JUNE 23 • 2022 | 49

C

hildren’s author 
Danica Davidson had 
authored more than a 
dozen books when she experi-
enced hatred as a journalist for 
a major cable media outlet in 
2015 because she was Jewish.
“I had an editor who lectured 
to me that it was no big deal to 
refer to Jewish people as Nazis,
” 
said Davidson, who lives in 
Kalamazoo. “I was told that, 
overall, the Jews didn’t have it 
that bad and only suffered a 
few bad years in the 1940s. It 
was then I realized the gravity 
of the Holocaust was becom-
ing trivialized, and there was a 
widespread ignorance about the 
history of the events leading up 
to and during the Holocaust.
” 

Davidson is author of the 
new children’s novel I Will 
Protect You: A True Story 
of Twins Who Survived 
Auschwitz (Little, Brown, April 
5, 2022). It is the account of 
co-writer, Holocaust survivor 
and educator Eva Moses Kor, 
who died in 2019 at age 85. 
A native of Burbank, Calif., 
Davidson remembers hearing 
stories of hatred toward Jews 
from her own family stories; 
her great-grandparents immi-
grated to the United States 
from Eastern Europe to escape 
pogroms. 
Growing up, her father pro-
vided her with books about 
the Holocaust, she attended an 
eighth-grade public school field 

trip to the museum of tolerance 
and read the play based on The 
Diary of Anne Frank. 
By high school, Davidson’s 
family moved to Sturgis, Mich., 
where she discovered she was 
one of the only Jewish students 
in her school. 
“I went to school and used 
Yiddish phrases I just assumed 
everyone knew,
” Davidson 
recalled. “I remember bringing 
matzah to school for lunch 
during Passover and the kids 
around me did not understand 
why I was eating it.
” 
Davidson also assumed 
everyone around her was well 
read about the Holocaust. Now, 
well into her adulthood in her 
30s, she is alarmed at statistics 

that reveal a growing number of 
adults under 40 had never even 
heard of the term “Holocaust.
” 
After her unpleasant brush 
with antisemitism in the 
workplace, Davidson delved 
further into learning about the 
history of discrimination and 
persecution of the Jews and the 
Holocaust when, in 2018, she 
met Kor, who was giving a talk 
at Western Michigan University. 
 
It was right there when 
Davidson presented turning 
Kor’s story into a children’s 
book; Kor met the idea with 
great enthusiasm. They got 
to work, through a series of 
in-person and telephone inter-
views, developing the manu-
script. 
continued on page 50

ARTS&LIFE
BOOKS

Letting Go 
of Hatred

New children’s novel 
tells a survivor’s story of 
tolerance and forgiveness.

STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Danica 
Davidson

Eva 
Mozes 
Kor

