num_pages: 165
description: Lonely Chameleon is a story of survival.  It is a story of genocide, tragedy, ruthless separations, unimaginable heartache, and, eventually, of triumph. It is the personal story of Marion Weinzweig, a young Jewish child caught up in the horrors of the Holocaust in 1940s Poland.  Marion's family life in her hometown of Apt was idyllic until the occupying Germans set into motion their relentless purge of Jews. We see through Marion's eyes, and the accounts of her few surviving relatives, the terror of families ripped apart as they were rounded up like cattle and transported to their deaths in concentration camps.  To save her life, Marion's parents sent her to live in hiding with a Christian couple. She became a "lonely chameleon," torn from her family, losing all connection with her Jewish heritage and struggling to blend inconspicuously into the non-Jewish world.  Her living circumstances kept changing, making her feel, as she terms it, "like an unloved, wild and scared animal." Despite bombings, days of terror and confusion, her ingenuity and determination got her through. Reunited with her father after Poland was liberated, Marion immigrated to Canada, and later moved to America.  Lonely Chameleon is a graphic, eye-opening, firsthand account of the inhumanity of the Holocaust. But it is more. It is a powerful message from a young Holocaust survivor to future generations to remain vigilant so such atrocities never happen again.
title: Lonely Chameleon: Memoir of a Child Holocaust Survivor