In Hungary, in the spring of 1932, Alex’s mother spoke with him. ‘Your elder brothers have left home to seek better lives for themselves. I think you should go too. You can see we are unable to provide enough food for you all. We have the little ones to look after. Your father cannot find employment. He never has and I don’t think he ever will.’
Alex was just eight years old.
This is the true story of a child survivor of poverty and hardship. Alex uses his wits and cunning learned on the streets to ensure survival in childhood, only to find his adolescence dangerously caught up in events surrounding WW2 in Europe.
Alex Sage was born in Russia to a poverty-stricken religious Jewish family. With a father unwilling or unable to work, and a new sibling arriving yearly, Alex was thrown onto his own devices. After several years living rough or scrounging hospitality from a kindly Jewish household, Alex confronts the terror of the German occupation.
Constantly on the move, changing identity, language and demeanour as circumstances require, one step ahead of civil and military authorities, Alex eventually becomes prisoner in the notorious German death camp at Mauthausen. If starvation doesn’t get him, the gas chamber surely will. But Alex is lucky …
Alex writes his story as a series of letters to a beloved granddaughter, Esther, who is currently serving out her national service in the Israeli army.
