The Sunflower Diary

Slava's Trilogy #3

by Lillian Boraks-Nemetz

Polish refugee Slava finds herself hidden behind a false identity in a boarding school.

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1999

Reviews

[Westcoast_girl · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is hardly anything written about this book so I'll do my bit.
'The Sunflower Diary' is a sequel to the book 'The Old Brown Suitcase' The summary on the back of my copy is:

Sixteen-year-old Slava Lenski writes about her life during her stay in a Victoria boarding school where she reluctantly conceals her Jewish identity. But the memories of war-torn Poland, her missing sister, and the memory of her beloved father intrude. Then the other girls discover her diary and her secret is revealed.

My Review
This book is a story about a girl and her diary struggling to make sense of the horrors of the Holocaust. An immigrant from Poland, she still bears huge scars including that of her missing sister and her dead papa. Before these scars can even begin to heal, she is shipped off to boarding school by her mother's newly wed partner. There, she clashes with the Canadian students who seem ignorant and cruel. Soon her diary is her only friend. But it can be dangerous to keep a friend whom is readable.

At first, I found this book a little slow. I had just finished reading some very fast paced (but brutal) holocaust books. However, by the end of the book I found that there was beauty in this particular book. Considering the absolute horrors of the holocaust, the effort of trying to explain them in children's books can be impossible. As a result, we are left with brutal but blessedly short books that tear at our heart strings but leave us confused, scared, or hopeless. This one was different.
I actually could feel the impact of the holocaust MORE in this book than in the other ones. Why? Because instead of hearing about mighty terrors that can be incomprehensible, I was instead reading about more personal terrors that I could understand.
The impact of the holocaust on this one girl seemed more painful than the statistics that have told me 6 million have died. That is not because I am cold hearted, it's just because it can be very hard to comprehend such enormity. As the infamous Stalin has said "When one person dies, it's a tragedy, but when a million people die, it's a statistic.”
Anyway, back to the book.
So by being able to follow one person's journey and read about their suffering in a life that is understandable, one is able to start to comprehend the impact of the whole picture.

[Eija · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book when I was in grade school, and I remember bawling my eyes out. It's about a girl who's sent to boarding school and must hide her Jewish identity. She torments herself on what it means to be "different" in a time like this, and how she perseveres through the hatred. Really powerful and emotional book. Intended for ages 10-13, but I'd still read it even now.

[Mateusz · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Sunflower Diary" is a beautifully written - but unfortunately little-known - sequel to Lillian Boraks-Nemetz's award-winning "The Old Brown Suitcase." Teenage Slava/Elizabeth, the novel's focalizer and narrator, is a Holocaust survivor from Poland struggling to find her place in post-WWII Canada. Sent to a Catholic boarding school by her newlywed mother, Slava has to pretend once again to be someone she is not. I hope one day "The Sunflower Diary" gets reissued as it is extremely difficult to find it (finding the third book about Slava, "The Lenski File," is even a greater challenge). It is such a shame that Lillian Boraks-Nemetz's trilogy has yet to be translated into Polish.