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Compassion, levity, and laughter can be found in the darkest of
places--and even in the smallest of creatures. Set in 1943
Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, J. R. Pick's novella Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals tells the story of Tony, a
thirteen-year-old boy who is deported from Prague to the infamous
Terezi-n ghetto for Jews--the horrific, overcrowded concentration
camp where one in four prisoners died of starvation or disease, and
a way station on the way to Auschwitz. But it is not the atrocities
Tony experiences that make his tale remarkable. It is his ability
to find comedy in the incomprehensible. Tony suffers from
tuberculosis, and, lying in his hospital bed one day, he decides to
set up an animal welfare organization. Even though no animals are
permitted in the camp, he is determined to find just one creature
he can care for and protect--and his determination is contagious. A
group of older boys including Tony's best friend, Ernie, aid him in
his quest. Soon they're joined by Tony's mother--and her coterie of
boyfriends. Eventually, they find Tony his pet: a mouse, which he
names and carefully guards in a box hidden beneath his bed. But in
the fall of 1944, the transports to Auschwitz begin. As moving as
it is irreverent, Pick's novella draws on the two years he spent
imprisoned in Terezi-n in his late teens. With cutting black humor,
he shines a light on both the absurdities and injustices of the
Nazi-run Jewish ghetto, using his literary artistry to portray in
stunning shorthand an experience of the Holocaust that pure
histories could never convey.
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