Sitting in the auditorium at Etowah
High School on February 22, 2002, I, along with the entire 8^th
grade class, was anxiously awaiting the arrival of Jack Mandelbaum,
Holocaust survivor, and cofounder of the Midwest
Center for Holocaust
Education. Little did I know that Jack’s
story would profoundly touch my heart and help me to make some sense, not only
of the Holocaust, but also of an event that was happening in the small
Northwestern town of Noble, Georgia. You see, earlier that week, I had been at the Tri-State
Crematory helping with the removal of human remains which had been sent to the
property to be cremated and were, instead, strewn about like trash.  I had never even seen a dead body before and,
I had certainly never seen a body left on an old rotten wooden gurney to
decompose amongst old cars and church pews. Luckily, I had Jack Mandelbaum’s narrative to listen to and, as he described
the atrocities that he faced every day while in the Nazi concentration camps, I
was comforted with the knowledge that he was sharing his experiences with us,
in person, and in the book Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps. 

Children’s nonfiction history
author, Andrea Warren tells the true story of Jack Mandelbaum,
a Polish Jew, who recounts a time in Poland
before the Nazi occupation, to his liberation, to his current life.  Warren
has won several awards for Surviving Hitler including the American
Library Association Robert F. Sibert Honor Book for
Most Distinguished Information Book for Children and the Gold
Medal for Children’s Nonfiction, National Association of Parenting
Publications. Other books by Warren
include Orphan Train Rider: One Boy’s True Story, Pioneer Girl:
Growing Up on the Prairie, and We Rode
the Orphan Trains. Warren has a
new book due to be published in 2004.

Constructed for ages 10-14, Mandelbaum’s narrative is rich and powerful with first hand
knowledge of Hitler and the Nazi regime. 
In the beginning, Jack recalls growing up in Gdynia, Poland;
he describes himself, his parents, sister and brother as being a close and
loving family. Then, in August of 1939,
Jack details the Nazi’s arrival in Poland,
and his subsequent separation from his family. 
He never saw them again. Later,
Jack recounts his transportation to Blechhammer,
Gross-Rosen, and Auschwitz concentration camps.  Throughout his ordeal, Jack remembers the
special friends he made as he struggled to survive, not only the beatings from
the Nazi’s, but also the deplorable conditions in the camps such as: dysentery,
typhoid, and starvation.   

Amazingly enough, during Jack’s
entire time at the concentration camps, he maintained an attitude of
forgiveness towards his captors; this attitude is what kept him alive.  And as readers of this book will discover, it
is a story about more than just the Holocaust; it is about what we can learn
from one person about grace, compassion, and survival.

© 2003 Judith L. Hawley. All
rights reserved.

Receiving awards from the Georgia
Bureau of Investigation and Georgia Emergency Management Association for her
work in the recovery efforts at the Tri-State Crematory in Noble,
Georgia, Judy Hawley, a
Probation Officer in Cartersville, Georgia,
is currently working on a second degree in English Education at Kennesaw
State University.

Categories: Children, Grief, Philosophical