Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for Aliza in Nazi-Land by Elyse Hoffman! It is a pleasure to welcome you here. Please do click around and read some of my other reviews. I previously read something else by Elyse which I reviewed here. I haven't read the first book in this series so didn't fully get the context of Aliza's experiences and life, but there is enough information in this book for it to make sense. So if you haven't either, don't worry about picking this one up.
The book is set in the USA in the mid 50s. Aliza is sixteen and she is a Holocaust survivor. She was in a concentration camp, where she lost her parents, and she was saved by her adoptive dad, Amos, who is part of a crew called the Black Foxes. She now lives with him and her adoptive sisters - one older and two younger. Aliza is haunted by what happened to her and by the fact that she can't even really remember her family. She hates school and her teacher and is often in trouble. Her elder sister is bullied by a boy called Yonah so Aliza often stands up for her.
One day Aliza sees something strange in her history textbook. She has been offered a contract to become a God in a zone of Hell, a zone which houses the absolute worst Nazis that existed, including Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and Heydrich. In this zone, she will be allowed to torture them as she sees fit. She can harm them, humilate them, do whatever she wants to them. They have to obey all her Commands.
Aliza keeps going into her Zone to inflict more pain on those who inflicted so much pain on her and millions of other people. She starts to avoid her real life which is a problem and which has an impact on her family, and she also begins to learn that power is seductive. It's fun - but also, is it? Aliza has a conscience and she begins to wonder exactly what she is doing.
It's an interesting philosophical discussion. If you could torture Hitler, would you? And especially if you were a survivor of the Holocaust, would you want to get revenge on men who wreaked so much havoc? What does it say about you? What does it say about them? I liked the way Elyse poised this question. It's easy to understand Aliza's anger and her wish to get even.
I liked Aliza's family and her adoptive uncle, Sam, too. I would have liked a bit more drawing of their setting in the US, and I did also think the rules about Hell were a little bit confusing and would have liked a bit more explanation. But in general I really liked the book and would like to hear others' opinions on it too!
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