Ragdolls

by Henry Golde

Book Overview

This is a story of an eleven year old boy's jouney to hell and back. The story that will have you wondering, "How did he survive?" Was it luck, fate or maybe a small miracle. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972421300
• ISBN13: 9780972421300
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Golde Publishing
• Length: 173 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Child's Perspective on War

A most worthwhile narrative nonfiction for grade school pupils through high school students and also appropriate for college-level history & cultural courses. The author recounts his life from the age of 11 to 16 as a witness to Holocaust horrors and atrocities in Poland, Germany and Czechoslovakia; this fine little volume provides the reader with a child's understanding of the tumult ensuing around him. Within this account, the reader lives the daily precarious survival of one individual. Beginning with the anti-Semitism of his hometown near Warsaw, the author, Henry, relates his early youth followed by the war years: a series of internments in ghettos, labor camps, and concentration camps of German-occupied Europe. The narrative opens on the advent of the Second World War. Soon thereafter, the reader experiences the demoralized Polish army retreating through Henry's hometown of Plotz, then the entrance of German troops. On their heels appear the black uniforms of the SS divisions. This heralds the transformation of the trusted streets of the author's hometown into a Jewish ghetto. Several months later, Henry and older brother and parents endure a freight transport to the concentration camp of Dzialdowo (German: Soldau), Poland. Within 2 months a second transport forces the family into the Ghetto Chmielnik. After 10 months, Henry sees his mother for the last time and, forcible separated from his family, is transported by lorry to the labor camp (Arbeitslager) Skarzysko-Kamienna, a major armaments' plant. Here the author enters the services of HASAG, the manufacturing firm from Leipzig, Germany. At Skarzysko the author endures 2 ½ years of grueling 12 hour shifts working within various plants ... and contracts Typhoid fever from which he experiences an unanticipated, but slow recovery. With the war having turned against the Nazis and the eastern front collapsing, the inmates of the HASAG plants at Skarzysko-Kamienna are herded into freight cars and transported to western Poland, arriving in the HASAG-run labor camps at Czenstochowa and neighboring Rakow. Within 5 months these camps are also evacuated as the Red Army advances toward the borders of the German Reich. HASAG now transports its slave laborers further west within the borders of Germany to its concentration camp of Buchenwald. After 4 weeks in Buchenwald, Henry is included with the group of laborers transported south by freight train to yet another HASAG facility, the V-1 Rocket Factory, at Colditz, Germany. During the 3 months of labor in the production of rocket elements and anti-tank weaponry here, allied bombing raids hinder production and signal the war is nearing the end. From Colditz then begins the 3 week, 180 km (112 miles) forced foot march through the rugged Saxon countryside and across the Czech border. Most who begin the march either die of exhaustion along the way or are shot for lagging behind or escaping. Arriving at the "model" concentration camp o

Amazing Story of Forgiveness and the power of Love

I recently attended a conference to listen to Henry Golde speak, he is very gifted in the way he can express himself but what I find most amazing is his ability to be able to forgive all of the wrongs done to him and carry on his life as a free man after this horrific experience. A very powerful book on the human spirit.