50 Fun Facts About The Devil's Arithmetic

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which relative at Hannah's Seder table turns out to have been her camp friend Rivka?

Aunt Eva carries the same tattooed number as Rivka, which is how Hannah recognises her. She took a new name after reaching America.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which fairy tale do the villagers think Hannah is muddling when she warns them of ovens?

Hansel and Gretel is a story Hannah had told her new friends, so they assume she has confused its witch's oven with real ones. Her true warning sounds like one more tale.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which prophet is Hannah welcoming when she opens the apartment door at the Seder?

Elijah is the prophet a Seder door is opened for, in the hope that he will visit. Hannah finds a field in wartime Poland where the hallway should be.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which science-fiction film does Hannah retell to the girls walking to the wedding?

Star Wars is one of the plots Hannah spins for girls her own age, who hang on every word. Never popular before, she discovers that she is a born storyteller.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what does Hannah take from Rivka and put on so that the guard leads her away instead?

Her kerchief is all it takes, because the new guard has not learned the girls' faces. Hannah tells Rivka to run, then walks on in her place.

Seeing herself as Chaya in a mirror in The Devil's Arithmetic, what does Hannah find has vanished?

Her braces are gone, and the girl in the glass reminds her of old family photographs. She is wearing a dress Gitl once wore to Shmuel's Bar Mitzvah.

What does Arbeit Macht Frei, the sign over the camp gate in The Devil's Arithmetic, mean in English?

Work sets you free was the lie hung over the gates of Auschwitz, Dachau and other Nazi camps. In the novel the villagers whisper the words as they are marched in.

Which actress played Hannah in the 1999 television film of The Devil's Arithmetic?

Kirsten Dunst was still a high school junior when she shot the film in freezing weather. She said the scenes of being herded out of the trucks at gunpoint felt frighteningly real.

As a small girl in The Devil's Arithmetic, how does Hannah enrage Grandpa Will while trying to please him?

Hannah inks numbers on her arm with a ballpoint pen to match his own, and he screams at her. She has nightmares about it for years and cannot forgive him.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which language can Hannah suddenly understand in Gitl and Shmuel's house?

Yiddish comes as easily to Hannah as a translated speech she once heard on a class trip to the United Nations. Until now it was only the language her older relatives joked in.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which disease is said to have killed Chaya's parents and left her confused?

Cholera had struck the family months earlier, and Chaya barely came through it. Every strange thing Hannah says about the future is put down to the fever.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what does the wedding entertainer tell Hannah that her Hebrew name, Chaya, means?

Life is what Chaya means, and the name follows Hannah through the book. After the war Gitl gives it to the organisation she founds for young survivors.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, where do the camp's youngest children hide whenever the commandant comes to inspect?

The garbage dump, which the prisoners call the midden, is the one place the Nazis will not go. Children under fourteen are not supposed to be in the camp at all.

After the truck ride in The Devil's Arithmetic, what are the villagers crammed into for four days and nights?

Train boxcars carry them with barely room to breathe, and the doors open only once on the way. A child and several old women are dead before the camp comes into view.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what does Fayge do when Shmuel is lined up to be shot after the failed escape?

Fayge runs to die beside him, throwing herself at his feet as the guns fire. The two had been stopped on the road to their own wedding.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what does Gitl make the newly shaved Hannah promise never to do before the Nazis?

Cry is the one thing Gitl forbids, so that the guards never see her broken. Shorn of their hair, the women of the village suddenly all look alike.

On the drive to the Seder in The Devil's Arithmetic, what does Hannah complain every Jewish holiday is about?

Remembering is exactly what she is sick of, and her mother answers that both grandparents lost family to the Nazis. The complaint frames everything the open door will teach her.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, how many Jews does Hannah tell her friends at the water pump will perish?

Six million is the figure Hannah dredges up from her history lessons, along with a promise that the Jewish people will endure. The girls take it for one more of her stories.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, where does Gitl settle after the war and found an organisation named for Chaya?

Israel is where Gitl goes after leaving the camp at a weight of just 73 pounds. Her organisation helps survivors find the relatives they lost.

As the weeks pass in the camp in The Devil's Arithmetic, what does Hannah find slipping away from her?

Her memories of home fade until a word like pizza means nothing to her. She can still name things from the future but can no longer picture them.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what is a badchan, the figure Fayge's father pays to enliven the wedding procession?

A jester is the nearest English word for a badchan, who rhymes and clowns for the guests. Hiring one marks Fayge's father as a man with money to spare.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what marks the right hand of the blokova, the prisoner who runs Hannah's barracks?

Missing fingers are her punishment: the blokova lost two of them for losing control of the prisoners in her charge. She is a prisoner herself.

In the prisoners' slang in The Devil's Arithmetic, what does it mean to 'organize' a pair of shoes?

To steal them, in plain words: the prisoners 'organize' whatever keeps them going, from water to a birthday present. The word turns theft from their captors into a small act of defiance.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which butcher, long refused by Gitl, escapes the camp to join the partisans?

Yitzchak is the only man to get away on the night of the breakout. Both of his small children had already been lost in the camp.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what is the afikoman that the children hunt for and hide at the Stern family Seder?

A piece of matzo wrapped in an embroidered blue cloth is the prize, and Grandpa Will must buy it back from whoever hides it. Hannah now thinks herself too old for the game.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what is a shtetl, the kind of place where Hannah wakes up among strangers?

