The Upstairs Room by Johanna Reiss, historical fiction set in WWII Holland

Title: The Upstairs Room
Author: Johanna Reiss
Publication: HarperCollins, paperback, originally published in 1972
Genre: Juvenile Historical Fiction
Setting: Holland, WWII

Description: Annie de Leeuw is the youngest of three sisters, living in Holland, not far from the German border. Her father is a cattle dealer, her mother an invalid, her sister Rachel teaches at a nursery school, and sister Sini is studying farming. But Annie’s family is Jewish and everyone is worried about the news from Poland where Hitler has invaded. Annie avoids the radio but is soon affected by the war as German tanks reach their town, her father is not allowed to do business, their maid leaves because she is afraid of working for Jews, and Rachel loses her job. Annie’s uncle and aunt fled to America but now it is too late for the de Leeuw to leave legally. As Jewish “volunteers” are recruited to work at labor camps, some join willingly while others are simply taken. Christian activists act as intermediaries and find brave families that will hide the girls in the country, just as they receive a letter ordering them to a Dutch work camp. Annie and Sini are brought to a remote farmhouse where they hide in an upstairs room for two years, with only occasional contact from their family, completely dependent on the kindness of strangers, as the war continues.

My Impression: Johanna Reiss, now 90 years old, based this novel on her own experience of hiding from the Nazis with her older sister for three years. The book won several awards and was a Newbery Honor Book. Reiss came to America in the 1950s and her husband encouraged her to write about her family and how their lives were changed by the war.  The story is suitable for middle-grade readers without white-washing the horrors of the Holocaust.  Nor is that necessary: in my experience, children interested in WWII will read everything they can find and those who do not like historical fiction will read this book if it is assigned to them.

At just ten when the book begins, Annie is initially insulated from the real danger facing Dutch Jewish families. What she notices is that her gentile friends stop associating with her, her sister loses her job, her father talks about leaving Holland, and she is no longer permitted to attend school, which, at first, does not seem a hardship to her. The adult reader sees the real tragedy more clearly – the ailing mother whose frailty and willful blindness to the news about what is happening to Jews in Germany and Poland – prevents Annie’s father from organizing the family to leave for America (where, perhaps, Annie’s mother would have received medical treatment) before it is too late.

One of my favorite children’s books about WWII is The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig who, coincidentally, was involved in the marketing of Betsy’s Wedding, much later when she worked at Harper & Row. It is perhaps realistic but frustrating to see Reiss’s characters discussing if they should volunteer to go to the German “camps” not knowing they are concentration camps. This is before brave Dutch people help smuggle the sisters to the country where they can be hidden, although their hosts thought it would be for two weeks, not three years!

This is a hard life for a child. When Annie is hiding in the farmhouse bedroom she yearns to look out the window but is told repeatedly it is too dangerous. She has a hard time understanding the peril until she sees an underground newspaper:

I picked up the newspaper. Don’t give up hope, it said. The Germans will lose. It didn’t say when. I guessed they didn’t know either. I read a little further. No, what the paper said couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be. I had trouble going on, but I finished the article.

I put the paper down. Now I knew. Now I really knew what was in Germany and Austria and Poland. Murder camps. Sure I had known there were camps. That’s where those trains took you. But I hadn’t known that they were like this, that Hitler had told his soldiers to murder Jews, any time they felt like it. . . .

Now I knew why I was here, why I shouldn’t stand close to the window in the front room. I had just read why in a paper that told people what was really going on.

Although written for a middle-grade audience, Reiss captures the fear of the future and of being captured as well as the tedium of staying hidden. As an adult reader, I was worried about Annie and her sister’s safety, not only from the Nazis but also from their at-first unwilling hosts. Annie is expected to sleep in the same bed as the farming couple hiding her, which might not have ended well. Her older sister feels her life is slipping away and seemed to be spending too much time alone with Johan, the middle-aged farmer who is their host. False alarm, luckily! I suppose I've read too many of those 70s problem novels.

The book is often compared to The Diary of Anne Frank but with a happier ending; there is also a sequel. I read this for the de Grummond Book Group and the 2022 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge led by Marg at The Intrepid Reader.

Source: Library