A Lucky Child

More than half a century passed between the events Buergenthal recalls in his memoir and his writing. Buergenthal believes he needed the distance to recall his experiences with detachment, and that it enabled him to parse details unimportant to his story. Buergenthal’s family was “for all practical purposes, wiped out in the Holocaust” (xvi), so his memoir is the only link between his family’s past and future:

Each of us who lived through the Holocaust has a personal story worth telling, if only because it puts a human face on the experience. Like all tragedies, the Holocaust produced heroes and villains, ordinary human beings who never lost their humanity and those who, to save themselves or for a mere piece of bread, helped send others to the gas chambers. It is also the story of some Germans who, in the midst of the carnage, did not lose their humanity (xvi-xvii).

Buergenthal concedes that his recollections may be slightly inaccurate- names, muddled facts, imprecise dates, and events that did not occur precisely as he describes. He was a child when the events took place and because he did not write his memoir sooner, he could not consult participants to verify details: “I grew up in the camps-I knew no other life-and my sole objective was to stay alive, from hour to hour, from day to day” (xviii).