Far Above Rubies

Cynthia Polansky
Martin & Lawrence Press (2007)
ISBN 9780977389827
Reviewed by Kim Peterson for Reader Views (2/06)

When Sofie Rijnfeld marries her husband Jan, she also becomes mother to his six daughters. They share three wonderful years before German paratroopers invade and the occupation of Holland begins on May 10, 1940. During the first six or seven months only a few things change and Dutch Jews, an integral and accepted part of their country, think rumors of the German actions elsewhere are exaggerated. But as 1940 marches into 1941, hope for the future slips away and fear advances as the rights of Jews are wrested from them. Jewish businesses are closed, telephone use forbidden, and a curfew imposed. Ultimately, they are forced to turn in their valuables which include religious items like the silver candlesticks for Shabbat. Labeled with six-pointed yellow stars, Jews are easily identified and laws enacted against them easily enforced.

Then the steady deportation begins of young Jewish people to "resettlement" camps. In April 1942, the six Rijnfeld girls are summoned for resettlement. Sofie decides to go with them. After tearful farewells with Jan, the seven women join the others filling crowded boxcars. Relocated to Westerbork, the Rijnfelds carry out their work assignments and encounter telltale signs of the deep hatred the Germans feel for the Jews. But life is mostly tolerable and the girls are together.

When the Rijnfeld women are sent on to Auschwitz, Sofie reaches deeper for the resilience to keep her daughters and herself alive in the face of atrocities carried out at the Reich’s foremost killing center. Although the book is fiction, Polansky bases it on fact. Sofie did exist and she did accompany her stepdaughters all the way to Auschwitz. Polansky tells Sofie’s story of self-sacrifice filling in fictionally how those years may have unfolded. Reading the frightening truth about the Holocaust is never easy, but the triumph of this woman who survives despite great loss is inspiring.

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