Description
Book SynopsisThis book is the author's attempt and duty to, in the words of Elie Wiesel, ""Bear witness for the dead and for the living”. Through extensive research in archives, family documents, and literature, Laufer unearthed his father’s lost biography as a slave in the Hungarian forced labor battalions and in German concentration camps, his return to Hungary, and his daring escape from Stalinist Hungary to Israel. Laufer's father's experiences mark one of the saddest points in Jewish history. The story is contrasted with his own in Israel during the Six Days War, a pinnacle in Jewish history and during the Israeli wars that followed.
Trade Review“This work [is] a unique and important addition to Holocaust study and Jewish history generally. … Laufer notes in the foreword of his book how it is a ‘duty’ that ‘memories of our experiences [both of father and son] and their lessons’ be communicated ‘to our children and the generations to follow’—just as Elie Wiesel felt. As far as this reviewer is concerned, the author of A Survivor’s Duty: Surviving the Holocaust and Fighting for Israel—A Story of Father and Son has most definitely done his duty.” —Diane Cypkin, Pace University, Martyrdom & Resistance January/February 2019
-- Diane Cypkin * Martyrdom & Resistance *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
ForewordJune 1942: Imprisoned in the toloncház
July 1942: Budapest
August 1942: Leaving Gyula
August 1942: Püspökladány, Hungary
September 1942: Gomel, Ukraine
September-October 1942: When Man Becomes a Horse
October-December 1942: Stary Oskol
May 1967: Dark Clouds over Israel
May-June 1967: The Six-Day War
Summer 1967: Messianic Days (or so we thought)
January 1943: Near Stalingrad
1968-1970: The War of Attrition
October 1973: The Yom Kippur War
November 1944-May 1945: Dachau and Mühldorf, Germany
May 1945: Liberation
July 1945: Home at Last
1945-1949: Budapest
July-August 1949: Escape from Hungary
June 1982: A War of Deception
Bibliography
