I got the distinct feeling of being rushed through the boys' experiences, relayed in a way that acknowledged other accounts already written on the Holocaust. Or perhaps it was relayed in this hurried fashion to spare `the boys', now men, from reliving the experience. Or just maybe it was me... possibly misinterpreting parts of the account lost through translation. All of these thoughts came to mind as Gerhard drove on, clearly determined to answer `why'.

Aside from chronicling (forty years later) `individual' before, during, and after experiences of boys who survived Birkenau's Concentration Camp--in a range of coalescing views and memories--the `why' does get addressed... and addressed in a most respectable satisfying fashion. ( )