The Devil's Arithmetic

Jane Yolen is the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic, a novel for young readers (1988). The main character, Hannah Stern, is almost 13 at the start of the novel. The story begins in her present, the late 1980s, and then travels back in time to 1942. The novel straddles multiple genres: fantasy, time slip, and historical fiction. Stern experiences the tragic history of the Holocaust, and Yolen uses her knowledge of history to provide accurate details. Like Hannah, Yolen is Jewish and grew up in New York.

Yolen has published hundreds of books and won several awards. The Devil’s Arithmetic won the National Jewish Book Award for children’s literature, and in 1999, it became a movie starring Kirsten Dunst and Brittany Murphy. Many schools continue to teach Yolen’s story, as it tackles pertinent themes like memory, hope, identity, privilege, and suffering.  

The page numbers refer to a 1990 Puffin Books eBook version of The Devil’s Arithmetic.

Content Warning: This study guide contains traumatic violence and situations related to the Holocaust.

Plot Summary

Hannah Stern is almost 13 years old, and she doesn’t want to go to a Passover Seder with her family. Her mom picks her up from the house of her best friend Rosemary, where Hannah ate a big dinner and Easter candy. Her mom is annoyed. Hannah should have waited to eat. Now, Hannah isn’t hungry. Her mom says Passover is about much more than food: It has to do with remembering. Hannah is fed up with remembering. Her mom reminds her that the Nazis killed many of her grandparents’ family in the Holocaust, and Hannah admits that she remembers.

Hannah lives with her mom, dad, and little brother, Aaron in a big house in New Rochelle—a city in New York State. The Seder is at her grandma and grandpa’s apartment in the Bronx—a borough of New York City. On the drive there, Hannah tells Aaron she’ll help him with the Four Questions, which are recited at the Seder by the youngest child to encourage inquiry, and tells him the plot of a zombie movie she watched on TV.

At the Seder, Aunt Eva kisses Hannah on the forehead. Eva is Hannah’s favorite aunt, even though, as Hannah grows older, her magic dwindles. Hannah’s name comes from one of Eva’s dead friends. Eva lives with her brother Grandpa Will and his wife. She helped raise Hannah’s dad.

Will screams at a Holocaust program on TV. Hannah doesn’t understand why the Holocaust continues to upset Will—it’s in the past. Will has a number tattoo on his arm from the Holocaust. Hannah remembers when she drew a number on her arm, and Will became very angry.

During the Seder, Hannah can’t suppress her suffering. She doesn’t want to be here, and she doesn’t like the food. She wishes she could eat jelly beans like Rosemary. Yet she gets to drink wine. Will says she should open the apartment door to see if Elijah, a prophet who represents hope, is outside.

Hannah opens the front door. She travels back in time to 1942 Poland, and can somehow speak and understand Yiddish. Gitl and Shmuel, her aunt and uncle, call her Chaya—Hannah’s Hebrew name. In this new timeline, Hannah’s parents died of cholera. Hannah was living in Lublin, a city in Poland, but now lives in a tiny Jewish village with Gitl and Shmuel. Shmuel is about to marry Fayge, the daughter of Rabbi Boruch. Yitzchak, a butcher, wants to marry Gitl, but she doesn’t want to look after his young children, Tzipporah and Reuven.

The wedding party is lively, and Hannah is a hit with the girls from the village. She tells them stories from popular culture and impresses them with her worldly knowledge. When the party reaches Fayge’s village, Hannah sees Nazis. The Nazis tell the party they must relocate immediately. The Nazis lie that the party has nothing to worry about: If they cooperate, the Nazis will treat them humanely. Remembering what she learned from her family and in school, Hannah tries to warn them that the Nazis will kill them. Rabbi Boruch dismisses her, and Gitl hushes her. They don’t want to hear her tragic story. They’d rather believe the Nazis’ hopeful lie.

The Nazis mistreat the party. They make them lie down in the dirt and then violently take their identity papers and jewelry. They pack them into crowded, smelly trucks and then cattle cars. In the cattle cars, there are stories of mass killings and wanton murder, but some of the party dismisses them. Gitl tries to instill hope with a joke about keeping kosher.

The party arrives at an unnamed concentration camp. The blokova, a non-Jewish prisoner in charge of other prisoners, slaps Hannah and takes her blue ribbon. The party has to take a shower. Remembering Holocaust history, Hannah assumes they’re going to the gas chamber. Fortunately, the shower is a shower. Afterward, Nazis shave their heads, make them dress in rags, and tattoo a number on their arms. Before bed, Gitl reminds Hannah that she’s not a number but a person.

The next day, Hannah notices a fly on Tzipporah’s cheek. She’s dead, and Gitl smacks Hannah because she doesn’t want her to dwell on the death and lose hope. Rivka, a girl who has survived the camp for a year, teaches Hannah about the importance of hope and how to stay alive. She instills the number on her arm with meaning, and Hannah does the same. Hannah is determined to live: She doesn’t want to die or become a “musselman”—camp slang for someone alive on the outside but dead on the inside.

When the head of the camp, Commandment Breuer, comes to select prisoners for the gas chamber, the kids hide in the trash dump. The Nazis won’t go in the garbage—it’s beneath them. Breuer makes a surprise visit and selects Reuven. Hannah feels terrible for not doing more to save him. She thinks she and the others are monsters for not fighting back. Rivka tells Hannah the Nazis are the monsters, and that the Jewish people are the victims.

Gitl tells Hannah that there’s a plan to escape. The plan fails, and the Nazis shoot the participants. Shmuel, a part of the plan, dies defiantly, and Fayge dies with him. Later that day, Hannah tells the girls another story: Millions of Jews will die, but the Jewish people will survive, and there will be a Jewish state and Jewish movie stars. During the hopeful story, a Nazi chooses Rivka and two others, Shifre and Esther, for the gas chamber. Hannah takes Rivka’s headscarf and pretends to be her. She dies so Rivka can live. Returning to her grandma and grandpa’s apartment in the Bronx, Hannah realizes Aunt Eva is Rivka.