When I Grow Up

From the prize-winning author of The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt comes a deeply resonant, graphic depiction of newly discovered stories of Jewish youths--from a world on the cusp of a nightmare. In the 1930s, as war loomed in the distance, a group of Jewish scholars in Eastern Europe--guided by the humanistic philosophy that “he who holds the future, holds the youth”--established an Autobiography Competition for Jewish youth. Three of these competitions were held, in 1932, 1934, and 1939, in which more than 600 texts were collected.

The prizes for the final competition were never awarded, as on the very day they were scheduled to be given out, the Nazis invaded Poland, and everything changed. These autobiographies became some of the first casualties of World War II. In an unbelievable turn of events, a trove of hidden Jewish documents was recently found in a Lithuanian church cellar--including hundreds of newly discovered autobiographies of Jewish youth.

It''s as if hundreds of Anne Frank stories have suddenly come to light. Each of these autobiographies are charged with a wrenching poignancy, as the authors have no idea what horror is soon to come. Ken Krimstein, with his remarkable talent for breathing life into his characters, elevates six of these forgotten youths from historical ghosts to real human beings.