When The World Was Ours

When the World Was Ours is a historical young adult (YA) novel written by Liz Kessler and inspired by Kessler’s own father’s accounts of his experiences during the Holocaust. Through the perspective of three children whose lives in Vienna, Austria, are forever altered by the unfolding of World War II, Kessler examines the resilience of the human spirit as the characters struggle with the insidious process of dehumanization and work to maintain the profound bonds of friendship and family throughout their various ordeals.

The novel was originally published in 2021 and was selected for the Maine Student Book Award Reading List and the Texas Lone Star Reading List, in addition to being awarded the Green Mountain Book Award and USBBY Outstanding International Book Award.

This guide refers to the 2022 First Aladdin Paperback edition.

Content Warning: This guide contains descriptions of antisemitism and the Holocaust, including human rights violations, severe abuse, violence, genocide, and gruesome death.

Plot Summary

On Leo’s ninth birthday, he and his two best friends, Max and Elsa, ride the Ferris wheel in Vienna with Leo’s father, Mr. Grunberg. All three friends feel like they are in the middle of a precious moment, one that must be remembered and treasured. They all think about their futures, and Elsa hopes to marry one of the boys someday. Max is particularly smitten with Elsa. Mr. Grunberg takes a photograph of the children and later gives them each a copy, commemorating the moment. Elsa, Leo, and Max promise to remember this day and hope to remain friends forever.

As time goes on, Max’s father becomes involved in Nazism and starts to reject Elsa and Leo’s families because they are Jewish. He also discourages Max from seeing them and eventually bans the friendship completely. When Elsa’s family decides to leave Austria for Czechoslovakia because they suspect that Austria is no longer safe for Jewish people, Leo and Max are heartbroken. Max kisses Elsa goodbye, still hoping to marry her someday. Initially, Leo cannot believe that the country has become unsafe for Jewish people, but he has noticed ominous changes in the mood of his own family that suggest that something is deeply wrong with society.

Elsa is now living in Prague and meets a girl named Greta, who becomes her new best friend. Elsa still loves and misses the boys and writes to them often, but she otherwise enjoys her new life. However, her newfound contentment is shattered when her father announces that he is going to enlist in the army on the following day. Elsa has no choice but to accept what is happening and hope that he will return safely, which he eventually does.

Austria is overtaken by the Nazi regime, and at Leo and Max’s school, new laws are introduced. The headmaster calls out the names of all the Jewish students and tells them that they are “dogs” who no longer have rights. The Jewish students are eventually banned from attending school with non-Jewish students. When Leo’s name is called in the assembly, he looks to Max to defend him, but Max only moves away, not wanting to risk being associated with a Jewish boy. Something inside Max demands that he obey the headmaster, and in this moment, the trust between Leo and Max is severed. Leo has never known such shame and feels that even those who sympathize with the Jewish people are only grateful that they are not in the same dire situation.

Walking home that day, Leo sees his papa kneeling in mud, surrounded by jeering men who used to be his friends. Leo’s papa sees him and urges him to leave immediately. With each passing day, there are new laws and restrictions, and Leo starts a list to keep track of them.

Max’s father (who was in the group that kicked Leo’s papa) is promoted to senior Schutzstaffel (SS) officer, and he moves his family to Munich. Max joins the German Youth. He loves being part of a team again and feels like he is working for a greater purpose. Within weeks, he fits into his new role and makes new friends, but they are nothing like the friends he had before. At night, Max thinks of Leo and Elsa and looks at the photograph featuring the Ferris wheel. He never speaks of his conflicting feelings about his old friends.

When Max asks his father if he can write to Leo, Mr. Fischer forces Max to scream that Jews are “filth” over and over until he believes it. He then takes Max out into the night to throw rocks into the windows of Jewish people’s homes. Leo awakes in Vienna to the same type of attack, and he and his parents hide under the stairs. When they emerge, two men who used to be Mr. Grunberg’s friends storm into the house and arrest him. Leo does not see his father again for almost seven years.

