For this installment of our weekly book reviews from Booklist, the American Library Association’s nationally distributed book and media review publication, we have Sharon Rawlins’s review of “Friedel and Gina: A True Story of Sisterhood and Survival During the Holocaust” by Jeremy Dronfield, first published February 1, 2026, in Booklist.
Enjoy.
“Friedel and Gina: A True Story of Sisterhood and Survival During the Holocaust”
By Jeremy Dronfield. March 2026. 352p. HarperCollins/Quill Tree, $18.99 (9780063355743). Grades 6-8.
Dronfield recounts the harrowing true story of German-born twin sisters Friedel and Regina “Gina” Rosenthal and their struggle to help each other survive the Holocaust during WWII. In 1933, at age nine, Friedel and Gina, the youngest of six children of Jewish Polish–born immigrant parents, found their lives completely upended when Hitler rose to power. The family was arrested, faced miserable living conditions stuck at the border between Germany and Poland, and endured years of starvation in Poland’s Częstochowa ghetto. After the ghetto’s liquidation, the girls were sent to Bergen-Belsen and endured the horror of having to dispose of the bodies of typhus victims. At another camp, Gina, ill with typhus, was saved from certain death after Friedel rescued her from under the Germans’ noses. While the story is true, Dronfield invents a few names and reconstructs some events. However, facts are delineated from fiction in the book’s extensive source notes, including archived interviews with Friedel and her older sister Martha, and firsthand interviews with Friedel, Gina, and Martha’s daughters. The twins’ courage and devotion to each other is inspiring, making this a worthy addition to books about the Holocaust. Includes an author’s note, timeline (not seen), glossary, the aforementioned source notes, bibliography, and further reading.— Sharon Rawlins
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