I highly recommend this book, not only because it is about the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, but because almost all of the details in it were based on true accounts.

In a nutshell, the plot of Number The Stars is about the occupation of Denmark by the Nazis. Lois Lowry created a fictional character in the person of Annemarie Johansen, a ten-year-old Danish who lives with her family in Copenhagen at the beginning of Germany's invasion of their country and the persecution of Danish Jews. Annemarie's family became involved in the rescue of their Jewish family friends, the Rosens, and several others, through the help of the Danish Resistance. Lois Lowry took bits and pieces of history and created a plot using Annemarie Johansen as the protagonist, and the result was a must-read book.

I don't have much patience reading non-fiction books, this notwithstanding the fact that history is an interesting topic for me. So I take what historical fiction books are available and enjoy them immensely, learning what I can about significant events from years past. From this book, I learned that the Danes destroyed and sank their entire naval fleet when they learned that the Nazis were planning to take them for their own use, and that many Danish Jews were able to escape the clutches of the Nazis because of confidential information leaked by a high German official to the Danish government. I learned that they were able to cross the sea to Sweden, which was free of Nazi occupation, and that a solution that numbed the olfactory senses of sniff dogs invented by Swedish scientists were used for this purpose. Those are just a few bits of history which I learned from this book; there are lots more.

It's just a short read, but most informative. Please take time to read it. :)

EDIT: By the way, the title was lifted from Psalm 147:4 of the Bible which states:

He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.

-New International Version

I think it also refers to the Star of David, the symbol of the Jews.