( 8 reviews )
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Posted: Aug 1 2009
Mr Salton's biography reveals the horrors of the holocaust from his personal experience. His will to live combined with his resourcefulness, courage, stamina and what he called 'luck' (I call it grace) allowed him to live when most did not. I was appalled at the cruelty of so many people, but encouraged by the kindness some prisoners had for one another. Thank you for writing this book.
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Posted: Oct 14 2008
This was one of the most powerful memoirs of the many Holocaust stories that I have read. It was difficult to put it down, and when I did, I had to take time out to contemplate what I had just read. One of its strengths is the author's continuous attention to details and facts, giving us a day by day, month by month, and year by year account of what his and his fellow Jews' daily life and subsequent sufferings were like. It is, in fact, so detailed that the reader feels like he/she is right there in his hometown of Tyczyn as he passes his boyhood surrounded by the love of his family....then with the Nazi invasion, the descent into the abyss begins as each day brings new heartbreak, new difficulties. The author has an extraordinary ability to describe emotions so that the reader can feel within himself just how the parents felt, how his fellow prisoners felt as they suffered and were brutally killed. The memoir is a searing indictment of 2,000 years of Christianity and its utter failure as the fabric of society is torn asunder under the Nazi occupation. The simple one and a half page of the Prologue left me angry and emotional as the author describes how even today the Poles reject any ties to centuries of Jewish culture and their former "neighbors". Throughout this tragic story the author relates in simple but graphic detail how the "Christian" Poles stood by and jeered, laughed, threw stones, and showed utter contempt for the Jews and their terrible suffering as they passed by and were beaten and shot by the German and Ukrainian guards. Even worse were the Poles and Ukrainians who hunted down Jews as they tried to escape and either killed them or turned them into the Gestapo. The most sobering aspect is that what happened in this book, one man's attempt to survive in conditions so terrible and dehumanizing that it takes courage to even read it all, is that this happened in countless towns, in countless families, to countless innocent men, women, and children simply because they belonged to a group that was condemned. It became "ok" to discriminate, then humiliate, then beat, then kill and finally annihilate. What is the lesson to be learned? The chilling and sad answer is that the world has in many respects learned nothing. This powerful story is an indictment of humanity itself.
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Posted: May 26 2008
The only reason I put this book down was to reflect. This story is so important - I will do as another reviewer suggests - "This book is to be read and passed down to our children to read. Very powerful. A suspensful read on a horrific truth.
