A Holocaust memoir from Paul Schaffer, who survived Auschwitz to become a successful industrialist, honored by the country of France
By the age of 14, Paul Shaffer had received a comprehensive education in Vienna. He spent his teenage years, first on the run from the Nazis in Belgium and France, and then in Auschwitz from 1942 to 1945, and survived to become a successful industrialist who was honored by the government of France. The carefully chosen vignettes and descriptions in this Holocaust memoir provide insights into a middle-class Jewish childhood in prewar Vienna, attitudes to Jewish refugees in Vichy France, arrest and detention in France, survival in Auschwitz, and the return to postwar France to face the challenges of reintegration into French society. With photos of the author in the Siemens factory where he worked as an inmate, this emotional memoir is an attempt to comprehend those events and examine the range of human behavior he himself witnessed. Shaffer’s account was written with students in mind, and consequently deliberately omits detailed descriptions of the most horrifying aspects of life as a concentration camp inmate.