I'm No Hero: The Journeys of a Holocaust Survivor (Samuel and Althea Stroum Book)
I'm No Hero: Journeys of a Holocaust Survivoris a memoir by Henry Friedman, a Polish Jew who escaped internment in the concentration camps with help from a Christian family, who hid Friedman in the loft of a barn for 18 months. He was 14 years old when he went into hiding, and he remembers his flight for safety from the German bombings of Poland this way: "[I saw] buildings burning, parts of human bodies, dead and wounded animals. I was mesmerized by a wounded horse. His blood was bubbling from his stomach, and my mother put her hand over my eyes and dragged me away." When the family was liberated by the Russians, Friedman grew up fast. He became involved in black market trading in a displaced persons camp in Austria, and he began seducing women with great regularity. He moved to America in 1949, and returned to Poland to visit the family who protected him in 1988. His primary avocation, in retirement, is speaking to school children about surviving the Holocaust. Friedman is not a scholar, and his prose is workmanlike. But his book--even considering its detailed reports of his off-color adventures--will be most profitably read by adolescents and young people. It is a harsh, tough, simply-told story about growing up in very difficult circumstances, about forgiving oneself for moral failure, and about accepting second (and third, and fourth) chances with grace.--Michael Joseph Gross