Clara's War/A Lucky Child

Clara's War

Occasionally, though all too rarely, a story emerges from the Holocaust experience that proves that even in the face of unspeakable evil, there is hope. Schindler’s List was such a tale. Clara’s War is another.

Based on the author’s diary, which is now kept in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., this heart-wrenching memoir chronicles 15-year-old Clara Kramer’s experiences when the Nazis occupied her small Polish town, and how she and her family found an unlikely savior. Mr. Beck was known to be an alcoholic, a womanizer and a vocal anti-Semite, but upon hearing that Jewish families were being led into the woods and shot, he took in the Kramers and two other families, providing them a safe haven in a bunker dug out of his basement. They would be confined there for nearly two years.

Clara’s War vividly re-creates their ordeals as they struggled with their cramped conditions, as Mr. Beck begins a dangerous affair with Clara’s cousin and as the fugitives held their breath while SS officers engaged in drinking sessions in the room above them.

Before the war, around 5,000 Jews lived in Zolkiew, Poland. At the end, Clara was among the barely 60 who survived. Her story will change your life.

A Lucky Child

In A Lucky Child, Thomas Buergenthal recounts his childhood when he was in constant fear for his life. He was only 4 when he and his parents were incarcerated in the Jewish ghetto in Kielce, Poland, where the Gestapo killed two of his friends by hand grenade. Four years, another ghetto and two labor camps later, he arrived in Auschwitz and miraculously passed the initial selection process on the platform in which the children are pulled out and “eliminated.” There, separated first from his mother and then his father, he lived on his own, using his wits to charm his way into jobs that enabled him to escape the frequent selections, cadge a little extra food and once even catch a glimpse of his mother. He eventually endured the Auschwitz Death Transport to Sachsenhausen where, again against all odds, he was liberated by the Russians.

Now a Judge at the International Court in the Hague—and one of the world’s leading experts on international law and human rights—Thomas Buergenthal has written his memoir with a clarity that makes his odyssey through the Holocaust all the more astonishing. This book is a true literary achievement that deserves a spot next to Primo Levi’s masterpieces.

Clara's War

Softcover: 352 pages

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers ( April 21, 2009 )

Item #: 159699

ISBN: 9781615237036

Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25 x 0.79 inches

Product Weight: 13.0 ounces ( View shipping rates and policies )

A Lucky Child

Softcover: 256 pages

Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA ( April 20, 2009 )

Item #: 368064

ISBN: 9781615237203

Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25 x 0.58 inches

Product Weight: 10.0 ounces ( View shipping rates and policies )