Honoured to be telling Mitka’s story, Steven W. Brallier, Joel N. Lohr, and Lynn G. Beck, have recorded the remarkable true account of Mitka Kalinski who survived enslavement to a Nazi officer during and after World War Two.

After enduring nightmares, depression and anxiety for decades, Mitka Kalinski finally revealed the tightly kept secret that had been gnawing away at him; he was a holocaust survivor. Nobody, not even his wife, knew details of his youth. In fact, Mitka is still trying to make sense of them.

As he understands it, his father left, presumably to war, and his mother, believing it was the best course of action, took him to the safest place she knew, a kinderheim, an orphanage. He doesn’t know how long he was there but remembers that fateful day in the autumn of 1941 when army trucks arrived outside the orphanage and all the children were ordered to get inside the vehicles. He ran away into the woods but ended up being grabbed by the SS and shoved into a railroad cattle wagon crammed with 150 other people heading to a German concentration camp.

Mitka reveals the atrocities of life in a concentration camp as well as the sadistic and horrific medical experiments conducted. The authors hold nothing back. In December 1942, Nazi officer ‘Iron’ Gustav Dorr, arrived at the camp, selected Mitka and took him to his home in Rotenburg an der Fulda. At 7 years old he’d survived 4 concentration camps and still wasn’t free. In addition to losing his family, his friends at the orphanage, and his freedom, he was stripped of his identity. He lost his connection to his Jewish faith and his birth name. A slave to the Nazi officer, he was renamed Martin and given a new birth date, making him 10 years old. For seven years he was enslaved by the Door family.

You’ll read about a boy who had reasons to hate, yet chose love. You’ll read of him refusing bitterness and replacing it with happiness. In his later years, you’ll read how he rejected victimhood and moved forward with grace. We won’t be subjected to the horrors Mitka was; however, we can take a lesson from his attitude. Regardless of the situation we find ourselves in, we can choose to survive and we can choose not to let it define us.

This remarkable memoir is to be published July 20, 2021. It was originally titled, “My Name Is Mitka,” because those were the first words he uttered as a liberated child. He’d almost forgotten his birth name. This emotional read is necessary to us understanding the evil that humans are capable of inflicting as well as appreciating the bravery and resilience of those who were captured and survived.

“The man who could not write his name made joy his unforgettable signature. In the end he found himself.”

I received this gift from Mitka Kalinski, his team of authors, the Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company and NetGalley and was under no obligation to provide a review.

Of the many, many holocaust books I've read this is one of the most chilling, crushing and moving. What Mitka Kalinski endured is incomprehensible. Not only was he on his own since about the age of six during WWII, he was sent on cattle cars to...and miraculously survived...four concentration camps. At a Nazi farm he was enslaved, tortured and barely existed on animal's feed and had a new identity including name forced on him. Let me reiterate...he was by himself, no family.

Mitka's memories of a man and a woman with a few details are vague but he believes they are of his parents. He went through massacres, wore no shoes (only rags) and experienced unspeakable horrors. His will to survive was remarkable, his courage unsurpassable. Mitka's accounts gave me goosebumps as well as tears. The precious little boy! Fast forward to post war and Mitka works at "normal" jobs at which he did not know what to do, what the procedures and rules were. But he was clever and enterprising. He married and had a family. But he kept his experiences secret until much later. It was his way of coping.

After he finally told his wife much of his story and when his children were older, they returned to Germany to seek answers. I can't imagine the level of torment and fear he had. Thankfully he had good support. He was satisfied.

This poignant book is breathtaking. I really struggled and wrestled with it as it is so heart wrenching. Kudos to Mitka for telling his story. He is a true hero and then some. My utmost respect, Sir.

My sincere thank you to Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company and NetGalley for the honour of reading this extremely difficult and important book. It should be required reading.

What a wonderfully tragic story with some light of survival. I will never tire of reading the accounts of the Holocaust by the people who suffered in the camps or feared for their lives daily. I am so grateful that Mitka decided to come forward with his story.