Book review by Dennis D. McDonald

This short book, newly re-translated into English, is the memory of a teenage Jewish boy who is sent to a series of German concentration camps during World War II.  He survives, but most of those around him — including his father — do not.

Most of the book is a matter of fact retelling of the day to day horrors of what it is like to be the target of an organized racial extermination plan where the targets of extermination are systematically brutalized, starved, and forced as slaves to work to support the Nazi war effort. It is intensely personal and matter of fact but occasionally reveals very adult and complex thinking about God, the existence of evil, and most profoundly, the existence of God.

Review copyright (c) 2007 by Dennis D. McDonald