This June marked what would have been Anne Frank's 80th birthday. It's an appropriate time for Jews who lived through the horror of the Holocaust to make their stories public. Hannelore Brenner, a German journalist, came to know a group of women who shared a horrible history, and she tells their story in "The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt."

Ten of the girls -- women, now -- still meet once a year in Spindlermuhle, a resort area of the Czech Republic. All Jewish, they were prisoners of the Third Reich during World War II, and, before they were sent to Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen or other infamous places, they were relocated to a place known as Theresienstadt. At the time, they were maybe 12 to 14 years old, and they were assigned together to Room 28 of one of the internment camp dormitories.

Through interviews, documents and diaries, Brenner unearthed experiences long held inside, and, in some cases, prohibited from being discussed. What does it do to a young girl when a member of her family tells her she is exaggerating when she describes her war experiences? This is what happened to one of the girls, named Judith, whose aunt said, "Oh, don't start exaggerating. It couldn't have been that bad." Judith had been interred in Bergen-Belsen, one of the worst of the death camps, where both of her parents died.

Although the book is disjointed at times and lacks a central focus, it is nonetheless a memorable account. Told through first-person observation -- letters, diaries and other documents -- that disjointed feeling comes from so many characters, and victims. There is a list in the front of the book of the names of the girls of Room 28 who did not make it through to the end of war. As I read, I found myself flipping back and forth as I encountered each name, to see if I could better understand their fate.

The book covers life in the camp, which housed those few Jews who were spared, or who were there temporarily before being sent to the concentration camps -- decorated military heroes or others with some distinction. It held world-class artists -- musicians, directors, composers and painters -- who tried to make life as normal as possible for the children, in the most hideously abnormal circumstances.

The children had lessons, did crafts and participated in dramatic productions. This was a far cry from what would become of so many of them. Most of the citizens were eventually sent east, to the horrors of the concentration camps. Of the approximately 12,000 children who went through Theresienstadt, only a few hundred survived.

Linda White is a book reviewer in St. Paul.