When Hitler invades Czechoslovakia, tension rises in Elsa’s world, and life becomes unsafe once again. Her parents attempt to send her and her brother, Otto, away to Holland, but they act too late; war is declared. Elsa and her family are soon kicked out of their home. Their precious belongings are stolen, and they are sent to live in a tenement block. Meanwhile, Leo and his mother find a place to stay in England. They receive a letter from Papa, who claims that all is well in the camp at Dachau, but Leo knows that something is wrong. Leo and his mother hate the idea of leaving Papa behind, but they know that he would want them to get out of the country and find safety. In England, Leo is bullied; the other children assume that he is a Nazi because of his accent. Fortunately, Leo soon makes a friend in Daniel, who is also Jewish.

At the same time, Max undergoes his first German Youth retreat and finds himself plagued by memories of his past friendships with Elsa and Leo. When Max visits Dachau concentration camp for the first time, he is thrilled by the opportunity to really immerse himself in the Nazi regime. However, when he sees that the camp is full of prisoners, not soldiers, he becomes confused and conflicted. He also encounters Leo’s father, who recognizes him immediately and smiles at him. Max denies knowing who the man is and cannot believe that Mr. Grunberg has been reduced to such a state.

The Jewish people of Prague are sent to live in “ghettos” that have no running water and very little food; conditions are so crowded that four families must share a single apartment. Elsa is still with Greta, and they spend their days together, feeding a local stray cat or discussing their futures. When the entire block is evicted, Elsa and her family must move again, and this time they have no idea where they are going. The entire block is marched to the train station and put into crowded carriages. They are transported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Elsa’s days become miserable; she only finds solace in her dreams and in the fact that she still has Greta and her mother. One day, two men who were caught sending letters to their wives in the other camp are brutally beaten in front of Elsa and many others. As time goes on, people slowly starve on low rations of substandard food.

Meanwhile, Leo and his mother get a letter from Papa that was sent a year earlier. They regain hope that he is still alive and that they will see him again one day. Leo starts to fit in at school and even develops a close friendship with a girl named Annie, who eventually becomes his girlfriend. He and his mother move into their own apartment and continue to mourn the fact that Papa is not with them. Meanwhile, Max plays the game of “Nazis versus Jews” with his friends, but for him, this is more than a game, for he believes that he is training to become a soldier. When he turns 14, he officially joins the Hitler Youth, and his father starts to treat him like a man. Despite feeling proud of his accomplishments, Max still finds himself longing for Leo and Elsa. When he is caught looking at the photograph of the Ferris wheel, his father tells him to burn it, along with all the letters from Leo that Max never knew existed. In doing so, Max attempts to erase his past from his current identity as a follower of the Nazi regime.

Leo sees that his mother is losing hope and tells her that he has a new girlfriend, which lifts her spirits. Annie is Jewish and also escaped the Holocaust, and Leo hopes that his papa will get to meet her one day.

One year later, Leo’s mama and Annie make him his favorite dessert in celebration of the love they have created together. Meanwhile, Max and his family move to Auschwitz, and Max is given a job at the concentration camp. He cannot stand the smell of rotting corpses or the sight of the prisoners, but he pushes all emotion out of his mind, even when he sees Leo’s father again.

Elsa and her family are transported to Auschwitz in cattle cars packed so full that they can barely breathe. Many people die, and their bodies are thrown out along the way. When Elsa and her family finally arrive, Elsa’s mother, father, and brother are sent to the gas chambers and killed. Elsa is left with only Greta, and the two survive together as long as they can. When they make a plan to escape, they are immediately caught, and Greta is killed in front of everyone. At this point, Elsa feels that she has nothing left to live for, and when she is called to her death hours later, she does not fight it. She goes to stand against a wall and is met by Max, who is there to shoot his first Jew for his birthday. When Max sees that the prisoner is Elsa, he stops, and everything from his past comes rushing back to him. Elsa tries to reason with Max, telling him that he need not kill her, but Max is pressured by the other guards. He holds his pistol in his hands, shaking violently. When Elsa shows him her copy of the photograph from the Ferris wheel, which is sewn into her dress, they both smile, and then Max is shot by one of the guards. Elsa loses her last shred of hope and is shot seconds later. Leo’s papa is tasked with cleaning up the bodies, and he manages to recover the photograph from the scene. Much later, after the war ends and he finally reunites with his family, he gives the photograph to Leo. In 2021, Leo is asked to tell his story in the hopes that doing so will inspire people to speak out when they see the same injustices occurring.