FREE -- US & UK Kindle Edition -- CHILDREN ON DEATH ROW, Holocaust and Beyond, 3rd Edition by Tommy Lustig

My Eternal Dream:

I still have the dream: I wake up early in the early morning in my Home in Terezin Concentration Camp. There were about 20 double bank-beds in a huge barracks room. I see in the shadow a little group of children just getting ready to leave. They are trying not to wake up the other children.

“Hey Kids, kids; where are you going to? Wait for me, wait for me…”
“We are leaving on a transport to the East. We are leaving to the Place of no Return. You will never see us again. You stay back and remember us. And you tell all people.
Yes I will, I will, I promise.

I hope you will find my book to be educational and enjoyable. The book is not only about Holocaust, Terezin and the vanishing children. The story goes beyond the end of WWII.

It is a story about Tommy, an innocent little boy who was sent to prison when he was 6 years old and was kept there for three years. He was sentenced to death, he was supposed to be murdered, but his murderers were too busy murdering others. The murderers ran out of time and so Tommy survived.

Tommy, the little boy, was actually me. In my writing I will tell you what I remember from those terrible days some seventy years ago in the way that I experienced them then – as a little boy. I was 3 years old when the Nazis invaded my world and I was 9 when the war ended. I was free from one concentration camp, an other started soon after and lasted much longer.

The story introduces our family and the environment we were living in. The family history goes back to the year of 1765 and to the little village Schwanenbruckel. It was located on the southern border between Germany and Czechoslovakia. It was the family get-together place for many years; it does not exist anymore.

Our family consisted of very different Jewish people, some were rich and some were not so wealthy in money, but they were certainly resorsefull in ideas. It was a close nit family, loving and hard working friendly people. They appreciated the fact that they were living in a country which was a democratic island in not so democratic Europe. This was before the Second World War. They also saw the thread of Nazi Germany to their neighbors and specifically to the Jewish population.

The story goes through my family life in Pilsen where I was borne. My father was involved in the community very actively. His dislike of the Nazis was not a secret. Then there is the escape from Pilsen to Prague and to Radesovice, an obscure Prague suburb. We lived there for three years. Gradually, the Nazi oppression of the occupied territory population and specifically of the Jewish people became hardly bearable.

The trip to the prison, to Terezin concentration camp and the live there follows. The story does not end with Terezin liberation. You will see that there was actually never a complete liberation at all. There was a temporally lift of the cage, just to have the cage come down, always more and more forcefully. Stalin took over the murdering hatched from Hitler at Stalingrad ... and we were living in “Stalin’s territory of interest”... until we escaped and made it to America. That is where the story ends.

The reader should understand the original purpose of my writing: When I do my Holocaust presentation to the high school children, I do not have too much time: some 45-90 minutes to talk about 9 years time span and beyond. I have published the story on Kindle to make it accessible to the children whose questions in so many letters were never answered.

One last note: I talk about my own experiences only when I talk at the schools. That is the ethical requirement. However; in my writing I included some of my family members experience and my friends experience also. And, am not supposed to insert any jokes into my presentations; Holocaust was a very sad story by it selves. On the other hand, what is a Jewish story without a Jewish joke? So I broke the rule in my writing.

Enjoy the reading, and feel free to send to me your comments.


US Kindle Edition

UK Kindle Edition