Marion describes her story as the one that Anne Frank might have told had she survived past March 1945. Both Anne and Marion spent time in Westerbork and later Bergen-Belsen. Of the 120,000 Jews detained in Westerbork, 102,000 perished before the end of World War II, 18,000 survived. Anne fell into the former group, Marion, the latter. While Anne’s story is typically read by pre-teens and early teenagers in the world today, Marion’s serves as an introduction for those who are just starting to ask their parents and teachers how people can be so mean and intolerant of one another.

In a society that is quickly becoming more divided and more intolerant, Marion’s message of hope, faith, and family strength, is even more important than it was when she first started discussing her experiences a couple decades ago. While most may brush off the striking similarities to the current president’s rise to power and the Nazis, it is hard for those who truly know their history to ignore. It is even harder for those who know that atrocities of WWII still ring loud in their older generation’s ears, and yet their younger generations engage in racist and destructive behavior.

Marion’s story is one of compassion and hope during one of the world’s worst times. My only reason for giving a less than superb rating is that brevity of the book. While written with young children (9-11 years old) in mind, there is only so much that one can remember about those years themselves, particularly 50 years later, as was the case when Marion & Lila wrote Four Perfect Pebbles and Marion recounted her childhood to Lila. Everyone always wants more from a good book, but at 160 pages, Four Perfect Pebbles is incredible concise. ( )

My favorite books are the ones with true facts and history involved. One of these books is one of them. Part of the Holocaust, the stories that weren't told... This story is about Marion Blumenthal Lazan's unforgettable childhood. Her and her entire family were stuck in Nazi Germany while Adolf Hitler was still in power. For the continuing of the war, their family had o live in refugee/concentration camps. This book discusses how they survived during those hard times. After that the were able to migrate to the United States...this story is truly an amazing story showing courage and hope.

As a student of history, I have read a number of Holocaust stories (and am currently reading Night), and each one drives home the sad fact that people can be unspeakably cruel, and that this cruelness is so often off set by the incredible kindness of another. This dichotomy very much troubles me, and yet fills me with hope, because when I look at the balance I believe there are more people who are good, or are victims, or are silent than those who are evil. So the numbers seem to favor those who are not evil. Yet, the phenomenal amount of death and destruction and misery that is caused by the few that are evil is overwhelming. What bothers me as I read these stories is not so much the evil ones; I knew they existed during the Holocaust, and I know they exist now. What bothers me is the silent ones - an overwhelming number who could easily crush the evil ones, but who choose to remain silent. As the great parliamentarian Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." In every generation this lesson needs to be learned again.
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The six-year ordeal of the Blumenthal family is chronicled in this memoir of Jewish life during the Holocaust from a little girl's perspective.

RGG: Concise, compelling telling of one Jewish family's efforts to escape Nazi Germany and emigrate to America, and who survive Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.