Lucien's Story: A Memoir [Paperback]

Aleksandra Kroh (Author), Austryn Wainhouse (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

November 25, 1943, Paris, France: Roused from sleep by a French policeman's pounding at the door, 11-year-old Lucien Duckstein and his mother were escorted to the local police station and bused to the first of two Jewish concentration camps in which they would spend the following 18 months. The first camp, known to Lucien only as Drancy, housed all the evils associated with Nazi accommodations: lice, scant food, crowded quarters, illness, and unspeakable cruelty. Throughout his stay in the camp, Lucien maintained his humanity despite these surroundings, but the year he spent at Bergen-Belsen left him faithless and forever changed. Written in stark and uncluttered language, Lucien's Story powerfully conveys one child's account of unfathomable horror and describes a life forever scarred by history and experience. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Through colleague Kroh, Lucien Duckstein, an esteemed scientist living in Arizona, recounts his experience as a Jewish child living in France during World War II. Lucien begins his story with his childhood in Paris, where his father was in the French Army. With the outbreak of the war, his once-normal life deteriorated to the point of total suffering. Lucien's father became a prisoner of war, and Lucien and his mother were sent to Drancy, a transit camp for Jews, where children starved with their mothers. Still, there was hope. Parents continued to provide some education for their children, and people organized evening get-togethers. Eventually, Lucien and his mother were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where conditions were much more horrible. Lucien describes extreme hunger, illness, medical experiments, loss of religious faith, and the horror of roll call. This affecting memoir gives insight into the treatment of Jews living in France during the Holocaust, a topic rarely covered. Recommended for Holocaust collections.?Mary F. Salony, West Virginia Northern Community Coll. Lib., Wheeling
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 68 pages
• Publisher: Marlboro Press; Translated edition (October 7, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810160218
• ISBN-13: 978-0810160217
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,608,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brief but compelling story of a child's attempt to deal with the unthinkable, February 5, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Lucien's Story: A Memoir (Hardcover)

This is the story of Lucien Duckstein, an 11 year old boy in Paris who is deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with his mother because they are Jewish. It is also the story of Lucien Duckstein, a sixty year old scientist who eventually comes to deal with the experiences he underwent in Bergen-Belsen and the Drancy internment camp. He explores the price those childhood experiences exacted in his adulthood, especially in his dealings with his wife, children, family and the outside world. He acknowledges the cost of having created a persona which could survive life in the camps. His language is sparse, but eloquent and his pain is evident in the simplicity of his words. This is a short (60page), volume that is uncluttered by the irrelevant, that flows from the start and is stark and frightening in it's descriptions of what it was like to be a French Jew in Paris and later. His use of the present to play off against the past merely highlights the horrors that he experience

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As dry and poignant as the skeleton's bones, March 23, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Lucien's Story: A Memoir (Hardcover)

A memoir -- A gateway into the world of Lucien leads the reader through the tunnels of his mind as the horrors of the past ricochet into the present. Without sentimentality this story changes the awareness of even the most knowledgeable reader. The present is honed by these echoes of the past. Beautifully, albeit adroitly, written, the bones of his experience are clean, sparse and strong. We are helped to understand the unimaginable

5.0 out of 5 stars Astonishing story, April 11, 2010

By 

Fly Guy (Northern California, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Lucien's Story: A Memoir (Paperback)

We've all read or heard about stories from the Jewish Holocaust until we're a bit tired of them. But when I read this I was astonished. Written by a renowned engineer, it describes his experience as a Jewish boy in Nazi-controlled Paris: taken along with his family at midnight, shipped to a holding area in France for some months, then off to a death camp. He survived by days, liberated by the Russians, who knew not to give the starving prisoners rich food immediately. Then returned to his old apartment with his family and the neighbors pretend nothing much happened....life continued. He suppresses his experience and gets on with life, only telling this story decades later.

Simply but powerfully told, there is little philosophizing. Rather a straight-forward account of what happened to him. Recommended not just for this episode in Western civilization, but for the writing style.