Upon the Head of the Goat: A Childhood in Hungary (1939-1944) by Aranka Siegal [FIRST EDITION] 1981 • FSG

Upon the Head of the Goat: A Childhood in Hungary (1939-1944) by Aranka Siegal

FIRST EDITION [1981] FARRAR STRAUS GIROUX

4th Printing / 1982. Hardcover with dust jacket in very good condition.

Dust jacket is in excellent shape, with a bit of shelf wear.  Looks great in a new HQ brodart jacket protector.

Book has a line of foxing across upper text block; otherwise like new.

The classic true story of one child's experiences during the holocaust.

Nine-year-old Piri describes the bewilderment of being a Jewish child during the 1939-1944 German occupation of her hometown (then in Hungary and now in the Ukraine) and relates the ordeal of trying to survive in the ghetto.  Upon the Head of   Goat is the winner of the 1982 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Nonfiction and a 1982 Newbery Honor Book.

9 year old Piri often visited her Grandmother's farm in the Ukraine. But in 1939 war broke out along the border and Piri could not return home to Beregszasz, Hungary. When, over a year later, she did return, Piri found many things changed. Her stepfather had been called back into the army and her mother ran the household. Piri's friends were distant, and eventually Piri was forbidden to attend public school. Food was available with ration coupons, but it was hard to obtain, especially for Jews after a curfew was imposed on them.

Then the police took her sister Lilli away and no one could find out what happened to her. Yet, in spite of all this, life went on in Piri's household even after the Germans took over Beregszasz. Jews now had to wear the star of David pinned to their clothes, and soon they were herded into a ghetto, and could take with them only what they could carry. 

Throughout, Piri's family is kept together by her mother's determination and seemingly endless resourcefulness-until that final moment when they are boarded on trains destined for a "work camp" called Auschwitz.