Escape Story

As a young girl Eva Erben was suddenly forced by the Nazis to leave her home in Prague to join, with her parents, one of the transports to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. The nightmare that followed is told by Eva as a young girl struggling to cope with the fear and danger that becomes part of her world.

Eva’s eventual journey to Auschwitz and her experience of three selection processes by Mengele make this child’s view of the Holocaust a unique and moving story as well as an important historical record.

When the allies drew ever nearer to the camp, Eva along with her fellow prisoners were hurriedly evacuated by the SS and taken on a 500km march, walking 30-40km a day through Poland in the snow and cold. Miraculously, she managed to escape her captors and was found and hidden by a Czech family until the war ended.

Then follows her rehabilitation through a journey back to her old home in Prague, a meeting with an old friend, travel across postwar Europe and eventually emmigration to Israel. This is a survival story with a happy ending.

Escape Story is ideal for work with children and a great addition to the children’s literature of the Holocaust, but provides a different perspective from that of Anne Frank.