Customer Reviews

Parallel Journeys

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
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This is a great book. It contrasts the views of a Hitler Youth and follower and a Jewish Prisoner very well. If you are interested at all in the Holocaust, this book is a must read. It is filled with interesting and horrifying facts. The author arranged this book well

Parallel Journeys
By:Eleanor Ayer


This book turned out to be a very good book. The front cover features Adolf Hitler with
thousands of his young supporters hailing him during World War Two. Books about the war
usually depress me so usually I wouldn't read them, but this book appealed to me because of the
faces of two teenagers on the front cover. That lead me to read the back cover which simply
said-He was an ardent member of the Hitler Youth. This is a story of the parallel journey through
World War II with Alfons Heck, and Helen Wohlfarth. It compares the two people who had
completely different experiences of the war and to let them tell their stories side by side. It tells
how Helen was treated bad during the war, and how Alfons was training to treat people like
Helen badly and get ready for the war. When I first started reading this book I noticed how
different it was to some of the other novels I have read about the holocaust. It's very chilling to
realize that it is non-fiction. It isn't based on a true story

I learned many things that I didn't know about the Holocaust. I never realized how bad it
was until I read this book. I was surprised to know how young some of the men were while in the
army. It was really sick to know that if they disobeyed an order they could be put to death. For
example, when Alfons thought an order he was given was a mistake and didn't follow it. He was
punished but luckily not killed. After he punished he never disobeyed an order again even if it was
to kill himself. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes war books especially World
War Two books.

Written by: Joe Boggs Madison Middle School

While they aren't from the same family, Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck have developed similar respect for one another that siblings have for each other. In their childhoods, these two never would have dreamed that they would be traveling the country together giving lectures at high schools and colleges. Heck was a rising power in the Hitler youth; Waterford a young Jewish girl suffering through concentration camps and death marches. Eleanor H. Ayer weaves the stories of both these survivors together beautifully. She incorporates the history of the Holocaust as well as personal testimony from Waterford and Heck. This really is a must read for anyone interested in the Holocaust or the oppression of Jews from 1933-1945.

I have read many books about the Holocaust which have moved me. This book, however, was unique because side by side it presented two divergent stories brought together in a very factual way by the author.So in essence, we have three points of view; that of a survivor, a perpetrator and an author. The author has woven these stories together very skillfully and given a very comprehensive picture of Nazi Germany leading up to, during and after WWII.This book gives us two, true suspenseful stories against a factual historical backdrop all in one powerfully moving book. It was a courageous endeavor by each of the three who wrote it. I would recommend it for all students who are interested in getting an authentic view of this dark period in the history of the 20th Century. The book ends on a note of hope. Indeed just the fact that such a book could be written by two people with such opposite - life and death experiencesis a testimony that healing of even the most abominableexperiences imaginable is possible. I couldn't recommend it more highly.I would give it a 10+.

Parallel Journeys, by Eleanor Ayer with Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck, compares the life of two young people in Germany during the rise of Hitler and the outbreak of World War II. They were born within sixty miles of each other, but their lives took dramatically different paths. Alfons, a boy grew up on a farm in Germany, but when Hitler came to power he became involved with the Hitler Youth. He began his training to become the future of Germany and eventually the world. There he learned discipline and order. He trained to become a soldier and he learned the ways of warfare. He was taught to be a follower of anti-Semitism. He was told to hate the Jewish, and that they were the reason for Germany's problems. As years went by, Alfons rose through the ranks of the military. He started as a captain of a couple hundred boys into a major general of a couple thousand that were among the last to surrender. When the Allies finally came into Germany, Alfons, only seventeen, threw out his uniform and became a translator for the Americans who did not know of his past. Eventually the Americans found out and Alfons was ordered to turn himself in. The Americans viewed the Hitler Youth as misguided children and let Alfons go. After thirteen years Alfons moved to America after the memories of the Hitler yeas were forgotten.
Helen Waterford was a young Jewish girl who grew up in Frankfurt, Germany. She married Siegfried Wohlfarth and the two moved to Amsterdam because of tension in Frankfurt. She had a baby girl Doris whom she gave to friends because she was going into hiding. She and her husband were found by the Nazis and taken to Birkenau. Birkenau was one of the forty camps at Auschwitz. There she experienced to horror of the death camps. Eventually she and three hundred other women were transported to the work camp of Krarzau. She became sick of hepatitis, but eventually recovered. The camp was liberated and she began her quest across Europe back to Holland to find her daughter. Eventually after being held prisoner again she completed her journey and was reunited with her daughter. She learns her husband did not make it back. She and her daughter get help from her husband's boss who buys them tickets to America where they begin their new life. Her story can be seen at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Parallel Journeys was a decent book. It shows the lives of two young Germans. One was promised a bright future as a member of Hitler Youth, and the other almost experienced death in a concentration camp. The book illustrates how lives of young Germans could be completely different. Both stories were very interesting and educating, but were not captivating and enjoying to read. It was hard to follow with book switching back and forth between stories. At some points it was boring and hard to get into. In conclusion, Parallel Journeys was a descriptive book with a lot to offer. It provides much information on two completely different lives. It provides the opportunity to learn of the status of the world during some of the most rememberable decades in world history.

