Product Description

At the age of seven Thomas Buergenthal was imprisoned in Nazi ghettos and camps, being rescued by Soviet and Polish troops when he was eleven. Separated from his parents in Auschwitz and surviving the ‘Death March’ of 1945 he was miraculously reunited with his mother a year and a half later. The rest of his family and almost all of his friends were killed. After experiencing the turmoil of Europe’s post-war years – from the Battle of Berlin, to a Jewish orphanage in Poland – Buergenthal went to America in the 1950s at the age of seventeen. He eventually became one of the world’s leading experts on international law and human rights. His story of survival and his determination to use law and justice to prevent further genocide is an epic journey through 20th Century history. Buergenthal gives his perspective – as a child – on life in the camps. And, uniquely, he shows how his past has informed his understanding of the modern day war-crimes he sees as a judge. His book is both a special historical document and a great literary achievement, comparable only to Primo Levi’s masterpieces.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34597 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Review
"* 'an extraordinary story... Heartbreaking and thrilling, it examines what it means to be human, in every good and awful sense' Elizabeth McCracken"

About the Author
Thomas Buergenthal is a leading law scholar with a doctorate from Harvard Law School. After taking up various appointments at Law faculties throughout the US he became the first US judge and later President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and a member of the UN Human Rights Committee before joining the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In 2008 he was awarded the Justice Prize by The Gruber Foundation. He is the author of more than a dozen books on international law and is the subject of a biography entitled Tommy by Norwegian humanitarian and founder of UNICEF Odd Nansen.

Customer Reviews

Comments by Michael Calum Jacques, author of '1st Century Radical'.
Make no mistake; this is a remarkable book. Moreover, it is a remarkable testimony and the lightly worded title (which includes the word 'lucky') could easily be considered to be ironic! The author, Thomas Buergenthal, is now a successful human rights lawyer living in the USA. Previously, though, as 'A Lucky Child', he had lived in and survived the utter ordeal of the ghettos and of the dreaded Auschwitch Concentration Camp.

The title sets the tone for the greater part of the narrative; an ever increasing tension between the abject terrors which Buergenthal underwent and witnessed and the somehow optimistic mood and tenor of his final memoirs. In fact, in certain respects, 'A Lucky Child' has been more than 50 years in the writing and the detachment afforded by time and cultural distance (among other things including the author's own vicarious mindset) ensures the book never tumbles into the mire of gratuitous self pity. That is, to some extent a 'stand alone' achievement in itself!

The author was merely 4 years old when his family were interred in Kielce, within the Polish ghetto there. After 4 years they were transported to a labour camp where "Arbeit macht freiheit". Having witnessed the cruel and brutal abduction of his kin - snatched from his hapless mother's arms - Thomas is himself lucky to avoid a similar fate when he wittily points out to the guard that he is old enough to be able to work!

After this soul destroying event, Thomas' father begins to scrutinise the methods of their prisoners and instructs and advises his son of the best means to survive. His father's tutelage is, in fact, pivotal and vital! Thomas actually succeeds in avoiding the worst excesses of treatment (including some agonising sessions in which the "Angel of Death", Dr Mengele, selected which unfortunate inmates were to be included on his 'little lists').

When he was 10, during August, 1944 Thomas, his father and some other 'arbeiters' were hoarded together and shoved onto an Auschwitz bound train. Buergenthal's own camp ID number was B-2930 and his father's was B-2931. This mark still serves as a reminder to him 'to fight the ideologies of hate and of racial and religious superiority that have for centuries caused so much suffering to humankind'. So the book provides the reader with Burgenthal's own future raison d'etre, especially in a professional sense.

Despite the undeniable tide of optimism, even hope, flowing through this remarkable story, the author does revisit the perplexing question of exactly how humanity can be so patently cruel. This is unanswerable, and the fact that Buergenthal is unable to give a satisfactory explanation proves that very point!

Perhaps some of the most sobering and poignant passages found within 'A Lucky Child' are those beautifully honest and self-deprecating ones which tell the reader that merciless torture was not the exclusive privilege of the Nazi camp authorities, but was actually dealt out by Jews on fellow Jews.

Although his father does not survive, the author is later reunited with his mother. Subsequently he has to deal with a well of intense hatred felt towards those Germans who are soon carrying on with their lives, quite happily, 'as if nothing had happened'. Later on still, when he was a few years older, he even felt ashamed about his vengeful loathing of the German people. This demonstrates the magnanimity of Buergenthal's all conquering spirit. And nowhere, not at any point within the narrative, is there a mere hint of affectation; this should be humbling for those of us who become irascible when we've ran out of chocolate digestives!

At the close, after celebrating his survival of the ghettos and the sheer hell of Auschwitz, the author announces that he had then truly qualified as 'a true child of the camps', What a stunning turn of phrase with which to conclude his memoir about surviving the inferno now known as the Holocaust. This relatively brief book (250 odd pages)is well worth a read ... and a second read, just to check that you really had read what you thought you had!

Michael Calum Jacques

Indeed: A Lucky Child
This amazing and inspiring book is a fine example of choosing one's moment. Whereas some Holocaust survivors wrote their accounts shortly after their ordeal, Thomas Buergenthal waited more than 60 years after the passage of time had blunted his anger and the horrors he had witnessed and experienced. The result is a balanced and enthralling account of a child using all his means to surive the Holocaust.

Thomas, together with his parents, had been on the run from the Nazis since the age of four. He was interned in Auschwitz at the age of 10. During those years he experienced things that no human being should have to experience and especially not a child.

Through his intelligence and resourcefulness, Thomas' father Mundek kept the family together; he shrewdly anticipated when they should flee and how they could best survive. Later during his internment Thomas, was also intelligent and resourceful in his ongoing quest for survival.

In Auschwitz, Thomas' father learned from a friend that a job for Thomas could provide some protection for him. Thomas then became an errand boy, delivering messages and packages for those running the camp. In this way he often happened upon useful information and could go to many places around the camp where others could not.

Yet, Thomas was a lucky child. Many times he missed the dreaded selections either for the gas chamber or becoming one of Dr. Mengele's objects for experimentation. There were also acts of great kindness to him from others, especially from a Norwegian internee .

A particularly moving moment is when he recalls how he briefly saw his mother in the womens' camp and how he repeated their exchange and the picture of her over and over in his mind in the days to come. Even though she had lost her hair she was of course beautiful to him.

Thomas survived the death March from Auschwitz, enduring extreme cold and hunger and losing some toes to frostbite.

After the liberation and spending some time as a mascot for Polish soldiers, including his own tailor made uniform, Thomas was taken to a Jewish orphanage near Warsaw by one of the liberating Polish soldiers who was himself Jewish. Thomas spent a year there until his mother found him. During this time the children received a great deal of warmth, kindness and even education. It was a halfway house between what many had experienced during the Holocaust and to adjust them to a more normal existence.

After Thomas returned to Germany his mother employed a teacher to tutor him so that he could attend school. He had of course had virtually no formal education. This teacher was astonished that although Thomas had very little academic knowledge his level of maturity was way beyond his years. Hardly surprising.

This book is special in that it is an account of a child's experiences during the most terrible of times and yet even in that horrible place where Thomas was forced to live, there were still moments of childish pleasure and acts of great courage by him and others.

Much later Thomas turned to international law and human rights. He is now a judge at the International Court of Justice it would appear that he has created a most positive life.

Do read this book, one can't help but be left with a feeling that in spite of the ugliness to which people can be subjected, the goodness of the human spirit will prevail.

absolutely great book
A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy
Great book. Very moving. Could not put the book down until I read the last page.