A small Jewish town of the kind once scattered across Eastern Europe, a shtetl was a world the Holocaust all but wiped out. Hannah sees one in full swing, on the day of a wedding.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what was Grandpa Will called in the camp, where he had to carry the dead?

Wolfe was his name before the family took new ones in America. As one of the Kommandos he had to carry away the bodies of prisoners who were killed.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, why does Grandpa Will pick Hannah to open the door during the Seder?

She gave up her wine, emptying her whole glass into the prophet's cup, and he praises a sacrifice nobody asked for. Hannah feels a fraud, because she simply did not want it.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what does Rivka hand each newcomer, warning it must serve for everything?

A bowl is the only one each prisoner will ever get, and nothing else is issued for eating or drinking. Rivka took over the job of handing them out after her mother died.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what do the soldiers outside the synagogue announce to the wedding party?

They are being resettled for the length of the war, or so the officer claims. The rabbi urges calm, and only Hannah knows where the trucks really lead.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what do the prisoners call the black handleless door that leads to the gas chamber?

Lilith's Cave takes its name from the figure of Jewish folklore said to have been Adam's first wife. Those who pass through its door do not come out.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what sound do the prisoners spread to warn children that the commandant is coming?

A clucking noise, made with hands cupped to the mouth, ripples through the camp like a chorus of crickets. At the signal the little ones race off to their hiding place.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what grim sum does Gitl's phrase, the one that titles the book, keep count of?

Each day survived is added to the one before, a sum built of single days. Hannah clings to the camp's rules for the same reason, because any order helps her last a little longer.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what does the prisoner tattooing Hannah say about the dress she has been given?

It was his daughter's, he tells her, and the girl was called Chaya too. He begs Hannah to live for every child who shared the name.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what does the badchan say he sees in the officers outside the synagogue?

The Angel of Death is his name for the men in black uniforms, and he alone seems to see them as they are. Hannah pleads with the rabbi to flee, but nobody will listen.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which village girl claims Chaya as her best friend but never reaches the camp?

Rachel does not last the journey, and Hannah is left wishing she had returned the compliment. She had answered that she already had a best friend, named Rosemary.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which little brother of Hannah frets about asking the Four Questions at the Seder?

Aaron stumbles over the word herbs, and Hannah quietly coaches him through it. By tradition the youngest child able to manage them asks the questions.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which New York suburb does Hannah keep telling the villagers she really comes from?

New Rochelle means nothing to Shmuel, who laughs it off as a joke and assures her she is from a Polish city. Even on her last walk she tells her friends about a girl who lives there.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, from which Polish city has the orphaned Chaya come to live with Gitl and Shmuel?

Lublin is the city the village girls crowd round to hear about. Chaya's clothes and bedding from there were burned for fear they still carried disease.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which prayer for the dead does Gitl lead in the barracks after the rabbi is taken?

The Kaddish is what Gitl insists on, after slapping Hannah for a flippant camp word about the dead. Out in the yard such talk may pass, she says, but indoors they will mourn properly.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which rabbi, father of the bride Fayge, tells the villagers to fear only God?

Reb Boruch leads the villagers in prayer as the trucks wait, sure that God will provide. Within days of reaching the camp he is among those selected to be killed.

In Jane Yolen's novel The Devil's Arithmetic, what is the name of the commandant who conducts each Choosing?

Breuer strikes Hannah as oddly familiar, and the name of Dr Mengele of Auschwitz floats into her mind without her knowing why. His visits decide who is sent to the ovens.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which Passover song is Shmuel whistling when Hannah first sees him?

Dayenu, a title meaning roughly 'it would have been enough', had been sung at her own family's table earlier that evening. The tune is the first thread tying the two worlds together.

Which prize from the Association of Jewish Libraries did Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic win?

The Sydney Taylor Book Award honours children's books that portray the Jewish experience, and is named after the author of All-of-a-Kind Family. Yolen's novel took the 1989 prize for older readers.

Which actor, an executive producer of the 1999 film of The Devil's Arithmetic, introduces it on screen?

Dustin Hoffman appears unbilled at the start and shared the executive producer role with Mimi Rogers, who also acts in it. The film went on to win two Emmys, for its script and its direction.

Where does the 1999 film of The Devil's Arithmetic open, in a scene Jane Yolen's novel does not have?

A tattoo parlor is where the film's Hannah is idly choosing a design when she realises she is late for the Seder. The irony lands later, when a number is forced onto her skin.

Which Clueless actress played the camp-wise Rivka in the 1999 film of The Devil's Arithmetic?

Brittany Murphy had broken through as Tai in Clueless four years earlier. The film introduces her Rivka early, as Chaya's cousin in the village.

Who finally persuaded Jane Yolen to face the subject she had long avoided and write The Devil's Arithmetic?

Her editor, who happened to be a rabbi's wife, talked her into it after years in which the idea had simply overwhelmed her. Yolen came to call writers the memory of a civilization.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, which birds does Hannah notice wheeling freely over the camp as she works?

Swallows dart overhead catching insects, at roll call and again at the water pump on Hannah's last afternoon. They come and go as no prisoner can.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, what animal nickname has Gitl earned for her toughness and blunt speech?

The Bear suits a woman who brushes off suitors and sings an angry song about kidnappers to steady the children in the trucks. She is also one of the few villagers to outlast the camp.