"I wrote this book so you would remember. I will not be here to speak to you this story forever. Don't let the lessons from this evil fade away. Remember. Remember. Remember!"
This book by Menachem Taiblum, with Cyndie Meyer, is first and foremost a Holocaust memoir.
It's also an eye-opening historical document, offering a different perspective as well as details of facts, incidents, and situations that aren't covered by concentration camp survivors.
And as a thrilling inspirational memoir, it illustrates how a boy of eleven through fifteen years of age is able to escape the Nazis, finding the courage and resilience to survive on his own.
Taiblum's extraordinary story begins before the war, describing the period of growing anti-Semitism before the Nazi invasion of Poland. It extends into the war's aftermath, portraying the utter chaos through which the survivors must struggle to rebuild their shattered lives.
Providing a range of responses to both the Nazis and Jewish people from Polish nationals, this book serves as a powerful cautionary tale about bigotry and prejudice. But even as it conveys the overriding evil of the times, it also highlights the sustaining oases of compassion through which G-d's work is done.
About the Author: Menachem Taiblum's inspirational memoir, With G-d at My Side: A Child's Story of Survival, details how he endured the Nazi occupation of Poland on his own.
In 1948 he was among the first groups of Jewish people legally allowed to immigrate into the new state of Israel. While at a newcomers' camp there, he had the opportunity to study with Moishe Kosowicki, one of the great cantors of the twentieth century. After serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, he married and had a daughter, finding work first as a construction truck driver and later in the orange groves.
Offered a job by a Jewish newspaper in São Paulo, Brazil, he spent fifteen years as a reporter and journalist before immigrating to the United States in 1972, where he operated seasonal accommodations in the Catskills and Miami and worked as a cantor. Now eighty-seven, he resides in Portland, Oregon.
