Overview

Roman Halter was a spirited, optimistic schoolboy in 1939 when he and his family gathered behind the curtains to watch the Volksdeutsche (German-Polish) neighbors of their small town in western Poland greet the arrival of 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 silently witnessed his Jewish classmates being bayoneted to death by soldiers at the edge of town. 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 this his native village, post-war, was nothing like the home he remembered.

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Reviews

"""To lose everything, but to regain 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 ""Written with the piercing detachment of much of the great literature of the Holocaust...Compelling [and] compassionate."" - Observer (UK) ""Roman's Journey is a work of moral grandeur. The more people who understand that, the better the world will be. The author deals with the evil done in the war to him, his family, and so many others... it is a triumph of the human spirit that he has been able to free himself from anger, and equally from self-pity."" - David Pryce-Jones ""Roman's Journey is a masterpiece of English literature, and one of the greatest works about the Shoah. The human voice resonates in this book, and the objective tone, composed without making any judgment on the action. Broke my heart... Halter's mastery of the craft transfigures horror into beauty - that is the mystery of great art, and he has accomplished it."" - Hugh Nissenson ""A unique story told without sentimentality... This is writing after my own heart."" - Aharon Appelfeld ""Thank you to Roman Halter for this memoir... It is, as the title says, one man's journey, or rather one boy's; and a very telling, and moving, journey it is too... Learn all you can, be realistic about yourself and the world, but never give up hope: these are the lessons of Roman's Journey. They are surely as good for life as for death, for peace as for war."" - Guardian ""This is an impressive book... Roman Halter's resourcefulness and courage as a teenager in the worst killing fields of the twentieth century were truly remarkable. Halter relates the tale of his extraordinary odyssey in clear-eyed, level-headed prose, free of moral philosophising or please for retribution... Inspiring.""- Sunday Herald"

To lose everything, but to regain 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 Written with the piercing detachment of much of the great literature of the Holocaust...Compelling [and] compassionate. - Observer (UK) Roman's Journey is a work of moral grandeur. The more people who understand that, the better the world will be. The author deals with the evil done in the war to him, his family, and so many others... it is a triumph of the human spirit that he has been able to free himself from anger, and equally from self-pity. - David Pryce-Jones Roman's Journey is a masterpiece of English literature, and one of the greatest works about the Shoah. The human voice resonates in this book, and the objective tone, composed without making any judgment on the action. Broke my heart... Halter's mastery of the craft transfigures horror into beauty - that is the mystery of great art, and he has accomplished it. - Hugh Nissenson A unique story told without sentimentality... This is writing after my own heart. - Aharon Appelfeld Thank you to Roman Halter for this memoir... It is, as the title says, one man's journey, or rather one boy's; and a very telling, and moving, journey it is too... Learn all you can, be realistic about yourself and the world, but never give up hope: these are the lessons of Roman's Journey. They are surely as good for life as for death, for peace as for war. - Guardian This is an impressive book... Roman Halter's resourcefulness and courage as a teenager in the worst killing fields of the twentieth century were truly remarkable. Halter relates the tale of his extraordinary odyssey in clear-eyed, level-headed prose, free of moral philosophising or please for retribution... Inspiring. - Sunday Herald

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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