Customer Reviews

Petit Claude: The Orphan of Auschwitz

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Recently I met Agnes Seugnet, author of a newly published book called, "Petit Claude The Orphan Of Auschwitz And His French Rescuers." This is a true story of the rescue of a little Jewish boy in France during the time of the Holocaust. The couple that sheltered and nurtured the child during the war was Mrs. Seugnet's parents. They were members of the French resistance. It is an emotional and very sincere book that can be enjoyed by both teenagers and adults.

Mrs. Seugnet's book is very important. She is a direct link to the Holocaust experience and is willing to share it with others. By reading the book, teenagers can acquire a much deeper and more immediate understanding of the Holocaust. This experience led to my discussing the Holocaust with my own family. I urge other families to talk to their children about these events. To those families with survivors I urge the survivors to talk to their children and grandchildren for you are a link to the past. As Mrs. Seugnet puts it, it is your "duty to share the memory."

We always hear about all the terrible things that happened in World War II - how a whole nation ultimately colluded with a psychopath who managed to wreak havoc across the entire world and how millions of people suffered and died for no reason at all. It can lead to a very depressing conclusion about human nature and the world we live in.

So with that in mind, its very refreshing to read a book like this which is about two unlikely lovers, a German and a Frenchwoman, who dared to stand against the fascist regimes of Nazi Germany and Vichy France, risking their lives to save that of a young Jewish boy whose family are, one by one, murdered by the Nazis. There is no more powerful way of understanding the real horror of what the Nazi's committed and also of what an impact one person's decision to do the right thing can have.

The orphan's two rescuers are actually the author's own parents and one gets the sense that this book is as much a personal voyage to understand her parents as it is to relay a heroic tale. As such the intricacies and contradictions of their characters come across in a very compelling and intriguing way.

Overall, I found "The Orphan of Auschwitz" both depressing and hopeful, tragic and heroic. It certainly gives an astonishing insight into the lives of real people living and fighting in that extraordinary period and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is at all interested in how the moral dilemmas of the war forced ordinary people into leading extraordinary lives.

This book is an honest and moving true account of an unusual situation: a French woman and a German man protecting a little Jewish boy during World War II. The resolve and nationalities of the couple add a new dimension to our understanding of the complexity of French and German resistance.