Theo Coster

This is a review of the advanced copy “We All Wore Stars” by Theo Coster for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

The book is about a handful of classmates who were relegated to Amsterdam’s Jewish Lyceum during World War II.

The author and Anne Frank were among the nearly 500 boys and girls at the school. Only half of them survived the war. The author cites that 80% of the Jewish population in the Netherlands were killed during the Nazi occupation, which is twice the percentage of Jews in Belgium and France.

The book explores how many children went into hiding and how others operated under a “ghastly delusion” that they would at least avoid hunger and illness in Nazi labor camps.

The book also reveals the enormous pressure on children in hiding to be quiet and not make trouble, and the absolute lack of professional help after the war in easing the emotional trauma. The moving lore around Anne Frank’s life remains inexhaustible and eternal.

An unpleasant time in history but one that needs to be recorded. This reviewer does recommend this book and rates the book with 4 out of 5 stars.… (lisätietoja)

I've always loved the Diary of Anne Frank so when I saw this book I knew I had to read it. I was expecting a book full of stories of Anne. What I got was a book of the stories of the classmates of Anne and what happened to them during the war. You can barely make a connection between these people and Anne Frank. It almost seems like a gimick to sell books because theres barely any stories of Anne in it. But if you get passed that it was an ok book, but I've read better memory books about the Holocaust.… (lisätietoja)

It is fashionable for a reviewer to establisher his bona fides by mentioning extensive experience with the topic at hand. When it comes to the Holocaust, such a maneuver seems particularly crass. A thousand memoirs read are as nothing compared to a tattoo on the arm. But the memoirists themselves do us a great service. The most valuable of these accounts allow us to bear witness to the capacity for the greatest evil, and in its wake, the greatest resilience and will to survive. And they offer up the weight of an almost unimaginable emotional landscape: one painted in fear, hunger, death and obscenity.

I wish I could report that "We All Wore Stars: Memories of Anne Frank from her Classmates" by Theo Coster is such an account. Mr. Coster has produced a book based on meetings and interviews with his – and her --- former classmates. This emerged out of his documentary film “The Classmates of Anne Frank” based on the same project.

In fact, the title of this book is misleading. The memories of Anne Frank are present but spare, and the book deals more with Mr. Coster’s interviews focusing on experiences in Holland during the War, and his own story of surviving the war in the care of a Christian family. That the Anne Frank name is prominent in the title is testament more to her continuing marketability, and one wonders whether the appearance of exploitation crossed Mr. Coster’s mind.

Perhaps Miss Frank would have no objection. But precocious and talented writer that she was, she could not have forgiven the rest. It is hard to conceive that an account of Jews surviving Nazi occupation amid the murders of their fellows could be sterile. But that is what Mr. Coster has accomplished. The emotional tone throughout is shockingly cheerful and chatty; it is as if the team survived a particularly bad game, and then went out for dinner.

It is not clear whether the author is able to appreciate the full brunt of his subject, but is not writer enough to articulate it. Or whether – could it be due to wartime trauma? – his limited emotional insight does not allow him to address this difficult topic. One wished throughout that Anne Frank were only here to leap to the author’s aid.… (lisätietoja)