• About this Book

Written by Wolfgang Samuel

• Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
 
• Publisher: Broadway
• On Sale: October 16, 2001
• Price: $17.95
• ISBN: 978-0-7679-0824-5 (0-7679-0824-4)

about this book

As the Third Reich crumbled in 1945, scores of Germans scrambled to flee the advancing Russian troops. Among them was a little boy named Wolfgang Samuel, who left his home with his mother and sister and ended up in war-torn Strassburg before being forced farther west into a disease-ridden refugee camp. German Boy is the vivid, true story of their fight for survival as the tables of power turned and, for reasons Wolfgang was too young to understand, his broken family suffered arbitrary arrest, rape, hunger, and constant fear.

Bringing fresh insight to the dark history of Nazi Germany and the horror left in its wake, German Boy records the valuable recollections of an innocent's incredible journey. Because his estranged father was off fighting the war as a Luftwaffe officer, young Wolfgang was forced to become the head of his household, scavenging for provisions and scraps with which to feed his family. Despite his best efforts, his mother still found herself forced to do the unthinkable to survive, and his mother's sacrifices become young Wolfgang's worst nightmares.

“There have been innumerable accounts of the horrendous German experience in World War II and its rubbled aftermath. If some of them provoke the unsympathetic thought that when a nation sows the wind, it will reap the whirlwind, others, like German Boy, embody the ever-recurring historical truth that the innocent usually pay for the sins committed by others.”–The New York Times

"Serves to remind us of the basic humanity that must continue to link us, if we are to avoid total submission to barbarism...An absorbing story of survival and redemption." -Booklist (American Library Association)