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The Helpers: Historical Fiction About WWII Humanitarian Heroes
By: Angela & Melissa
Updated:
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we may earn a referral fee from qualifying purchases.Some of the most courageous acts of WW2 came from ordinary people who opened their homes, shared their meager food rations, forged identity papers, or smuggled children to safety. These individuals, from Polish teenagers hiding Jewish families in their attics to Dutch women assisting with the Kindertransport, risked everything to protect the vulnerable.
The books on this list celebrate these unsung heroes whose resistance took the form of radical compassion and humanitarian aid. While most were not part of organized resistance networks running espionage operations, their work was no less dangerous and no less vital. Each story reminds us that even in humanity’s darkest hours, individual acts of courage and kindness can save lives and preserve hope.
WW2 Historical Fiction: The Helpers
In addition to these brave helpers, we have another excellent list of historical fiction books highlighting the dangerous work of those part of the organized resistance during World War II.
The Sunflower House
Book Summary
Allina has a good life in her small German village, where she spends her days working at her uncle’s bookshop, making strudel with her aunt, and spending time with friends and her fiancé. But the year is 1939, and she also has one very big secret that puts everything at risk. Her birth mother was Jewish, which makes her a Mischling.
After losing everyone she loves, Allina is forced to work as a nurse at Hochland Home, a state-run baby factory. There, she becomes not only a witness to, but also a participant in, Himmler’s horrific eugenics program.
To survive, Allina must keep her Jewish identity secret. When she meets a high-ranking SS officer with secrets of his own, she must decide how much she can safely share with him. They each take major risks to join forces and save as many children as possible.
Historical Context
A Mischling was a derogatory legal term used in Nazi Germany under the Nuremberg Laws to classify individuals with both “Aryan” (German/European) and “non-Aryan” (primarily Jewish) ancestry, defining them as “mixed-blood” rather than fully “pure.”
Under the Lebensborn Program of Nazi Germany, Women of “pure” blood stayed in Lebensborn homes for the sole purpose of perpetuating the Aryan population, giving birth to thousands of babies who were adopted out to “good” Nazi families.
Book Summary
In 1664, Alouette was the 18-year-old daughter of a master dyer at the famed Gobelin Tapestry Works. She dreams of a life bigger than the one she was born into, but instead, her life takes a terrible turn when her dad is wrongfully arrested. Things get worse when she tries to save him, but instead ends up sent to the Salpêtrière asylum, where thousands of women are held captive and cruelly treated. But she’s not the only brave woman there, and she finds some unlikely allies.
Three centuries later, in 1939, a medical student named Kristof is doing his psychiatric residency in Paris. His neighbors are a Jewish family who fled Poland, but now the Nazis are threatening their new home. Kristof is their only hope of survival. Over the next three years, his life looks dramatically different from what he planned when he entered medical school.
Thoughts on This Book
Unlike most popular dual-timeline novels that contrast WWII with a present-day storyline, Skylark takes us back to a less commonly covered period in history. This would be a great fit for clubs that enjoy historical fiction, but are looking for an interesting twist. Plan on discussing how you think the stories are related to each other.
Be aware that the story starts at a slower pace, and it may take you a bit longer than normal to be hooked. However, reviewers say it’s worth the wait, and you will connect with the characters once you get to know them.
Book Summary
Lili and Esti met at the University of Ferrara and have been best friends ever since. Both women have Jewish ancestry, which deems them an “inferior” race under Mussolini’s Racial Laws. Life goes on for the two women as a war breaks out across borders until Germany invades northern Italy, and they are suddenly living in occupied territory.
Self-confident Esti convinces Lili to flee to a villa in the countryside and help a group of young war orphans. Then they continue on to Florence, where they pose as nuns and falsify documentation for the Underground. But their biggest risk of all comes when Esti is wounded and asks Lili to run away with her young son in order to protect him.
Traveling alone with the boy, Lili does everything she can to keep Theo safe as they make their way through Allied territory, Nazi-occupied villages, and bombed-out cities.
Why We Think You’ll Love It
This is a beautiful story of friendship and one friend’s willingness to do anything to protect what is most important to the other.
