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The Extra
The Extra | Kathryn Lasky
2 posts | 3 read
Is the chance to serve as an extra for Hitler’s favorite filmmaker a chance at life — or a detour on the path to inevitable extermination? One ordinary afternoon, fifeen-year-old Lilo and her family are suddenly picked up by Hitler’s police and imprisoned as part of the "Gypsy plague." Just when it seems certain that they will be headed to a labor camp, Lilo is chosen by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to work as a film extra. Life on the film set is a bizarre alternate reality. The surroundings are glamorous, but Lilo and the other extras are barely fed, closely guarded, and kept in a locked barn when not on the movie set. And the beautiful, charming Riefenstahl is always present, answering the slightest provocation with malice, flaunting the power to assign prisoners to life or death. Lilo takes matters into her own hands, effecting an escape and running for her life. In this chilling but ultimately uplifting novel, Kathryn Lasky imagines the lives of the Gypsies who worked as extras for the real Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, giving readers a story of survival unlike any other.
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Nitpickyabouttrains
The Extra | Kathryn Lasky
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Pickpick

Ya about a gypsy girl (I know that‘s not the preferred term now, but it‘s how the character refers to herself and her community) in Vienna at the start of wwii. Her family is taken from their home and she finds herself a prisoner but also an extra on a nazi movie set.

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ravenlee
The Extra | Kathryn Lasky
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Mehso-so

Between a so-so and pan for this one. I bumped it up because it's unusual to have a Holocaust story about Gypsies, so it was a good change of pace. Some good action, interesting characters, but the last third-quarter seemed rushed. Biggest drawback: it would have been better written in first-person rather than third-person.