When They Came to Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust [Hardcover]

Mark Seliger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 1996

Fifty holocaust survivors share poignant tales of bravery, resilience, loss, and spirit, in which they describe day-to-day life in concentration camps, hideout experiences, and the guilt associated with posing as non-Jews.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"When I went back two years ago, standing in the place where they came to kill us, I showed my daughter and my grandson, 'This is where my ashes are supposed to have been'" says 70-year-old John Klein, one of the 50 survivors of the Nazi concentration camps who recount their horrifying stories in When They Came to Take My Father. The book was edited by Leora Kahn, a photography editor, and Rachel Hager, an editor at Parents magazine. Photographs are by Mark Seliger. The editors have wisely allowed the power of the testimony within to emerge. "Everybody knew that if you didn't get up for roll call, they would take you to the gas chamber," remembers Rosa Strygler. "One day ... I left my mother knowing that when I came back she would not be there. And she wasn't."

From Publishers Weekly

Fifty Jewish men and women who survived the Holocaust?many in concentration camps, others as refugees, or in hiding, or as resistants?relate their experiences in this moving, powerful volume. Their searing first-person accounts, accompanied by black-and-white portrait photographs, tell of families pulverized, of loved ones murdered by the Nazis and of their quiet, determined day-to-day triumph over evil. Polish-born New Jersey builder Sol Urbeck, whose parents perished in the liquidated Krakow ghetto, worked in the Krakow factory supervised by German businessman Oskar Schindler (the focus of Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List). Journalist Ernst Michel, who escaped from Auschwitz in 1945, became the only Holocaust survivor to serve as a reporter at the Nuremburg trials. "Everybody thinks freedom is something inborn, but it isn't. It is something that has to be taught and experienced," declares retired family court judge Gertrud Mainzer, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen. An extraordinary testament to the human spirit, this album includes short, impassioned essays by novelist Anne Roiphe, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, social psychologist Eva Fogelman and others. Kahn is a photo editor; Hager, herself a child of survivors, is an editor at Parents; Seliger is chief photographer for Us and Rolling Stone.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; 1st edition (January 17, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559703059
• ISBN-13: 978-1559703055
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,945,668 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "This is where my ashes are supposed to have been", December 10, 2004

By 

J. Guild (Toronto,Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When They Came to Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust (Hardcover)

This is a rather different book on the Holocaust.It is the summaries of the interviews carried out with 50 people who survived the Holocaust.These interviews were done in the mid 90's with survivors who are in their senior years;many who were born over 80 years ago.Several of the people were the sole survivor of a large family.Included are excellent portraits of all these people.It is obvious that they have heavy hearts when remembering the terrible injustices they experienced.
Some of the thoughts expressed:
"We were counted like gold,treated like s---."

" know that the bulk of them went straight to the gas chambers
because I saw it that day kneeling on the stones."

"The hope of everyone was to see the Germans beaten."

"The sign of a free man is being able to keep your hands in
your pockets."

"We were loaded on cattle cars-jammed full-and shipped to
Auschwitz."

"It was a daily lottery with death,and I happened to win."

"If they nail me,you can have my shoes."

"Those who say we should forgive and forget,have nothing to
forgive and nothing to forget.I cannot forgive,I cannot
forget."

NEVER AGAIN!

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mark Seliger book, September 20, 2009

By 

D. Robarge - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: When They Came to Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust (Hardcover)

The book came nearly as expected a few pages were damaged but not horribly bad just a bit beaten up.