High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Number the Stars is a work of historical fiction about the Holocaust of the Second World War by award-winning author Lois Lowry. Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen is the central character, who lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1943 and was caught up in the events surrounding the rescue of the Danish Jews. She and her family risked their lives to help Annemarie's best friend, Ellen Rosen, by pretending that Ellen is Annemarie's older sister; the sister had died earlier in the war during her work for the Resistance.