A Cat Called Adolf

Overview

This is one holocaust memoir which does not stop at survival but goes on to describe the lasting effects upon those survivors of their persecution, betrayal and suffering. Trude Levi was inspired to set down her memories of her experiences as a young Hungarian girl deported to Buchenwald to work like a slave in a munitions factory. She says she had no sense of survival but was sustained by a strong sense of self-respect and a stubborn refusal to compromise. On her twenty-first birthday she collapsed from exhaustion on an infamous Death March and was left lying where she fell, not even worth a bullet. So, when the war ended shortly afterwards, she had survived - just. Years of wandering, poverty and hardship followed. Illness, disillusion and the insensitivity of others too their toll, yet the author is able to describe her experiences with directness and without self-pity. Her most fervent wish in telling her story is that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten, and that the events she recorded are never allowed to happen again.