In June 1944, the Nazis locked eighteen-year-old Dave Hersch into a railroad boxcar and shipped him from his hometown of Dej, Hungary, to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, the harshest, cruelest camp in the Reich. After ten months in the granite mines of Gusen, the nearby sub-camp, Dave weighed less than 80 pounds and was more dead than alive. As Allied forces drew close, the Nazis put him on a death march to Gunskirchen Concentration Camp, over thirty miles away. Soon after, he escaped, was recaptured and put on another death march. Against all odds, he escaped again. Author Jack Hersch knew his father’s story well. Or at least he thought he did until years after his father’s death when he came across a photograph of his father on the Mauthausen Memorial’s website. It was an image he had never seen before. His intensely personal journey of discovery began there and took him to Europe to learn the secrets his father never told of his time in the camps.

 

Eight Cousins Books, our co-host, will have copies of this book at the talk. The book will also be available in the store at 189 Main Street in Falmouth.