The Final Journey [Hardcover]

Gudrun Pausewang (Author), Patricia Crampton (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1996

Alice is eleven years old, and it is wartime. She is on a train with no seats, no lights, no sanitary facilities. Her parents and her grandmother are missing, and Alice doesn't know where she is going. Maybe she will get to play outside again, maybe she will see her parents. But as the train rolls on, Alice begins to realize that just when you think things can't possibly get any worse, they do. "No reader will be immune to the plight of these people, powerless in the face of overwhelming evil."-- "Kirkus Reviews"

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This German import imagines an 11-year-old Jewish girl's experience on a train bound for Auschwitz. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Gr. 8^-12. What was it like in the railway cattle cars bound for Auschwitz? This novel, first published in Germany in 1992, tells it from the viewpoint of an 11-year-old Jewish girl. Alice Dubsky has spent two years in hiding in a basement, protected from the knowledge of the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Now suddenly, crammed with nearly 50 people in the hot, stinking darkness of the train car, she faces the fact that they are prisoners being taken to a camp. That must be why her parents disappeared months before. She sees her grandfather die and witnesses the miracle of a baby born in the excrement, even as she learns for the first time from a young woman how babies are made. People cling to their possessions. Some share and help one another. Someone else dies. The train stops at sidings; people outside hear the cries and do nothing.

Do we need another book about the Holocaust? Yes, if it is as good as this one. This is not a book for children, but teens and adults will find it compelling reading, an extension of the autobiographical journeys of Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz (1959) and Isabella Leitner's The Big Lie (1992). Crampton's translation is restrained; the dialogue rings true; the details are authentic. There is no exploitation; in fact, there is almost no direct violence. The end is quiet and devastating. They get there. The Auschwitz commander sends some to the right; Alice goes to the left, together with the other children, the old, the disabled, and the newborn baby. They strip for the "showers." Hazel Rochman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Viking Juvenile (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670864560
• ISBN-13: 978-0670864560
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,364,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, December 28, 2002

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Final Journey (Mass Market Paperback)

Eleven year old Alice is loved and spoiled endlessly. But when her and her grandfather are thrust onto a cattle truck with no idea of where they`re going, everything in Alice`s life changes. This book is so horrifyingly realistic. The description of the things and people surrounding Alice in the cattle truck is terrifying. You actually feel like your in the disgusting cattle truck, feeling scared and confused. And when Alice first deals with the delemma of death and the miracle of birth you feel her emotions jumping off the page. This book is really amazing in it`s reality of the horrors of the Holocaust.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Moving, October 1, 2001

By 

"baumannc" (Chattanooga, TN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Final Journey (Mass Market Paperback)

Attending a german school in 8th grade ('95), I first read this book (in it's original german) for a book rewiew and thoroughly enjoyed it. The story about a girl named Alice describes what it was like for Jews and others to travel to the concetration camps on cattle cars with the unending thirst, heat/cold, death, excrement and fear. It has a double importance for me because Mrs. Pausewang came to our area library and gave a speech on her writing. She is actually a surviving victim of the holocaust herself so she wrote this with experience. The end of the book is a really touching one as is the rest of the story. This story was one of my first favorite books. In fact, I liked it so much, I had my dad pick up a copy of it on a return trip to Germany so I would have it. Now, while doing research for my college Holocaust class I found out that it is translated into English so more people are able to read this wonderful story. Now I can finally recommend it to everyone.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Final Journey, April 17, 2002

By 

Cathy Kyritsis (Thailand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Final Journey (Mass Market Paperback)

The book was a marvelous book but it also makes you feel grief, and sadness for the main characters. A young girl, Alice, who is Jewish, has been taken away from her home by men she has no clue are. Taken with her, were her grandparents. Alice lives with them because her parents had to myssteriously leave the country, she hadn't heard from them in a while.
Alice's granmother also dissaperas at the train station where they were taken by the strange men. So now its Alice and her grandfather left alone on the train for who know how long? Maybe days. Along with them there is a family of 5, a strange old man, and other mysterious characters you will read about. So Alice's journey begins on this train of the unknown, no idea where she is going or what will happen to her and her grandfather when they get there. While you read this book you will discover that its about good and evil and who wins doesn't matter but what really matters is that bravery faces the face of evil.