A Sandwich for the Journey

Set against the horrifying backdrop of World War II, A Sandwich for the Journey tells the story of one of three million evacuees - a young Jewish boy from London’s East End named Maurice Levitt. This moving narrative is beautifully told and centers around an oral history conducted in 2016 between Charles Minx and his father in law, none other than Maurice Levitt himself, who was 84 years old at the time. From 1939 to 1944, between the ages of seven to twelve, young Maurice was evacuated five times from his family’s home and forced to live with “host” families in the English and Welsh countryside, while his father’s family was facing unspeakable horrors in Nazi-occupied Poland as most fell victim to the holocaust, disappearing without a trace.

Charles C. Minx, Jr. is a history teacher. He served in the U.S Army for eight years in the reserves under Special Operations Command. In 1994 he earned an AAS degree in electrical engineering which eventually landed him in Silicon Valley. The disaster of 911 and its economic repercussions ended the so-called "Golden Age of Telecom" resulting in the closure of Charles's telecom test lab in 2002. Coming full circle, Charles moved his family to South Bend in early 2003 where he and his family began their lives anew. 14 years later he had the opportunity to earn his Masters's degree in Liberal Studies from Indiana University South Bend, and, alas, it was his graduate thesis that planted the seeds for the book A Sandwich for the Journey.