More than 70 years after the end of the Second World War, the shadow cast by the Shoah lingers. Monographs, memoirs and occasional diaries continue to appear, as some who lived and suffered through those years are speaking up at last as they approach the end of what are by now long lives. We may assume that not many more of these will be published—the survivors are now in their eighties and nineties—yet their stories are needed more than ever. Not only do they shed light on a sui generis tragedy in recent history, but they are also a cautionary tale for the present day, when anti-Semitism is on the rise and hostility toward other minority groups is mounting.
Two such memoirs by Canadians have appeared recently. The lives of both Max Eisen and Eric Koch were greatly changed by the Nazi war against the Jews, but their experiences were very different. Eisen’s book, By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz, although it...
Michiel Horn is professor emeritus of history at York University. He translated David Koker’s At the Edge of the Abyss: A Concentration Camp Diary, 1943–1944 (Northwestern University Press, 2012); he is also the author of Becoming Canadian: Memoirs of an Invisible Immigrant (University of Toronto Press, 1997).
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