21 June, 2010

A Lucky Child

A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy - Thomas Burgenthal

Being a Jewish child in Nazi Germany was not a good thing. The Nazi's didn't have a lot of use for children - you were either killed or used for medical experiments. Thomas Burgenthal managed to avoid both.

A fortune teller told his mother before the war that he was a lucky child and would come through the coming period unscathed. This is what his mother held to when everyone around her said there would be no chance of a child surviving - especially when he had been sent to Auschwitz.

For me, Thomas Burgenthal was lucky in so many ways. He and his mother found each other after the war, so many survivors had no family left. Given what he went through, he came through relatively intact - physically and mentally.

A Lucky Child was an interesting read. It is quite amazing that he survived.