This story of a young Polish boy during World War 2 is an impressive account. As a Jew, Romek would ordinarily be sent to the concentration camps, but he passes as a Gentile and thus goes to labor camps instead. He tells his story in detail and it is absorbing but horrific, as he has to deal with brutal behavior. One wonders how he got through it all, so it is a testament to the human spirit and the will to survive. I have read several accounts of life during the war, including the Holocaust, but this story I must rate as excellent, as it is a dispassionate telling and full of detail. How did he remember all the details, so that years later he could recount them in this story?
The painful memories told here are thankfully eased to a degree by the second half of the book, where Romek tells how he finally escaped and made his way to freedom, and then a gradual return to normalcy, through education and various jobs until he became quite successful. This is a very interesting and worthwhile story. ( )

This thin book speaks volumes in the telling of the story of a young Jewish boy's survival of the brutality under the Nazi regime. The narrator, Ken Roman, tells his story to John James, who writes it so it can be shared with the world.. 'Romek' (his boyhood nickname) is almost-matte-of- fact in his telling, often in few words , and often without a lot of detail...yet the starkness of the horrors he lived through comes through loud and clear. He gives a little of his family background pre-war, and the changes that come as antisemitism grows, then the Nazi invasion of Poland. At the age of only 13, separated from family, placed in work camps, then concentration camps, the chance of his survival seemed slim. He tells in stark details, about the brutality of the work camps, the concentration camps, sexual abuse, hunger, feeling terror and exhaustion, and the constant fear of death, as they are surrounded by it. But he is able to recognize (probably in retrospect) that some of the small kindnesses of his abuser actually contributed to his survival. All this, in only the first 53 pages! I was quickly absorbed in Romec's words, and the horrors of what he lived through.

Pages 54-120 tell of his freedom from the Nazis, as they deserted their duties on the death march of their prisoners, leaving the survivors in a frozen field to fend for themselves. This takes 2 pages. The remainder of the book, he relates the story of seeking and finding help, and 'getting on with his life.' Again, all this is told matter of factly, light on details and little expression of emotion, other than occasionally saying he almost lost hope. He never seems to give up once he has gained his freedom, and at age 19, alone and far from home, he is able to see hope for a future....he has survived! He seems to have been a very mature, very intelligent young man who decides that his future now rests in his hands to create, and he works hard to get the education and skills he needs. Again, he is straightforward but brief in telling of paperwork difficulties, finding shelter, and trying to decide what to do with his life. He is quick to say how thankful he was for those who helped him, especially those who made him feel like he had family again, and wasn't so alone in the world. He shares enough conversations and incidents to keep it interesting.

It isn't until the end of the book, the last few pages, where he tell of the psychological scars he carries, the nights when he wakes up screaming from the nightmares, and the sorrow of losing his family. He also mentions the ongoing legal fight to get restitution through the German Court for the losses of his family and their property, inhumane treatment in his captivity and the detrimental effects on his health.

The horrors of the holocaust were real. Romek talked to students late in his life, telling them to remember the Holocaust, and not to let it happen again. He warned against racism and religious intolerances that poison and spread hatred. We need books like these to remind us of what happens when evil is allowed to take control, and a country allows, even encourages (!) racism and hatred to thrive. We need to remember so we never let this happen again. Sadly, neither Ken Roman ( Romek ) or John James saw this book get published, as UK publishers weren't receptive to this genre. It was privately published by Batory Publishers in Montreal. I am thankful for the opportunity to receive this book as an early reviewer, an would recommend it to anyone interested in reading WWII history. ( )

The book is unavailable to purchase or review, everywhere I search, even on this website which offerred it up to be reviewed. I had to add it myself.
This is a problem, because the brief book has great value, if only to remind people that "real" people were traumatized and brutalized by Hitler's minions. It is in need of a good deal of editing because the words often do not flow smoothly and the foreign words and references are not translated, which is distracting.
Still, I have read so many books on the Holocaust, and yet, everyone of them, this included, adds something to my knowledge base of the horrors inflicted by Hitler's Third Reich and the German people who voted for it.
Just 13 years of age, and all alone, this teenager was subjected to the whims of evil, shameful, despicable human beings, evil the likes of which one could not imagine even in a science fiction novel, and yet, because of his strength of character and courage, his willingness to bend the rules, understand the consequences of, and need for, his actions and the actions of others, he survived in spite of the monstrous daily trauma he suffered. His mental age surpassed his physical age. He was far more mature than the snowflakes of today who demand everything without having to work for it and do not appreciate how good they truly have it here in America.
Those who supported Hitler ignored the horrors, and pretended ignorance about the barbarism, even afterwards. The antisemites in France, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, etc., were absolutely complicit. They must not forget; we must remind them constantly, and we must not allow anyone to forget the evil they unleashed on so many innocents. If we forget, it will happen again. We must remember, if only to prevent that kind of evil from recurring. ( )

