"A Lucky Child"

I've been trying to expand my horizons a little bit and read more non-fiction books. My Mom recommended "A Lucky Child", by Thomas Buergenthal. It is an amazing tale about a young boy who survives the holocaust. I didn't know this, but apparently almost all of the children were killed instead of put in concentration camps. They were pulled away from their parents and blown up, shot, or put in gas chambers so that the Nazi soldiers wouldn't have to deal with them. Amazingly, Thomas Buergenthal, was able to avoid being pulled away with the other children. In some cases it seems like divine intervention, other times it was the ingenuity of his parents, but his mom claimed that he was just plain lucky.

His parents go through a tough time as they are driven from place to place trying to find somewhere safe for their family. They end up in a Jewish ghetto in Poland where they think they will live until the war ends. Little did they know what was in store for them. Thomas shares some very incredible stories about how his family was able to stick together for the first part of the war, and then once they were separated it gets even more amazing. He survives Auschwitz and the well-known death march. How a 10-year old boy could have the wits and courage to be able to do what he did to survive...well, it truly is just incredible.

This book probably won't make you cry; although it shares horrible ugly events, it's told in a detached way which seemed to help dampen the sadness. Only the first half of the book is on what happened during the war, the rest of the book is about what happened after the war. I love that the author included this in his book because a lot of stories end when the war ended, but there was so much that happened after that. He explains how hard it was to go back to Germany and live among people who only months before were responsible for the awful things he had to go through. Despite it all, he became a pretty incredible person. If you are into WW2 stories, then this is definitely one to check out.