"We were in this camp for two months, breaking stones.
I was just skin and bone.
Get through one day and then on to the next.
One day at a time. One day after another.
One day at a time. One day after another.
Then we were transferred to a camp at Drancy.
This was a new housing complex that been turned into
a prison camp for Jews."
This was a new housing complex that been turned into
a prison camp for Jews."
When Michael Rosen discovered that his father's uncle and aunt were on the same convoy as Eugene and Oscar Handschuh, he was inspired to tell their true story of survival. In first person narrative, he introduces the father and son who, as Hungarian Jews, were living in Paris and working in the Resistance against the Nazis.
They had done all they could to protect themselves with false papers. While trying to get new ones, they were discovered and their lives changed. It was December 28, 1942. They were interrogated, treated poorly, and forced into a work camp. They lived their lives from then on one day at a time, never knowing what might happen next. Next, they were sent to a prison camp and worried so much about being deported that they hatched a plan to dig themselves out. When the entrance to the tunnel was discovered, the Nazis gathered needed information from one of the men who worked on it.
Names were named, and deportation became the punishment. Eugene and Oscar were placed on Convoy 62 with twelve hundred other Jews. They knew nothing about the Holocaust, only that something bad was happening. They had prepared to find a way out, carrying hidden tools with them. Nineteen prisoners escaped, including the father and son. Two made it to Paris, while the father found a place to hide at a farm close by. When safe, he was taken to Paris where he was reunited with his son. Never had hugs been so tight. Still, they didn't know that the train was headed to Auschwitz, or what would happen there. Eugene and his father Oscar survived, Michael Rosen's relatives did not.
The book ends with hope for father and son. Never does it fail to remember the horror of what happened to so many others.
"What happened to the twelve hundred people on that train?
There were nineteen of us who jumped
on that one day.
There were nineteen of us who jumped
on that one day.
The rest went to Auschwitz.
Only twenty-nine came back.
Only twenty-nine came back.
And that's a true story."
Somber colors, created using ink, charcoal and pencil, echo the real sadness for those who endured the horrors of the Holocaust. The repeated "one day" is a reminder to all of the uncertainty of life and the need to be brave and resilient. It introduces the topic to a younger audience in a way that is both solemn and safe, yet informative about a terrible time in the world's history. It should be shared, then read again to understand the truth of what happened to so many. Much is left unsaid, as it should be for this audience; yet, it balances truth, hope and despair in the most sensitive way.
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