A Closer Look
The Story Behind the Story
Alias Anna is a nonfiction middle grade biography in verse about two young Jewish sisters, both acclaimed piano prodigies, who used their musical talent to outplay the Nazis when Hitler invaded Ukraine at the dawn of the Holocaust.
Piano prodigies Zhanna and Frina were ages eight and six when they moved to Kharkov, Ukraine, and became the youngest students ever awarded scholarships to the famed Kharkov Conservancy of Music. / Photo courtesy of the Dawson family.
I discovered this true story while doing World War II research for Lifeboat 12. I read an adult book entitled Hiding in the Spotlight by Greg Dawson and couldn’t stop thinking about 14-year-old Zhanna (alias Anna), her 12-year-old sister Frina, and what their story says about the courage of kids and the life-saving power of the arts. I contacted Greg, Zhanna’s son, and (over a five-hour lunch!) we decided to team up to retell the story for a middle grade audience.
Thirteen-year-old Aimee’s letter to her Grandma Z. Courtesy of the Dawson family.
Happily, Zhanna and Frina ultimately escaped to America and received full scholarships to the Juilliard School of Music, becoming celebrated concert pianists. They tucked the story of their perilous adolescence away, never speaking of it to family or friends, until fifty years later when Zhanna’s eighth-grade granddaughter got a school social studies project to interview a relative. Young Aimée wrote a letter to her grandma Zhanna, innocently asking: “What was life like when you were thirteen?”
That opened the floodgates. As one of the only known survivors of the Drobitsky Yar killing field, Zhanna realized that the world needed to hear this little-known story of how the Holocaust began.
One of the first things Zhanna confided to her granddaughter was that Nazis were the ultimate bullies. She was surprised to find that death mattered little; what hurt more was being harassed, ridiculed, and laughed at for things beyond their control. “Humiliation is much worse than death,” she said. “I guess our honor is life itself.” As authors and parents, we knew these wise words would resonate with middle schoolers.
We decided to write the book in verse, using lyrical language to echo the music—composed by Chopin, Brahms, Mozart, and Bach—that was the girls’ salvation. We combined Greg’s extensive research and primary sources with Susan’s poetry to create a nonfiction biography in verse. As Greg says, “Alias Anna brings the story of the Shoah in Ukraine to a vast new audience, arguably the most important one of all, the next generation to inherit the world and become keepers of the flame. Never again.”