There is an enor­mous effort to get down on paper and film the tes­ti­mo­ny of aging sur­vivors. This book is one exam­ple of this push. Pub­lished by a well-known trade pub­lish­er in an afford­able for­mat, it is going to reach a wide audi­ence, includ­ing school class­rooms. Not since the Holo­caust has there been so great a need for books like this, con­sid­er­ing the bar­bar­i­ty of the past decade. Nine child sur­vivors tell of the hor­ror that entered their lives, replac­ing inno­cence and love with per­ver­si­ty, per­se­cu­tion and, usu­al­ly, death. But still some sur­vived the mael­strom. How? What depths of belief in self, in the ulti­mate defeat of evil and the return of nor­mal­cy helped some to sur­vive? How much did luck have to do with it, or what did these chil­dren do to cre­ate their own opportunities? 

Lun­cia Gamz­er was saved twice dur­ing this peri­od. The Ger­man offi­cer who first inspect­ed her home look­ing for Jew­ish chil­dren didn’t reveal her hid­ing place although she was sure he sus­pect­ed it. Then she spent the war hid­den in a closed trunk by the wife and grand­moth­er of a Pol­ish Chris­t­ian fam­i­ly, who defied the wish­es of the family’s daugh­ters and hus­band, who feared discovery. 

Her­bert Karliner’s fam­i­ly was aboard the ill-fat­ed St. Louis, which was denied safe entry to Cuba and the Unit­ed States. He land­ed in France where he had to imper­son­ate a French Chris­t­ian using false papers, and bluff some Ger­man offi­cers in response to their ques­tions about his sup­posed home town. Markus Reich played dead in the snow on a death march, and was lucky to be missed by the ran­dom shots of Ger­man offi­cers, who were out to fin­ish off those who dropped. He found shel­ter in the home of a beau­ti­ful young woman whom he lat­er mar­ried. The sto­ries come one after the oth­er, too awful, too curi­ous, too won­der­ful to describe in this brief review. All of the sur­vivors but one, who immi­grat­ed to Israel, ulti­mate­ly immi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States. Their sto­ries of sur­vival will move you, cap­ti­vate you and, ulti­mate­ly, inspire you. Pre­ced­ed by a map of Europe and a brief his­to­ry of the Holo­caust, it ends with a glos­sary. For ages 12 – 16.