Reviewed by Brenda G.
While in her teens, Georgia Hunter learned her
grandfather, his siblings, and her great- grandparents were Holocaust
survivors. Against all odds in far-flung locations, this nuclear family of
Polish Jews lived through Hitler’s worst. This book presents a fictionalized
account of the trials endured by the family.
The story begins with Addy, given name, ironically,
Adolf, working in France as an engineer and wondering should he go home. In
1939 as Hitler’s march through Europe gains strength, Addy muses about what
might be happening in Radom, the Polish city where the Kurc family lives. When
he attempts to acquire travel documents to Poland, he is denied and told of the
dangers he would face, with “Jew” clearly stamped on his passport. A trip home
would require travel through German-controlled territory.
Chapter by chapter, the focus moves to one or more family
members and chronicles the miseries they face and the horrors they witness. The horrors of a packed railroad car,
watching others die around them. Months in a Gestapo jail. Deportation to Siberia from Soviet-controlled
Poland. Starvation. A special offer of transportation that turns
into a death train from which less than a handful of Polish Jews walk away,
including Addy’s sister Mila and her daughter. An infant born in the Siberian
winter whose eyes are frozen shut every morning. Entombment in the basement of
a bombed out convent. Scurvy. Attempts to rescue extended family and in-laws
who refuse to accept help in the face of certain death. Work in the
Underground. Securing false papers and passing as non-Jewish Poles.
Disappearances without explanation.
Harsh working conditions; harsher living conditions; while constantly
subjected to the whims of military and political forces.
The book is well-written and researched. Members of the
Kurc family are hard-working, intelligent, and resourceful. Despite this, they
are unprepared for the horrors unleashed upon them, their neighbors, and Europe
as a whole. This is truly a remarkable tale of survival.
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