A Detail of History by Arek Hersh
How do you survive when you’re 11 years old and all your family have been taken from you and killed?
How do you continue to live, when everything around you is designed to ensure certain death?
Arek Hersh tells his story simply and honestly, a moving account of a little boy who made his own luck and survived. He takes us into the tragic world imposed on him that robbed him of his childhood.
The depth of the tragedy, strength of courage and power of survival will move you and inspire you.
Contrary to assertions that the Holocaust years were a mere ‘detail of history’, Arek Hersh gives us a glimpse into the greatest catastrophe that man has ever inflicted on his fellow man.
Introducing A Detail of History:
Additional photographs:
This book contains 70 remarkable photographs.
Especially for this edition, Arek Hersh has curated an archive of additional photographs from his personal collection:
LOCATIONS:
- Sieradz in 2005. At the age of ten, I was living here with my family, oblivious to the troubles that would soon devastate my carefree world
- The Kloister church. From here, my family were taken to Chelmno and murdered. (Unison)
- Theresienstadt (Unison)
- The church where 1400 Jews were imprisoned (Unison)
- Sieradz – at the site of the old water pump (Unison)
- My Hebrew school, 2005 (Unison)
- My first school
- The synagogue in Sieradz, now converted into offices.
- The yard of the Kloister church at Sierdatz, where I saw my mother, sister Itka, brother Tovia, my uncles and aunties and other Jews of our town for the last time
- The gates of Kloister church. I was selected to join a work group. When I left these gates I did not realise I would be separated from my family forever
CHELMNO:
- At Chelmno, 2005 (Unison)
- Field of tears, where 150,000 prisoners were gassed and burnt
- Returning to Chelmno
OTOSCHNO:
1945-1960:
- In England in the 1960s
- With a work colleague in Manchester in the early 1960s
- In England in the 1950s
RETURN TO AUSCHWITZ:
- At Auschwitz
- At Birkenau
- At the ruins of a gas chamber at Birkenau
- Auschwitz 2005
- Auschwitz, 2001. This is my number – B7608.
- Auschwitz, 2001
- Birkenau – giving a talk outside Gas Chamber & Crematorium 2
- Birkenau-Auschwitz 1990
- My Auschwitz number – B7608 (Unison)
- Praying at Auschwitz 1980
1960 ONWARDS:
- Daughter Karen & family
- In Germany with Jean and nuns
- Meeting the Queen before lunch at Buckingham Palace, 2009
- South of France, 1975. My wife, Jean, is on the right.
- With daughter Susie
- With Jean and daughter Michelle at a fund-raising ball in London.
- With Jean at a party in Leeds
- With Liza Minelli at a fund-raising ball in London
- Receiving my MBE, 2009
- My friend Itzchak Raisman who went through most camps with me. We found each other again in 1960, but Itzchak is now dead
- Michelle, husband Yair, and daughters Liora, Avital and Galit