ESCAPE TO THE TATRAS

A Holocaust survivor recounts his experiences as a child during the Second World War in this memoir.

In these pages, Sladek writes about his childhood in Czechoslovakia and his family’s determination to escape persecution by fleeing into the Tatra Mountains region of the Carpathians. He begins his story in the picturesque town of Prešov, where he lived with his parents as antisemitic restrictions grew tighter and tighter—Jews were forbidden to enter professions, had their bank accounts seized, and were told to vacate houses and apartments located on main streets (the author’s parents clandestinely moved into the housekeeper quarters of his grandparents’ house). As the persecution and round-ups increased, the author and his parents fled from their home and took to the mountains with many other refugees. They moved from town to village, enduring biting cold and the near-constant terror of discovery and capture. The author’s father was sometimes lucky enough to find work, and occasionally, when Allied bombers flew over wherever they were living, Sladek would put on his best clothes and go outside to wave at the passing planes. When they were finally able to return to Prešov after the war and the liberation of the camps, it was a bittersweet homecoming, since many of the residents had turned blind eye to their removal. Throughout the book, the author very effectively combines the wisdom of adult recollection with the spontaneous emotionality of his boyhood self. There are occasional malapropisms (“We must be getting close to Poprad, I deducted”), but there are also genuinely thrilling passages, as when the refugees escape into mountain passes and Sladek goes last in line so he can drag a pine branch behind him to obscure their footprints. The author’s recollections of his boyish feelings are memorable and touching, making this work a compelling contribution to Holocaust literature.

A taut and gripping memoir of a boy fleeing from persecution.