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A review by theliterateleprechaun
Mitka's Secret: A True Story of Child Slavery and Surviving the Holocaust by Joel N. Lohr, Lynn G. Beck, Steven W. Brallier
4.0
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.
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.