In a world where Antisemitism and faulty assumptions about the Holocaust spread like wildfire, how to stop history from repeating itself? How to successfully keep the long-lasting promise to #NeverForget?
The memories of Holocaust survivors are the most precious testimony to one of the darkest times of humankind. But time is a ruthless killer and, as most survivors are slowly and inevitably leaving us, it is their descendants’ pride and duty to keep their memory bright and more alive than ever.
When the teenager Oren Schneider visits Auschwitz-Birkenau on a high-school trip, his heart is shattered. He cannot help thinking about his grandfather Alexander, who lived the reality of the concentration camps first-hand.
This moving tribute was written shortly after Alexander’s demise in 2020.
Schneider follows his grandfather’s story throughout all his life stages: his serene childhood, his terrifying adolescence in the concentration camps, his collision with the brutal post-war reality, and finally, his elderly years, when he visits the Buchenwald camp alongside his grandson, where the horrors now seem so distant.
The Apprentice of Buchenwald is the heart-wrenching story of Alexander Rosenberg.
A boy who used to collect stamps and play music for his mother, and absolutely adored his father.
A boy whose world was suddenly shattered and became a saboteur of Hitler’s war machine.
A boy who grew into a successful entrepreneur and a devoted grandfather albeit with a scarred soul.
A hero for his family and now, for the world.
“Being an inmate of a Nazi concentration camp did not stop Alexander Rosenberg. It did not stop him from doing whatever he could to keep his father alive. And it did not stop him from sabotaging the Nazi war effort by subtly tampering with the weaponry he assembled. [...] In telling this story, Oren Schneider does both of these things as well. He keeps his grandfather’s memory alive. And he directly sabotages the efforts of those enemies of the Jewish people who deny the enormity of the Shoah, or who tell us that protection can be found in assimilation.” – Elisha Wiesel, son of Marion and Elie Wiesel
The Apprentice of Buchenwald. The True Story of the Teenage Boy Who Sabotaged Hitler’s War Machine, by Oren Schneider is book 30 of the series Holocaust Survivor True Stories by Amsterdam Publishers.
It will be released on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January 2023. It can be ordered in all bookstores, on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Amazon link: https://mybook.to/Rn7ABV
