Escape From the Ghetto: The Breathtaking Story of the Jewish Boy Who Ran Away from the s
The title fails to do justice to the book. Chaim Herszman’s escape from the Lódz ghetto in September 1939, aged 13, was only the first of a series of audacious escapes over the next two and a half years as he crossed Nazi Germany, Vichy France and Franco’s Spain to reach Gibraltar and thence Britain. Nor does the story end there, for we follow Chaim’s career as a soldier in the free Polish army and then his tortured family life in post-war England.
The story is narrated by Chaim’s son, who has followed his father’s journey and interviewed such witnesses as he could trace, including a witness to the initial escape and the killing of a German guard. He does not shrink from describing his father’s difficulties in later years and admits that he was estranged from him for most of his life. The book is thus both an act of homage and of reconciliation.
One of the best wartime escape stories I have read.