The Secret Midwife
Book Summary
Despite the German occupation of her Polish village, Emilia is allowed certain freedoms because of her role as a midwife. Each day, she freely pedals past the Nazi checkpoints to the homes of expectant mothers. For years, she has also been secretly visiting hidden Jewish mothers…until she is betrayed and hauled off to Auschwitz.
When she is put to work as a midwife in the notorious concentration camp, she realizes that she’s in a position to bring a small amount of hope to the pregnant women who are also imprisoned there. Together with a brave doctor, she hatches a dangerous plan that could save countless lives. But if discovered, hers could be a fate worse than death.
Fifty years later, on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, when a news broadcaster runs an appeal for information on the midwife’s identity, Emilia knows that it’s finally time to tell her story.
Historical Context
While this story is fictional, it is inspired by true accounts from doctors and midwives imprisoned at Auschwitz during WWII. Some of the characters in the novel are real historical figures, including the infamously cruel Dr. Josef Mengele (known as the Angel of Death).
The Paris Library
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
96% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Based on a true story, this novel will transport you to two vastly different time periods and locations. In Paris in 1939, Odile worked for the American Library. When the Nazis arrive in Paris and threaten the library, Odile and her fellow brave librarians risk their own safety to become helpers.
Forty-three years later, in Montana, teenager Lily becomes interested in her widowed neighbor. As they begin to form a bond, Lily tries to learn more about how her French neighbor ended up in Montana. They have no idea that a dark secret connects them.
Lilac Girls
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
95% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Lilac Girls crosses three continents and follows three women whose lives are on a collision course.
Caroline is a New York socialite working at the French consulate, Kasia is a Polish teenager and a courier for the underground resistance movement, and Herta is an ambitious young German doctor who finds herself trapped in a male-dominated world of Nazi secrets and power.
The book alternates between the three stories, each providing thought-provoking insights into uniquely difficult situations as the war progressed.
Our Thoughts on This Book
Melissa loved Lilac Girls, although it includes tragic scenes that are tough to read. She was devastated when she learned that this historical fiction was based on the true experiences of the ‘Ravensbrück Rabbits.’
Specifically, you’ll find this to be the story of two people who choose to be helpers, and one who found herself accidentally aligned with evil.
Get your tissues ready; this story is part of history that we shouldn’t ignore.
Book Summary
Helene is about to wake her children for school in 1943 when German police break into her home to take her Romani husband and five children. Because she is German and not Roma, she doesn’t have to go with them, but she bravely volunteers, unwilling to watch her family face their fate without her.
When Doctor Mengele realizes Helene is a trained nurse, he assigns her to run the camp’s nursery. For sixteen months, Helene becomes a helper, doing everything possible to care for the children and bring them some sense of comfort and hope—all while two gas chambers operate just 400 yards away, with thousands of daily victims.
Based on a True Story
Don’t miss the author’s note, which reveals that Helene was a real person and a little-known hero. Her family was among the 20,000+ Romani people imprisoned at Auschwitz—a group rarely mentioned in Holocaust histories today.
Note: Some reviewers suggest reading this in print or on Kindle, as the audiobook narrator doesn’t always match the story’s tone.
The Wartime Book Club
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
96% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
In 1940, the Nazis invaded and occupied the Channel Islands, including Jersey. While thousands of islanders evacuated, many also stayed in their homes, including librarian Grace and her best friend, Bea, a postwoman.
By 1943, Grace had become Chief Librarian after her boss was sent to an internment camp in Germany. She is taking a great risk in hiding books banned by the Nazis in order to protect them from destruction. She also strongly believes in the importance of access to books during this terrible period. But when neighbors are offered extra rations for reporting each other, who can she trust?
More About This Book
Each chapter of this novel starts with information on a different banned book, adding an extra layer to this already engaging story. Don’t miss the author’s note that highlights which part of this story closely follows the history of the occupation of Jersey.
Keep in mind that this novel is on the long side (512 pages) and includes a large cast of characters beyond the alternating perspectives of Grace & Bea.
