BOOK REVIEW #THE STABLE BOY OF AUSCHWITZ #HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY #GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING #EUROPEAN MEMOIR

 

MY THOUGHTS AND BOOK REVIEW

This memoir is way beyond my expectation, Henry Oster has included every tiny detail of his Holocaust survival and moments of his growing up in Concentration camps with pain and strength. He has recorded the places he lived and worked during 1939 - 1945, the connections and friendships he made where at Buchenwald, an organized hell made him see death at his near eyes - unending scene of filth, despair, decomposed dead bodies in chlorine and impossible place to live in after he was shipped from Cologne to Buchenwald in Train at the age of 11.

A German Jewish boy's Holocaust survival story told in a clear and poignant manner. I have read several WW2 books, to understand the horrific persecution and suffering and killings of thousands of  innocent men, women and children at the night of Kristallnacht, Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

I never understood this precisely and what happened during this historical period of time closely before and a Germany that built Gas chambers to kill by gun shooting innocent Jewish people, and a America who came to liberate and rescue the Jewish prisoners to end the atrocities of Nazi Germany until reading this biography. 

I felt this is a well written memoir with all the historical events recorded for the reader to understand in detail about the WW2 happened in Europe. A free Henry Oster who was left alone, his mother and father not spared in the hands of brutally murdering Germans, no education, no country and no home.  Henry finally finds refuge and gets across to America. This true story of the Holocaust survival is very touching and inspiring.  

5 Star Rating *****

BOOK DESCRIPTION

This heart-wrenching memoir from a Holocaust survivor reveals the terrible realities of life in Auschwitz—and how a courageous young stable boy survived against all odds to tell his story.​

“I couldn’t last much longer. But just as I was beginning to give up, I found myself in the Auschwitz stables, with rows of stalls filled with horses.”

Henry Oster was just five years old when Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. He was the last survivor of the 2,011 Jews who were rounded up by the Gestapo and deported from Cologne. Assigned to back-breaking labor in the Auschwitz horse-breeding stables, Henry clung to the belief that if he made himself hard to replace, he might stay alive.

 

Henry was one of the 2,011 Jews who were deported from Cologne, through it all, he found the strength to survive and was one of only 23 to emerge alive from the concentration camps after the war.

 

How did one starving boy, alone and forgotten, survive this ultimate hell on earth? The Stable Boy of Auschwitz is the heart-breaking, mesmerizing, and unforgettable true story that will destroy your faith in humanity . . . and then build it back up again.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grand Central Publishing

Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 4, 2023

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages

About the Author

As a young boy Henry Oster survived deprivation in the Lodz Ghetto, a life-or-death selection in the Birkenau extermination camp, a firing squad in Auschwitz, being strafed by an Allied fighter, and starvation in Buchenwald. Henry rebuilt his life in America, arriving at 18 with no family, no English, no money, and no education. Of the 2,011 Jews who were rounded up by the Gestapo and deported from Cologne, he was one of only 23 to emerge alive from the concentration camps after the war. He was still working as a world-respected Professor of Optometry on his 85th birthday, helping the world to see.