Roman, or Romek, as his family called him, was only 13 when Germany invaded his native Poland. He was an only child, but part of a large, close-knit family who owned a soda factory in Gorlice. In 1941 he was apprenticed to a Silesian engineer who owned a small fix-it shop, in an attempt to keep him from being abducted for forced labor by the Germans. Blond, blue-eyed, and fluent in Polish (not all Jews of the time were), Romek began passing as Polish. Then the Judenrat submitted his name to the Gestapo as skilled labor, and he was assigned to a nearby Luftwaffe facility. The sixty workers at the facility were saved during the final action, when the Jews of Gorlice were rounded up. Many of the Jews were shot in a nearby brick factory, the rest sent to the camps. Of the 42 members of Romek's family, only he and his uncle survived the Holocaust.

Six months after the roundup, in the dead of winter, the sixty skilled workers were taken to Mielec, an Arbeitslager within the grounds of a pre-war aircraft construction company. The "Gorlice Mob" as they were called, began building aircraft for the Luftwaffe. Despite grueling 12-hour days and a dearth of food, life was bearable until the SS arrived to turn Mielec into a Konzentrazions Lager, a concentration camp. Conditions plummeted further when Mielec was deemed a target of the Allies, and the production was moved underground into a salt mine. When that environment proved too corrosive to the metals used, the mine was closed and, everyone was sent to Flossenbürg concentration camp.

Flossenbürg has a unique history in that it was constructed in 1933 as a work camp for German criminals. When non-Aryans began to be sent to the camp, the Aryan criminals were put into positions of authority over them and given privileges. One of the privileges was that kapos were tacitly allowed to keep a boy as their servant, in most cases the boys were sexually abused as well. Being young, small, and blond, Romek became the property of first a sadistic kapo and then was traded to a less vicious one. The latter helped him by changing his camp records to list him as a Pole, not as a Jew.

In April 1945, with the Americans nearly at the camp, the guards forced the prisoners on a death march. A few days later, events overtook them, the guards fled, and the prisoners were on their own.

In the second half of the book, Romek (or Kenneth Roman, the name he takes later on) relates how he found out about the fate of his family, his life as a displaced person, and his decision to be sent to Italy. There he recovers and decides to join the Polish cadets as a way to secure his future. Eventually he ends up in England, and we learn about his life there and his decision to become a British citizen. The book ends with his efforts to secure a pension from the German courts as a Holocaust survivor.

This slim Holocaust memoir was surprising in many ways. For one thing, Romek was very young when he went to the camps, yet his skills allowed him to remain with the skilled workers instead of being sent to his death early on. For another, he was in a work camp overseen by criminals, not a traditional concentration camp. Sexual abuse at the hands of the kapos is not often a factor in Holocaust memoirs I have read. Finally, many survivors marry other survivors after liberation, but Romek appears to have been homosexual or bisexual, something else that I haven't seen much mention of in Holocaust memoirs. Well-written, direct, and frank, Ken Roman's memoir deserves a larger audience than it is likely to get as a privately published book. I encourage anyone who is interested to visit www.batorypublishing.com to purchase a copy. ( )

Wow, what a great book. The book was a give-away from Library Things early reader program. A terrifying tale of the brutal mistreatment of concentration camp prisoners and the hypocrisy of the NAZI party and their great scheme to morality and honesty to the German people and to conquer the world. The party taught that any one not Aryan, which is to say from Northern Europe. Mainly, Germans, but Hitler left himself some wiggle room, you know for Nordic people And the English because I guess because the British ancestry includes immigrants from the German states of Anglia and Saxony. Anyway, if you were not German you were scum. Germans, even the criminals and others not considered desirable by Germans, were still officially deemed superior to Jews, Gypsies, and people of color, etc. So Romek found himself at the mercy of pedophiles and sadists. Anyone who could not qualify to be sent to the frontlines to free more able-bodied soldiers to die for their country. The inhumane treatment of the inmates and the cold-blooded murder committed by the guards was terrible to read, I cannot imagine living through it as Romek did. The book is easy to read at first, Life was good, but some Antisemites were in operation even then. his life after the war was at first very difficult, but slowly got better. He made many new friends, and even managed to connect with his only surviving relative in Poland. He had an aunt in Chicago who left Poland before Romek's birth, who sent a present of US$50 at his birth, but remained a stranger to him all his life. His life subsequent to the war is a uplifting story of a young man getting ahead thru intelligence, hard work, and a pleasant way with the people met and came to know. The story of his interment is to me the true story of Romek's lesson to us. One the world should learn and take to heart. His life after the camps is also a lesson. Life moves on and can be what you make of it. ( )