Parallel Journeys

She was a young German Jew. He was an ardent member of the Hitler Youth. This is the story of their parallel journey through World War II. Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck were born just a few miles from each other in the German Rhineland. But their lives took radically different courses: Helen's to the Auschwitz extermination camp; Alfons to a high rank in the Hitler Youth.

While Helen was hiding in Amsterdam, Alfons was a fanatic believer in Hitler's "master race." While she was crammed in a cattle car bound for the death camp Auschwitz, he was a teenage commander of frontline troops, ready to fight and die for the glory of Hitler and the Fatherland. This book tells both of their stories, side-by-side, in an overwhelming account of the nightmare that was WWII. The riveting stories of these two remarkable people must stand as a powerful lesson to us all.





Author : Eleanor H. Ayer
ISBN-13 : 9780689832369
Publisher : Aladdin
Publication date : 28/03/2000
Edition description : First Edition

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Ayer juxtaposes the stories of two WWII youths, one a German Jew and the other a Hitler Youth, excerpted from their published memoirs. "Weak execution undermines the premise of the volume," said PW. Ages 10-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Weak execution undermines the premise of this volume, a dual biography of Waterford, a Jewish woman who survived Auschwitz, and Heck, a German who had risen to the highest circles of the Hitler Youth organization. As the book states, Waterford and Heck currently speak publicly as a team, together explaining the horrors of WWII and the importance of compassion in healing that war's wounds. As the editor of Renaissance House, Ayer has already published Waterford's and Heck's individual memoirs (respectively, Commitment to the Dead; and A Child of Hitler and The Burden of Hitler's Legacy); here she excerpts passages from these works and interpolates a chronicle of the war. However, her account skimps on facts-even so basic a matter as Waterford's date of birth is obscured, and battles and campaigns are only roughly situated (``Early in 1942, the Allies struck back. For the first time, British troops defeated the Germans''). This soft-focus approach allows Waterford's and Heck's statements to go unchallenged-a particular problem with Heck, whose story seems self-serving and incomplete at best. Accordingly, the thesis is hard to swallow-that Waterford and Heck were both Hitler's victims. Ages 12-up. (June)