family and was sent to a concentration camp. She was soon separated from her family and moved to several other concentration camps. Hannelore had to do several different jobs at the different camps.
These jobs were backbreaking. All of the prisoners were fead with ration cards and could often only eat a small slice of bread. Hannelore met a man named Dick. Dick was a POW and worked in the kitchen. They instantly fell in love! Dick and Hannelore met in a shed behind the kitchen where he brought her extra food to eat. He also bought her new clothes and warm boots to wear. Hannelore experienced so much at the concentration camps and always had that doubt in her mind that she was going to die anyday. She often thought she would be tricked into going into the shower but instead of water coming down it would be gas. Hannelore and her friends were always very scared when they had to take a shower, and often found themselves crying and hugging each other thinking it was their last few minutes to live. I loved this book! It was very interesting to me. It was definitely a book that I couldn't put down. When she told about her experiences about making new friends and also losing her family I found this very interesting and heartbreaking to know the pain she must have been going through. A weak point in this book was when Hannelore couldn't find
Dick. Dick helped her to survive and they promised each other that they would never give up. They also promised that when they got out Dick would plant her a lilac tree just like the one she used to have at home. I think most all ages would enjoy this book! I don’t think young children would enjoy this book though because they wouldn’t know what lots of the stuff in the book meant. I really liked this book because it had a little bit of romance in it, but I also learned a lot about how the Nazis treated the Jews. I don’t understand why things had to be so brutal and why so many people were shot just because they weren't working hard enough. Also, this weekend I watched two movies. One was called “Schindler’s List,” and the other one was called, “12 Years A Slave.” There were so many experiences that were in both of these movies that were just like the ones in the book. I will plant you a lilac tree is a memory from Schindler’s List. This book doesn’t have any awards. I think this book should have received the Goodreads Choice Award because this book is very inspirational and overall a really great read.