The Last Train to London
Book Summary
In 1936, 15-year-old Stephan was a budding playwright growing up in a wealthy and influential Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. His best friend is a Christian girl named Žofie-Helene, whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper. Despite the growing shadow of war, Stephan and Helene are carefree and innocent.
But then the Nazis take control, and no one is safe. Hope comes in the form of a Dutch resistance worker named Truus, who risks her own life smuggling Jewish children to the European nations that will take them. After Hitler annexes Austria, countries begin closing their borders, and her mission becomes even more dangerous.
When Britain passes a measure to accept at-risk child refugees, Truus is determined to transport as many children, like Stephan and his young brother Walter, as she can.
Historical Context
This novel is based on the Kindertransports that carried thousands of children to safety and out of Nazi-occupied Europe.
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
97% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Liesel Meminger is a 9-year-old foster girl living in Nazi Germany in 1939. While trying to avoid all the death around her, she learns to read and begins stealing books. Soon, she’s sharing the books with neighbors and the Jewish man hidden in their basement.
It’s a heartbreaking read like so many others that cover this subject, but The Book Thief also underscores the vast power of books to help you through a terrible time.
Thoughts on This Book
Not only is Liesel reading books to escape her own reality, as she shares them, but she also makes unexpected connections with neighbors. Our readers voted that they believe this book will be considered a classic in the future, with one saying it’s “a heart-wrenching understanding of the effect of war and hate that should never be forgotten.”
The Paris Daughter
Book Summary
Elise and Juliette are two young mothers who become fast friends after a chance meeting at a beautiful park in Paris. They are living in the shadow of the war that is making its way across Europe, but the women can’t begin to imagine how their own lives are about to be impacted.
When Elise is targeted by the German occupation, she asks Juliette to protect her young daughter. Elise feels that her daughter will be safe in Juliette’s small, quiet bookshop, where she has Juliette’s daughter as a playmate.
When the war ends, Elise returns for her daughter only to discover that the bookstore has been reduced to a pile of rubble and Juliette and the girls are nowhere to be found. She won’t stop until she finds out what happened, and her search will lead her to New York City.
Thoughts on This Book
Our readers who have previously enjoyed Harmel’s The Book of Lost Names will enjoy the nod to that story in The Paris Daughter.
A View Across the Rooftops
Book Summary
Widowed math professor Josef is devastated by the occupation of his beloved Amsterdam by German forces. His former student, Michael, is Jewish and at risk of being whisked away to a concentration camp as Jewish raids began across the city. At great personal risk, Josef offers Michael a place to stay in his attic.
Michael can’t stop talking about his beloved, but forbidden, Dutch girlfriend, Elke. She is equally in love with him and is not sure what happened when he’s suddenly gone. Josef has memories of his own lost love and wants to help them have a chance at a life together, despite the unlikely odds.
The Light in Hidden Places
Book Summary
Stefania is only sixteen years old in 1943 when she finds herself caring for her six-year-old sister Helena in Nazi-occupied Poland. Her father has been taken to a labor camp, and her mother is stuck in their village, leaving the two girls to fend for themselves in Przemyśl.
When the Nazis liquidate the Jewish ghetto, Stefania makes a dangerous decision: she hides her former employer, Max Diamant, in the attic of her apartment. Soon, more Jewish refugees arrive seeking shelter, and Stefania finds herself hiding thirteen people in her small attic.
For over two years, Stefania risks her life daily to keep her hidden guests safe—all while caring for her little sister, working to pay the rent, and evading the suspicions of her Nazi neighbors.
Historical Context
This young adult novel is based on the true story of Stefania Podgórska, who was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for her heroic actions during the Holocaust.
Don’t miss the author’s note that provides more details about Stefania’s remarkable story and what happened to the people she saved.
Another Book to Consider
If you’re moved by Stefania’s story, consider reading Life in a Jar by Jack Mayer, which tells the true story of Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII. Like Stefania, Irena was a young woman who risked everything to save lives.
Life in a Jar also follows three Kansas high school students in 1999 who discovered Irena’s story and brought her heroism to the world’s attention through their History Day project.
The Baker’s Secret
Book Summary
Emma is a 22-year-old baker in a small town on the Normandy coast of France. After her Jewish mentor is removed from his shop, she has to take over the bakery.
