Overview

Roman Halter (1927-2012) was a spirited schoolboy in 1939 when he and his family gathered behind the curtains to watch the Volksdeutsche (German-Polish) neighbors of Chodecz greet Hitler’s armies with kisses and swastika flags. Within days the family home had been seized, 12-year-old Roman had become a slave of the local SS chief, and, returning from an errand, he witnessed his Jewish classmates being bayoneted to death. So began his remarkable six-year journey through some of the darkest caverns of Nazi Europe that claimed the lives of his family and the 800-strong community of his boyhood. Incredibly, he survived the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz, the Stutthof concentration camp, and a slave factory in Dresden, only to find his native village, postwar, was nothing like the home he remembered.

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Reviews

'A unique story told without sentimentality... This is writing after my own heart.' - Aharon Appelfeld 'He tells his story simply, without rage, as reminder of man's inhumanity to man.' - The Times 'No matter how many memoirs have emerged from the Holocaust, there is always room for more to cast new light on... life in the Third Reich... The story of Halter's months adrift in Europe following the German surrender is gripping... Roman's story is a compelling, compassionate and impressively literary contribution to the writing of humanity on the brink.' - Toby Lichtig, Observer 'Halter tells his story in naive style which wonderfully evokes the developing mind processes of a child... It is a story similar yet differing from those you have heard before since it speaks not of the anger of an old man looking back but of the experiences of a young man who, despite what had gone, had life before him and whom you knew, no matter how many times he went down, would come up kicking and thrashing his way back to the surface.' - Jewish Chronicle 'Roman's mother... told him: Record, don't judge. Roman's Journey, his account of those six years [of the war] and the happy childhood that was cut short so violently, is all the more powerful for sticking to her edict. As a memoir it is harrowing, but also compelling for the strength and clarity of Halter's testimonial and the sheer number of times he evaded death when such a fate looked certain.' - Glasgow Herald 'Nothing less than an encounter with humanity in all its good and its evil.' - David Pryce-Jones 'What is particularly chilling about Halter's tale is the way that the evil slowly insinuated itself into his village... This is an impressive book. It can't be enjoyed but it should be read. Roman Halter's resourcefulness and courage as a teenager in the worst killing fields of the 20th century were truly remarkable.' - Sunday Herald 'Told with an unsentimental directness that is quite spellbinding' - Southern Daily Echo 'A plain, strong account of living through Auschwitz.' - Scotsman 'To lose everything, but to retain one's sanity and, more staggeringly, one's love of life beggars the imagination. This is the book of a man who has achieved just that... I urge you to read it.' - John Hurt

Author Information

Born in Western Poland in 1927, Roman Halter enjoyed a notable career in the UK after the Second World War as an architect and a teacher of architecture. In 1974 he left architecture and began making stained-glass windows and HM the Queen's Royal Coat of Arms for British embassies and Crown courts. Halter died in 2012. His paintings of his experiences during the war went on show at Tate Britain and they are all at the Imperial War Museum in London.

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