A Lucky Child

Title: A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz As a Young Boy
Author: Thomas Buergenthal
Pages: 230
Published: 2009

“Thomas Buergenthal, now a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hauge, was not quite six years old when he and his parents were not quite six years old when he and his parents were forced into a Jewish ghetto in Poland. For the next four years they struggled there and in two labor camps, until they were placed in a train bound for Auschwitz. Separated first from his mother and then from his father, ten-year-old Thoma managed by his wits and some remarkable strokes of luck to survive Auschwitz and the infamous death march. Eventually liberated from Suchsenhausen, Thomas found himself the unlikely mascot of a Polish Army regiment, witnessed the fall of Berlin, and in 1951 he emigrated to the United States to start a new life.

Poignant and inspiring, A Lucky Child demonstrates the sheer force of will and determination that even the youngest victims of the Holocaust evinced. Buergenthal writes his story with a simple clarity that highlights the stark details of unimaginable hardship as well as the small wonders of childhood. From teaching himself to ride a bike belonging to an SS officer, to sneaking a heavenly sip of milk, to delighting in the pony given to him by his army comrades, he demonstrates that beauty is present even in the face of the greatest adversity. Filled with the stirring and true insights of a child, this book reminds us of the power of grace and the resilience of the human pride.”

Buergenthal really was a lucky child; surviving Auschwitz because the guards decided not to stop the train and run through the selection process — strong to the left, weak, elderly, and children to the right — was just one of his luckiest moments, but the one he owes his life to.

“It occured to me then that unlike those who survived Auschitz and can document our existance in that camp by reference to our numbers, those proisoners who died in its crematoriums after the SS had stopped recording their names have left behind no trace of their presence in that terrible place. No bodies, no names only ashes and numbers. It is hard to imagine a greater affront to human dignity.” {pg. 68}

The story, though, doesn’t become really interesting until the moments leading up to Buergenthal’s arrival as Auschwitz due, in part, because the beginning is filled with a lot of “I don’t remember” and “I don’t recall.” I don’t blame him for these gaps in the story; he was after all only five at the time and didn’t write his memoir until decades later, but it still detracts from the overall story. It hard to understand his early plight when there aren’t any details to set the stage.

There is also the issues of the photographs placed in the middle the text, instead of the glossy white pages in the middle of book that usually accompany a memoir. At times they are incredibly helpful in conjuring up images of the location, the setting, and the people, but for the most part they interrupted to flow of the story because a giant photograph would cut a sentence in half and the thought wouldn’t be continued for another page or so.

Rating: 3
Balance of Opinion: Diary of an Eccentric