A Childhood. Jona Oberski

The author recounts his experiences as a child in a German concentration camp and the deaths of his parents.

 Review by the authors son

Of course I am not objective writing a review of my dad's first book. I remember well receiving a copy from him when it was first published in 1978. I was 12. I had some vague notions about the war and about the persecutions of the Jews. I knew my dad's parents weren't his real ones and his brothers were his foster-brothers. But reading his account (which is based on his own experiences but, given that he was very young, not exactly autobiographical) made me see my father through completely different eyes. As the book is written from the perspective of a very young boy and written in very simple language, it was almost as if I was myself experiencing the war, the camps and the simple joys of family togetherness, subsequently disrupted by the incomprehensible grief of separation and death. It took me many years to recover from the shock, but it stirred an interest and passion in me for people's personal stories of pain, without comparing the extent of that pain.