T.
Buergenthal, A Lucky Child: A Memoir of
Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy
(NY, Little, Brown: 2007, 2009). *
This memoir is not about the
terror; it is about the struggle to remember, and to remember accurately.
Thomas Buergenthal, who became an outstanding scholar in human rights law, is a
former Chief Justice of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and is now a
justice on the International Court of Justice in The Hague, fled nazi Germany
with his family as a child, spent several years in the ghettos, and then was in
Auschwitz and the last trains back to Germany. In this memoir, Buergenthal
gently and reflectively weaves personal memory, the historical facts as they
came to be known, and the perspective of a jurist looking back and seeking
truth and balance into a well-written and easily read narrative.
When still a child, a fortune
teller said of Buergenthal that he was ҡ lucky child.ӠThis motif was adopted by
Buergenthalճ mother and sustained her hope that he was alive long after
they had been separated while at Auschwitz. It also became a leitmotif in
Buergenthalճ own vision of himself. The book moves between the innocent
child in the world of hell, the wily boy who learns the skills of survival, and
the adult who wonders over and over again, how this happened and why things turned
out as they did. Reflecting on the sheer lunacy of the concentration camp world
alternates with the joy of the child who is adopted as the mascot of a Polish
army unit, and yet again with the awareness that no one can really be trusted.
Madness, charm, and the need to be constantly alert are present all the time.
Aside from the astonishing story of
this little boy who, at warճ end, could not even read, the book
contains a moral lesson. After the war, young Thomas continued to live in
Germany for several years, much to the consternation of the reader who expects
mother and son to get out of Europe as soon as they can. However, in the course
of this stay, young Thomas had to confront Germans, many of whom had been
perpetrators and others who were, like himself, too young to have been
responsible. In this, he also had to confront his fantasies of revenge. How
natural to want to machine-gun Germans walking peacefully down the street
repressing, or unaware of, his and his familyճ suffering! Yet Buergenthal mastered this
ethically and it is this mastery that lead him to a distinguished career as a
jurist specializing in human rights. He can never forget. He can never erase
the tattoo on his arm. But he cannot let hatred control his life.
This book is a must – not for the
terror or for some new nugget of information on nazism, the war, and the
concentration and extermination process, but for the integrity of the attempt
to remember and to integrate memory into a larger life.
David R. Blumenthal
Jay and Leslie Cohen Professor of
Judaic Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, GA