This book is not your usual book. It details the lives of Ayran Alfons Heck and Jewish Helen Waterford.

Alfons was a member of the Hitler Youth and fought-and even met Adolf Hitler. After the war he was depressed about the things that he and his countrymen did to the Jews and moved first to Canada and then to the U.S.

Helen is a Jew who spend part of the war hiding with her husband. They were eventually caught. Helen's husband did not survive, but Helen did, eventually moving from Holland to the U.S. with her daughter Doris.

While in the U.S Helen read some of the things Alfons wrote about and contacted him leading to a friendship and career as they travel telling their stories to students all over the place.

A very moving book!

This book is geared for youth, and I think it's okay for kids from age 10 on up. Older teenagers and adults should be sure to check out Heck's other two books, "Child of Hitler: Germany in the Days When God Wore a Swastika," and "The Burden of Hitler's Legacy." All three books contain good stuff that is left out of the other two books - for example, Parallel Journeys contains the Jewish perspective of Ms. Waterford, and is written for youthful readers; Child of Hitler focuses on the events prior to and during the war; and The Burden of Hitler's Legacy provides a lot more detail about the events leading up to the end of the war, and the events after the war. I strongly recommend all three books, and promise you that you will not come away with the feeling that you have read the same story three times.

The world must never forget the holocaust. Today some people espouse a theory that the nearly 12,000,000 deaths (6,000,000 of them Jews) at the hands of the Nazi party never happened. This sad, but honest, tale traces the lives of two persons who lived through that era. Helen Waterford was a Jew who experienced the atrocities first hand. Alfons Heck was a high ranking member of Hitler's youth. Both lived to tell their tales. Both met each other after the war. Both told their tales together. This book alternates chapters between the two principle characters so the reader can witness this period through eyes on both sides of the ideological conflict. This is really two books in one. Either story will challenge the mind and heart. Either one of the stories is an important read, but both placed together in this manner makes for a 5-star book. Our local middle school uses this classic in some of the literature classes. You will be richer for having read this book.

Seriously this book is impossible to stop reading once you pass a certain point. I stayed up 'til seven in the morning reading this book. Mind you I started reading that night around ten or eleven at night. It is seriously that captivating. This book tells some very important and over-all relatively unknown facts about the period surrounding WWII. It is an intriguing and captivating book that I believe every human being high school age and older should read. I also think it should be added to high school curriculums.

This book focuses on the lives of two people during the Holocaust. Helen Waterford was a Jewish girl who grew up in Frankfurt, Germany. She married and moved to Amsterdam where she had a child named Doris. Forced into hiding, both her and her husband were found and sent to Birkenau. This was the last time Helen ever saw him. Along with many other women, she was sent to another camp, Krarzau, to work in a factory. When finally freed, her first thought was meeting up with her family she hadn't seen in so long. She reunited with her daughter and later moved to America.
Alfons Heck was a fanatic Hitler Youth member pledged to serve Hitler to death. He looked up to the Nazis because they would make Germany a victorious and prosperous country. A firm believer in Anti-Semitism, he worked hard to "let the Jews know where they belong." He moved through the ranks of the Hitler Youth as the war went on, ending with a Bannfuhrer. When Germany was captured, he became an American translator until the troops found out about his real identity. When news of the concentration camps and the real evil of the Nazis came to him, he was forced to live with guilt for the rest of his life. Trying to forget about his past, he moved to America to start a new life.
Overall, this book was very informational in relation to the Holocaust. By giving two opposite sides of the story, the reader gets the full picture from this major event in history. Although the book is a bit boring in parts, I am amazed at the individual's stories. Theirs is a story of bravery, determination, and wit during this difficult time.