Although there were several scenes that seemed very unnecessary, I thought the story as a whole was a decent one. The first chapter really sucked me in, but it got a little dry as she went through the details of the dawn of the Nazi regime. Also the abrupt way that the members of her family were "killed off" left many unanswered questions and made the flow of the story a bit choppy. And there seemed to be little emotion from the character at the news of her families deaths except for one brother. As this was a fictional story I would probably not recommend it as a legitimate Holocaust story with much merit as I have others such as Sarah's Key and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. ( )

Full of heartbreaking moments, this beautiful story by Miss Mahurin explores the tragedies of the concentration camps of World War II.

In this story, we follow the account of a young woman named Helen who, after surviving some unfortunate circumstances, was eventually found and taken into a concentration camp. Although she is one of the few who survive the camp, reading her story from little to young woman is hard.

The account of the way in which Germany affected Jewish families in this time is both realistic and powerful making it emotionally difficult at some points. It’s that realism though that makes this book all the better. To think that this was the reality for millions of people makes it all the more striking.
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"Persecution and hatred had walked through the door to my soul and ripped out my heart."

This book was historical fiction at it's finest. The ugly words were intricately weaved into a beautiful story of strength and perseverance. My heart ached with pain and swelled with inspiration. The circumstances Helen overcame were gut wrenching and awful. She lost loved ones, was humiliated in more ways than one, and in the end had lasting emotional scars.

"I found gratitude in the basement. My heartache never stopped, but I learned to be grateful for the essentials of life: for the air in my lungs, the visions my eyes behold, and the very experience of being alive."

The story was about a young girl trapped in a real life nightmare... Helen is a jew and Hitler wants rid of all jews... Her friend Max enlists to protect her and when times become too dangerous for her to remain at home, he hides her and her brother. They remain in hiding for years before the monsters come knocking down their door. While the cellar always seemed like a prison, when the S.S. come to take them away, they know things will only get worse. Together they embark on a terrible journey to hell (or Auschwitz) and when they arrive, they are separated and she is left with the images of murder in her mind. She finds her strength to survive illness, rape, and physical abuse in her father's words and a dirty dress.

"I wanted to confiscate one of their guns and shoot all of them through their hearts. I wanted warm bullets to find their frigid, calculating, stone-hard souls.

I finished the book hours ago, yet my brain is still within the pages. I was so captivated by the horror and utter raw reality. To think that actual people lived through similar things makes me sick to my stomach. It also makes me very appreciative for the life that I live. While reading Helen's story I felt so twisted thinking how fortunate she was, but to think how many people were killed... in some twisted way, Helen was lucky. She went through hell for that luck and had to sacrifice her health, innocence, and pride for that luck or as other's would call it, life. Her story is one that should be read by all. The Author's writing flawlessly intertwined history with an emotionally charged work of fiction. I loved it!

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In her new novel, The Seven Year Dress, Paulette Mahurin, digs in World War II, a theme many authors already wrote about, both fiction as well as non-fiction. For a contemporary writer, therefore a challenge to find a spot that may or not may unique, but has opportunities to interest an audience quite familiar with the grand story of Nazism, Holocaust, and the devastation brought to European society. In the Seven Year Dress the personal story of Jewish Helen is revealed for the first time to Myra, a young student looking for an apartment and still struggling whether or not to regard herself as Jewish.

Helen was born and raised in Berlin, Germany. The upcoming separation of Jews and Aryans, the rise of Adolf Hitler, his ideology and the Endlösung for Jews, homosexuals, gypsies impacts Helen's family and friends directly. Max, keeping his homosexuality a secret, joins the Hitlerjugend, while Helen learns to sew in order to have a job and earn money, once she's no longer allowed to go to school. Max proves to be a unique human, protecting Helen and her brother Ben where possible. It will cost his life, whereas Helen's other family members died or got missing in the course of war. Helen survives the Auschwitz concentration camp, although her virginity and feminity were brutally taken from her. Nothing lasts, and life's too special to lose it are the hopes she anchored to. What makes this novel special is the attention paid to all kinds of human sexuality, both in the Berlin youth years, the shelter in a farmhouse near Brandenburg, as well as in the concentration camp. A moving story set in the darkest decades of the 20th century Europe. ( )