A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal

Thomas Buergenthal's memoir, A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy, is a must read, not just for those interested in the Holocaust. He was born in 1934 in Czechoslovakia shortly after Hitler became chancellor of Germany. When the Nazis began persecuting the Jews, his parents were forced to give up their hotel in Lubochna and move to Poland, first to Katowice, then to the Ghetto of Kielce.

Buergenthal says much of his survival during the war was due to luck. The title of the book stems from his mother's visit to a fortune teller, who called her son "a lucky child." Buergenthal miraculously survives the liquidation of the ghetto and upon arrival at Auschwitz, he avoids the selection process that meant immediate death for children, the elderly, and the sick.

Buergenthal describes his experiences in Auschwitz, on the Auschwitz Death Transport to Sachsenhausen, and coming to terms with these events in the aftermath of war. Because he wrote his story more than 50 years after the war, his memories are colored by time and his experiences as an adult. It is no doubt a different story than he would have told if he wrote it right after the war, but I think giving himself time to grow up, create new memories, analyze human nature with regard to the Holocaust, and take stock of his experiences as an international human rights judge provides a unique perspective.

Buergenthal experienced so much pain and loss and witnessed many horrors and murders when he was just a child, not much older than my daughter is now. It broke my heart to read his stories of the ghetto (including memories of a German man who would walk the streets of the ghetto and shoot random residents in the back of the head), the concentration camps, and the death transport. He was hungry and tired and always needing to stay alert to avoid the gas chambers, and no matter how much he attributes his survival to luck, a lot of it had to do with perseverance, inner strength, and the desire to live. The fact that he was so young when the war began means he didn't have a normal childhood and knew nothing but hardships, which is sad yet contributed to his survival as well. There was a passage in the book where he mentions that his mother lost the best years of her life to the camps, yet because he was so young, he was able to begin a new life after the war. Another passage that struck me was his determination to break the cycle of hatred, noting that living in Germany after the war helped him to not hate all Germans because of what the Nazis did -- but friends who settled in other countries after the war were not able to overcome their hatred.

Buergenthal writes as though he is talking to you, and he includes plenty of details in his recollections so that I felt like I journeyed back into time with him. I think his story is important, as are all stories from Holocaust survivors, and I was upset to read in the acknowledgements that it took so long to publish A Lucky Child in the U.S. and the U.K. because many believe there is nothing left to say about the Holocaust. If anything, we need to be reminded so that we can work toward preventing such atrocities in the future.

To read an excerpt from A Lucky Child, click here.

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A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal is the 9th book I've read for the WWII reading challenge at War Through the Generations.

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A Lucky Child also was reviewed by:

Luxury Reading
Book Reviews by Bobbie
Reading Extravaganza
Shhh I'm Reading...
Books and Cooks
Devourer of Books

If you've also reviewed it, let me know in the comments, and I'll add your link!

Disclosure:  I received a free copy of A Lucky Child from Hachette for review purposes.