Escape From the Ghetto: The Breathtaking Story of the Jewish Boy Who Ran Away from the Nazis
John Carr
In early 1940 Chaim Herszman was locked in to the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. Hungry, fearless and determined, he goes on scavenging missions outside the wire limits, until he is forced to kill a Nazi guard. That moment changes the course of his life, and sets him on an unbelievable adventure across enemy lines.
Chaim avoids grenade and rifle fire on the Russian border, shelters with a German family in Berlin, falls in love in occupied France, is captured on a mountain pass in Spain, gets interrogated as a potential Nazi spy in Britain, and eventually fights for everything he believes in as part of the British Army. He protects his life by posing as an Aryan boy with a crucifix around his neck, and fights for his life through terrible and astonishing circumstances.
Escape from the Ghetto is about a normal boy who faced extermination by the Nazis in the ghetto or a Nazi deathcamp, and the extraordinary life he led in avoiding that fate. It's a bittersweet story about epic hope, beauty amidst horror, and the triumph of the human spirit.
John Carr is Henry Carr's eldest son, and in Escape From the Ghetto he has recreated his father's incredible adventure, through recordings and transcribed conversations in later life.