“Hunger gnawed at my insides. 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. Barbarossa was a towering, beautiful stallion. He only responded to commands in German, and as the only German-speaking boy, I was chosen as his caretaker. I felt an ember of hope. If I could make myself useful, helping these horses, maybe I could stay alive.”
Henry Oster was just five years old when Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. One 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.
A heart-wrenching and inspirational true account of a courageous little boy who, against all odds, after losing almost everything a human being can lose, survived to tell his story.
Torn from their home, Henry and his parents were deported to the Łódź Ghetto in Poland, a concentration camp within a city. Then, one terrifying day, after losing his father to starvation, Henry found himself and his mom herded onto a stifling, filth-ridden cattle car, on a ride to a place whose name has come to symbolize the worst of humanity: Auschwitz.
Nazis ripped Henry apart from his mother in the shuffling river of children, women, and men stepping off the train. For the first time in his life, Henry was completely alone.
Assigned to work in the Auschwitz stables, breeding horses, Henry had to tend his mares, Mutti, Olga, and the stallion Barbarossa from dawn into the night. It was back-breaking labor, but Henry clung to the belief that if he made himself hard to replace, he might just stay alive. With crippling hunger pains, Henry fed the horses each day, knowing that if he were caught pocketing a carrot or cramming some grain into his mouth, he would face the hangman.
Through it all—from finding ways to escape being selected for death in the Auschwitz/Birkenau gas chambers, to surviving a machine-gun firing squad, to enduring a brutal death march through the bleak Polish winter—Henry somehow found the strength and the will to keep on going.
How did one starving little 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.
Wydawnictwo: inne
Data wydania: 2023-04-04
Kategoria: Biografie, wspomnienia, listy
ISBN:
Liczba stron: 240
Tytuł oryginału: The stable boy of Auschwitz
Język oryginału: Angielski
Przeczytane:2023-01-20, Ocena: 6, Przeczytałam, Insta challenge. Wyzwanie dla bookstagramerów 2023, 2023, 12 książek 2023, 26 książek 2023, 52 książki 2023, Wyzwanie - wybrana przez siebie liczba książek w 2023 roku, Przeczytaj tyle, ile masz wzrostu – edycja 2023, NetGalley 2023,
"The Stable Boy of Auschwitz" is a touching story of a Jewish survivor of several concentration camps, Henry Oster, or rather Heinz Adolf Oster. His difficult life began with his fifth birthday and with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. A very poignant read. The boy's father, Hans Isidor Oster, was a war veteran. He fought for Germany in the First World War. He was even decorated. He deserved praise, and meanwhile he was muddy and broken by stupid Hitler and his kin. To this day, I cannot understand how this could have happened. Did Henry's parents survive the war? Together with the main character, we will go through various camps, including Auschwitz. We can observe how young Jews fared in concentration camps during the Second World War. You will experience a heroic fight for survival. You will find out how it happened that our hero became a horseman. Was it light and pleasant work? Tears streamed down my cheeks while reading this book. I couldn't stop crying. Thanks to people like our hero, we will never forget this terrible time. Did we need the Second World War? Of course not. This book is about Jewish children and their families. Did any of our hero's family survive? The photos are a plus in this book. Some of them are very drastic. The author shows us in a drastic way how it really was. This book is not easy, but it is very necessary for the younger generations. If you like books based on facts and about the Second World War, be sure to read this one. You will find out how Henry Oster's fate unfolded while reading "The Stable Boy of Auschwitz".