Gideon — Chester Aaron

2009 Moonbeam Book Award Silver Medalist

“The important thing, Gideon, is to survive. In any way at any cost, survive. By surviving you can not only fight back, you can carry the story of what is happening in this ghetto. You are of no use to our people dead.”

The words of his father ring in Gideon's ears. They haunt him everywhere: on the Nazi-patrolled streets of the Warsaw Ghetto where he and his family are trapped; on the Aryan side, “cleansed of Jews,” where he and a ruthless gang of smugglers form an uneasy alliance; and finally at Treblinka, a concentration camp where every day is a brutal nightmare of vanishing hope and systematic death.

Gideon must bury his identity, his religion, and every emotion he possesses to simply stay alive.

“Survive, Gideon.”