It Rained Warm Bread

Book by: Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet

Poems by: Hope Anita Smith

Illustrations by: Lea Lyon

Report by: Viki P.

Have you ever heard about the Nazi's "Twin Experiment? The doctor who did this experiment was Josef Mengele, otherwise known as "The Angel of Death". Who is Josef Mengele? According to a video called Joseph Mengele Biography: "The Angel of Death", he was a neutral student and always had problems with keeping grades to his mother's standards. Later he got a disease called osteomyelitis, a bone marrow disease. After he healed from the disease, he became a doctor. Later he joined the Nazi party and went into "SS" (Shoot Staffan), the German Police Force.

This book is about Moishe Moskowitz, a young boy, age of 11. Moishe remembers eating blueberry filled pierogis and playing games with his dad, until the Nazis came and his father had to hide on the Janek's farm. Janek was the family's friend. As time proceeds, the Nazis attack the farm and Moishe's family runs away. Soon the family gets separated and Moishe gets taken to a concentration camp－Auschwitz. This was the nightmare of World War ll. During this time, many people died of torture and the Nazis did experiments on those poor people, some examples are putting chemicals in people's eyes and killing them with poisonous gas.

The Nazis also did something called the Twin Experiment. The Twin experiment would be used to breed "pure Germans". Pure Germans were created by Josef Mengele when he did selective breeding with the most desirable traits (blue eyes and black hair) with Twin's Experiments. He would also take twins and make them conjoined twins. Moishe kept moving from concentration camp to concentration camp in cramped cattle cars.

He is terrified of the unknown terrors present. While traveling to Auschwitz on a train, there was a group of Dutch girls that had seen the train. They saw Moishe (and all the prisoners), so they got warm loaves of bread and threw them into the iron horse－this was the day it rained warm bread. In reading this book, I think it really captures what the Holocaust was like and shows why this time was both lonely and depressing. This time is depressing because of all the people getting tortured and all the pain that is now reflected in the pages of this book.