The Stable Boy of Auschwitz: A heartbreaking true story of courage and survival

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Henry was one of the 2,011 Jews who weredeported from Cologne, through it all, he found the strength to survive and was one of only 23 to emerge alive from the concentration camps after the war.

in Poland. Then, one terrifying night, Henry found himself herded onto a stifling, filth-ridden cattle car, on a ride to a place whose name has come to symbolize the worst of humanity: Auschwitz. This story is about one of the 2,011 jewish people named Heinz Oster who was arrested and moved by the Gestapo from Cologne. What I think people might not realize is he survived 2 Jewish Ghettos that were essentially meant to starve these people and different concentration camps to include Auschwitz/Birkenau and Buchenwald. He survived air rades agasints train cars, death marches, 12 hour shifts, he escaped mass firing squads, starvation and he lived on a wooden pallet for 10 years total! By the time the American forces liberated him he was now only 1 out of 30 of the originally captured Jewish people from Cologne. This story of survival is incredible and everyone must read his story . Many times I shook my head in disbelief. Henry Oster was just five years old when Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. One of the 2,011 Jews who were rounded up by the Gestapo and deported from Cologne, he was one of only 23 to emerge alive from the concentration camps after the war.

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It’s hard to frighten a boy after he’s faced starvation, disease, brutality and, in my case, a machine-gun firing squad. We were the strong ones, the ones who had survived.” When Henry describes how he personally felt when he first started to experience hatred against Jews brought me to tears. His description of that day walking home from his first ever day at school, to only be bullied by the Hitler youth and how his life would never be the same from that point on, still gives me the chills to think about.

Heinz Oster first experienced hate against Jews when he came home from his first day of school in 1934. A crowd of newly anointed Hitler youth decided to flex their status by taunting young children, 'I had gone to school that morning full of excitement...when I finally made it home that afternoon, the world was a much darker, more dangerous place.' Shortly thereafter, his family is forced from their comfortable, well-off surroundings into a one-bedroom hovel. That is the beginning of the tale of torment and heartache. And it's only the beginning of the war. Their plight only became worse and the war only became longer. I've ready many books about the holocaust, most tell the story of a person who survived one or more concentration camps. Henri Oster did the same and tells this tory in this book. but unlike so many other books, Henry lets us see his life before he is sent to the camps. We get to know his mother and his father, and what life was like in Cologne, Germany. I was a child during this time and the mere idea of facing what this child faced is beyond comprehend. The stable boy of Auschwitz, while this title is right, only three chapters in this book were about this author working in the stables of Auschwitz. All the other chapters were about this life before, during and after the Second World War. And I understand that because it is an autobiography but it’s really misleading.While reading this book I felt so much anger and sadness that this happened to so many people. But I also felt a distance to the author. The writing style, the violence and explicit language was something that I disliked a lot and I couldn’t feel any inspiration out of it. in Poland. Then, one terrifying night, Henry found himself herded onto a stifling, filth-ridden cattle car, on a ride to a place whose name has come to symbolize the worst of humanity: Auschwitz .