German Boy

July 31, 2000
In 1945 Samuel, then 10 years old, fled his home in Sagan, Germany, with his mother and younger sister, escaping just ahead of the Russian army's arrival. The author's memoir vividly depicts what it was like to be a child refugee (confused and frightened) in postwar Germany, constantly searching for food and a haven. Since Hedy, the author's mother, had been planning to divorce his father (a Luftwaffe officer), she refused to join him, but instead took Samuel and his sister to stay with her parents in the small town of Strasburg, which shortly became a Russian-occupied zone. Although the author had earlier viewed his mother as self-centered and unloving, he describes how his image of her changed during their years on the run, when he saw her make heroic efforts to keep her children alive. Attractive to men and clever, Hedy used her wits and charm, exchanging sex for food for her children. Their situation improved after the author's father found them and managed their transportation to a barracks in the American zone. Samuel's parents divorced and, in 1950, Hedy married a U.S. Army sergeant. The author moved with them to the U.S., where he completed his education and began a 30-year career in the air force. He has produced an engrossing and powerful narrative. Maps.

July 1, 2000
Samuel's memoir recalls a boyhood in war-ravaged Germany during the final terrifying months of World War II and the hopelessness of the following years spent itnerned in inhumane and debilitating refugee camps. The son of a Luftwaffe officer and now himself a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, he recounts, with plainspoken and expressive first-person commentary, the danger and fear he faced fleeing from an advancing Russian army. What results is a gripping account of war, hunger, sickness, rape, and abuse-literally a race with death. Samuel vividly describes the refugee life of deprivation and humiliation, where sex is currency and hunger constant. He speaks emotionally of the love and strength of his brave mother ("my hero and friend") and her valiant and eventually successful struggle to protect and care for her family with the father away at war. This deeply emotional and moving memoir clearly illustrates that the military collapse of Nazi Germany was eclipsed by the greater tragedy of the German nation. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-John E. Hodgkins, Yarmouth, MA

June 1, 2001
Adult/High School-Samuel was 10 years old when he, his mother, and younger sister fled the advancing Russian army in Germany in the final days of World War II. Describing the events many years later, Samuel still vividly remembers the disorientation, terror, hunger, and desperation that dogged their lives until 1951 when they arrived in the United States. The voice of a little boy develops into that of a young man as he writes of his mother's indomitable spirit and the degrading extremes she went to in order to obtain food and shelter for her children. The boy is ill-prepared to assume the crushing responsibility for keeping his family together and alive after the war years when he finds himself a refugee and outcast in his own country. There is a thread of hope, an appreciation for random kindness, and an ability to look beyond the depravity of humankind that pervades this brave and poignant memoir of a man who went on to serve 30 years in the U.S. Air Force and retired as a colonel.-Cynthia J. Rieben, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA

Copyright 2001 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2000
Given the enormity of the crimes committed by the Third Reich, it may be difficult for some readers to muster sympathy for the sufferings of German civilians, both during and immediately after World War II. After all, one presumes that many of them were ardent supporters of the Nazis, especially when they were winning. Thus, this unsettling account of the devastation of war, seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy, serves to remind us of the basic humanity that must continue to link us, if we are to avoid a total submission to barbarism. Samuel and his mother and sister fled the Russian advance on Berlin in 1945 and engaged in a daily struggle for survival. Refugee camps became horrifying scenes of disease, squalor, and starvation. Under Communist rule, they experienced the viselike grip of totalitarianism, which they had largely avoided under the Nazis. Samuel's description of his family's escape to the West is both thrilling and terrifying. This is an absorbing story of survival and redemption. ((Reviewed August 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)