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The Children of Willesden Lane is the powerful true story of Lisa Jura, who fled Nazi-occupied Vienna on the Kindertransport as a child. Jura was one of 10,000 young refugees who were separated from her parents and brought to England for safety before World War II. Our online companion to the book features musical selections to accompany the text, a study guide for middle and high school classrooms, and short videos.

George Grosz was a "German American expressionist painter and illustrator. Born in Berlin, he studied art at the Royal Academy, Dresden, the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, and the Academie Colarossi, Paris, and served in the army in World War I (1914-1918)."

Reading Sholem Aleichem’s writing serves a dual purpose. First, it exposes us to the life and culture of Jews in a particular time and place—eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. Second, it allows us to connect history to our own lives, as any encounter with great literature does. Of course, recognizing connections between oneself and the life of someone who lived a century ago is a difficult task, especially considering that the particular world Sholem Aleichem wrote about is gone—transformed by modernization, and then eventually destroyed by the Holocaust. However, literature—because of its suggestive power—can serve as a bridge to the past.