Naomi's Gift - Facts

 

The book starts in Stocksee. Stocksee is a municipality in the district of Segeberg, in  Germany. 

The letters that Zita writes mention Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah is the New Year in Judaism.

Zita mentions Dragobete as the celebration when her sister Naomi became engaged to Codrin. Dragobete is a traditional Romanian holiday celebrated on February 24. The day is particularly known as "the day when the birds are betrothed". It's said that If boys don't meet the girl they like, they will have really bad luck for the rest of the year. 

Zita and Naomi get sent to Ravensbruck, the concentration camp where Naomi gives birth.  Ravensbrück  was a Nazi German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in Northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück. The camp memorial's estimated figure of 132,000 women who were in the camp during the war includes about 48,500 from Poland, 28,000 from the Soviet Union, almost 24,000 from Germany and Austria, nearly 8,000 from France, almost 2,000 from Belgium, and thousands from other countries including a few from the United Kingdom and the United States.