Facing the Enemy: How a Nazi Youth Camp in America Tested a Friendship [Hardcover]

What do you do when your best friend becomes the enemy?

Growing up in Newark, NJ, in the 1930s, Tommy Anspach and Benjy Puterman have always done everything together. It never mattered that Benjy was Jewish and Tommy was of German descent. But as Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party comes to power in Germany and war brews in Europe, everything changes. Tommy is sent to Camp Nordland, a Nazi youth camp for German Americans, where he quickly learns that Jews are the enemy. Heartbroken by the loss of his friend, Benjy forms a teen version of the Newark Minutemen, an anti-Nazi vigilante group, all the while hoping that Tommy will abandon his extremist beliefs. Will Benjy and Tommy be able to overcome their differences and be friends again?

Based on real-life events and groups like the Newark Minutemen and the pro-Nazi German American Bund, this daring novel-in-verse reveals the long history of American right-wing extremism, and its impact on the lives of two ordinary teens.2024 Kansas NEA Reading Circle List

(An) illuminating verse novel... —Publishers Weekly

The story of a friendship torn apart when Nazi ideology arrives on America’s shores... (e)ach boy struggles with different types of personal adversity, and the challenges of their relationship highlight an important, lesser-known chapter in U.S. history. —Kirkus Reviews

The novel’s action moves back and forth between Tommy’s and Benjy’s first-person accounts, doing a nice job of adding complexity to the plot...Good for independent reading and, especially, classroom use. —Booklist

“Facing the Enemy offers a frightening glimpse inl3)