Throughout the years of war, and under the watchful eyes of the enemy, Emma builds up a clandestine network of barter and trade, risking her life to make sure as many villagers as possible have bread and other food. In addition to helping the villagers meet their physical needs, she also helps restore their hope.
The Woman with the Blue Star
Book Summary
In Poland in 1942, a group of Jewish citizens hid in the Polish sewer system to escape a fate that would have been even worse. The Woman with the Blue Star tells the story of 18-year-old Sadie, who is forced to hide in the sewers with her pregnant mother.
Above ground, affluent Ella is shopping at the outdoor market when she spots Sadie underground. Ella begins to help Sadie however she can, but the risky friendship will be tested as the war continues to close in all around them.
A Related Book to Consider
There is a memoir, The Girl in the Green Sweater, written by one of the survivors who spent 14 months in a Lvov sewer with her family. The memoir also talks about their helper, Leopold Socha, who risked his life to provide food and medicine.
A Picture of Hope
Book Summary
Nellie is a photojournalist who has spent most of the war in London photographing pilots taking off and landing. She’s grown bored and is frustrated that women aren’t allowed closer to the action. She devises a plan to travel aboard a medical ship traveling to France just after D-Day.
Along the way, she comes upon an orphanage where nuns are sheltering children with disabilities. Can she help them get safely into Switzerland before it’s too late?
More About This Book
This book is listed as #5 in the Heroines of WWII series, but each book in this series is written by a different author and is a completely stand-alone story about a unique aspect of the war.
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
99% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
The Nightingale tells the story of French sisters Vianne and Isabelle, who have always been at odds. Vianne is a rule-follower, and Isabelle is more rebellious and willing to speak her mind. With WWII escalating, Isabelle intends to fight for France, while Vianne simply wants to survive the war with her family intact – even if it means allowing a German officer to live in her home.
Isabelle, who refuses to live passively under German authority, joins the French resistance and guides Allied airmen out of France after their planes are shot down – work for which she adopts the codename the Nightingale. As the war wages on, both sisters learn who they are and what they can do.
Thoughts on This Book
In this novel, the two sisters take different approaches to making a difference during the war. As a result, this book is also included on our list of books about WWII Resistance workers.
Schindler’s List
Book Summary
Oskar Schindler is an unlikely hero: a German businessman, Nazi Party member, and war profiteer who arrives in occupied Poland seeking fortune from the chaos of World War II. He establishes an enamelware factory in Kraków, initially employing Jewish workers simply because they’re cheaper labor.
But as Schindler witnesses the brutality of the Nazi regime, particularly the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto and the horrors of the nearby Płaszów concentration camp, something shifts. He begins using his factory as a refuge, manipulating the system to protect his Jewish workers from deportation to death camps. His list of “essential workers” becomes a list of lives saved.
By the war’s end, Schindler had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black-market goods to keep approximately 1,200 Jews alive. Based on extensive interviews with fifty Schindler survivors and meticulous research, Thomas Keneally’s novel tells the true story of how one man’s moral transformation during humanity’s darkest hour saved generations.
About the Author
Thomas Keneally is an Australian novelist and playwright who has won numerous literary awards, including the Booker Prize for Schindler’s List (originally published as Schindler’s Ark in 1982). The book was adapted into Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed 1993 film.
Number the Stars
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Set in 1943 Copenhagen, Number the Stars is the story of 10-year-old Annemarie and her best friend, Ellen. While they’re attending school every day like normal, the country faces food shortages, and Nazi soldiers are all around town.
As Hitler’s regime gains power, the Jewish citizens of Denmark, including Ellen’s family, are “relocated.” Annemarie’s family agrees to keep Ellen in their home, at significant risk to her and themselves.
Thoughts on This Book
If you’re looking for a short book, this is your winner at only 137 pages. While it’s technically a middle-grade book, it’s been enjoyed by readers of all ages since its original publication in 1989 and received attention as the Newbery Medal winner in 1990. If you read this one in the 90s, especially if you were a child or young adult at the time, it’s worth a re-read now.
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