Title : Death March Escape
By : Jack J Hersch
Genre: Nonfiction :
Biographies & Memoirs ,
Pages: 253
book synopsis :
In June 1944, the Nazis locked eighteen-year-old Dave Hersch into a railroad boxcar and shipped him from his hometown of Dej, Hungary, to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, the harshest, cruellest camp in the Reich. After ten months in the granite mines of Mauthausen's nearby sub-camp, Gusen, he weighed less than 80lbs, nothing but skin and bones.
Somehow surviving the relentless horrors of these two brutal camps, as Allied forces drew near Dave was forced to join a death march to Gunskirchen Concentration Camp, over thirty miles away. Soon after the start of the march, and more dead than alive, Dave summoned a burst of energy he did not know he had and escaped. Quickly recaptured, he managed to avoid being killed by the guards. Put on another death march a few days later, he achieved the impossible: he escaped again.
Dave often told his story of survival and escape, and his son, Jack, thought he knew it well. But years after his father's death, he came across a photograph of his father on, of all places, the Mauthausen Memorial's website. It was an image he had never seen before - and it propelled him on an intensely personal journey of discovery.
Somehow surviving the relentless horrors of these two brutal camps, as Allied forces drew near Dave was forced to join a death march to Gunskirchen Concentration Camp, over thirty miles away. Soon after the start of the march, and more dead than alive, Dave summoned a burst of energy he did not know he had and escaped. Quickly recaptured, he managed to avoid being killed by the guards. Put on another death march a few days later, he achieved the impossible: he escaped again.
Dave often told his story of survival and escape, and his son, Jack, thought he knew it well. But years after his father's death, he came across a photograph of his father on, of all places, the Mauthausen Memorial's website. It was an image he had never seen before - and it propelled him on an intensely personal journey of discovery.
My thoughts
rating:5
Would I recommend it : yes
This story was an amazing read from start to finish , it was also an emotional read as well but then again when it comes to nonfiction and especially the ones that are about WWI or WW2 then you know your going to feel the emotions, there was times i had to stop read it not because I wasn't enjoying it or liking it but because of how I felt. This book its just a story about a son loving his father and wanting to understand more about him ,but its also part of his history as well as the history of how the Jews was traded, about family that helped one man , even though it was dangerous , and how one man lost most if not all of his family doing this troubled times, how the Germans would pick and choose who would live and who would did , and especially about the death marches ,and how one man man not only escape from it once but 2 times and lived to pass the story on to his son the author. The story is haunting but its also a story that can not be ignore or forget. And one that needed to be told , With that said I want to thank Netgalley as well as the publishers for letting me read and review it , exchange for my honest opinion.
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