The Devil's Arithmetic is a heartbreaking story about the Holocaust that really helps you relate to the horror that the Jewish people and many others went through at that awful time. It is about a Jewish girl named Hannah that cannot appreciate her religion and the life she has. She finds herself back in the 1940's after she opens a door to the past, her and her relatives enduring the torture of the Nazis. Aristotle once said, "Evil draws men together." In the Holocaust, as the Nazi's cruelty pulled the Germans and Jews apart, it drew the Jewish people together. The Devil's Arithmetic is factual and emotionally wrenching as it shows you how things worked in death camps. Hannah, the main character, is in denial in the beginning, but starts to get lost in her new self and lose her old memory as well. She is wise beyond her years, an old wisewoman trapped in a young girl's body. Hannah becomes selfless, and then makes the largest sacrifice possible for a young girl she hardly knows. The end of the book was satisfying and moving. Anyone who reads it will never think of the Holocaust in the same frame of mind again. Intense and depressing to the appropriate degree,
The Devil's Arithmetic will be more than you bargained for in a book of its size. Facts are seemingly crammed into this slightly small book. You don't even realize you are learning history as you read this well-written book, although tears are almost constantly streaming down your face. So if you need a river of sympathy and understanding to flow from your heart, read The Devil's Arithmetic and get lost in the horror of the 1940's.