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Parallel Lines: a Journey from Childhood to Belsen

Parallel Lines: a Journey from Childhood to Belsen

Author(s): Peter Lantos

Location(s): Hungary

Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs

Era(s): WW2

Location

Content

This is a story of a young boy s journey from a sleepy provincial town in Hungary during the Second World War to the concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen. After a winter in Bergen-Belsen where his father died, he and his mother were liberated by the Americans outside a small German village, and handed over to the Red Army. They escaped from the Russians, and travelled, hiding on a goods train, through Prague to Budapest. Unlike other books dealing with this period, this is not a Holocaust story, but a child s recollection of a journey full of surprise, excitement, bereavement and terror. Yet this remains a testimony of survival, overcoming obstacles which to adults may seem insurmountable but to a child were just part of an adventure and, ultimately, recovery. After having established a career in the West, the author decided to revisit the stages on his earlier journeys, reliving the past through the perspective of the present. Along the way, ghosts from the past are finally laid to rest by the kindness of new friends.

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Lead Review

An extraordinary account from the adult perspective of a childhood ripped apart. The death of Dad and Mum and finally becoming an esteemed surgeon. That is quite a life!

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