When the World Was Ours - Holocaust story

When the World Was Ours by Liz Kessler
Extracts and notes for KS3 & KS4
Suitable for ages 12+

A powerful and heart-breaking novel about three childhood friends living during the Second World War whose fates are closely intertwined, even when their lives take very different courses.

Three friends. Two sides. One memory.

Vienna. 1936.

Three young friends – Leo, Elsa and Max – spend a perfect day together, unaware that around them Europe is descending into a growing darkness, and that events soon mean that they will be cruelly ripped apart from each other. With their lives taking them across Europe – to Germany, England, Prague and Poland – will they ever find their way back to each other? Will they want to?

Inspired by a true story, WHEN THE WORLD WAS OURS is an extraordinary novel that is as powerful as it is heartbreaking, and shows how the bonds of love, family and friendship allow glimmers of hope to flourish, even in the most hopeless of times.

A Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week, this is the perfect story for readers of Private Peaceful, The Book Thief and Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl.