The three books in this series are the mer­ri­est Holo­caust books I have ever read. That is because the author has a great sense of humor and he and his moth­er are ​“char­ac­ters.” She is gor­geous, resource­ful, and knows how to use her looks and sex to get her and her son to safe­ty. In addi­tion, the author him­self was a weird lit­tle guy who had strange ideas about God and reli­gion, couldn’t relate to oth­er chil­dren and formed con­clu­sions about sit­u­a­tions that were quite bizarre (both the sit­u­a­tions and his con­clu­sions!) After escap­ing over the Carpathi­an Moun­tains into Hun­gary (Book 1), eight-year-old Yulian and his moth­er, Bar­bara, with courage, wit, and a large dia­mond ring, final­ly make it by boat to Brazil — where they have adven­tures — he with an old­er female refugee (Iren­ka), and she with a wealthy suit­or whose Latin ardor clash­es with her Euro­pean upper-class val­ues, but she real­ly needs his mon­ey … So many romances and so much pre­tend­ing! What a movie, maybe a musi­cal, this would make.