Roman's Journey

Description

Roman Halter is a boisterous schoolboy in 1939 when he and his family gather behind net curtains to watch the neighbours of their small town greeting the arrival of Hitler's army with kisses and sawstika flags. Within days, the family home has been seized and 12 year-old Roman becomes a slave of the local SS chief and a silent witness to the brutal murder of his Jewish classmates. This is the beginning of a remarkable six-year journey through some of the darkest caverns of Nazi Europe where the lives of every other member of his family and almost all of the 800-strong community of his boyhood are lost, but remembered here.

Born in 1927, ROMAN HALTER was a celebrated architect and arist. He designed the gates to Israel's holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, and his paintings, testifying to his experiences during WW2, have been shown widely, including at Tate Britain. He died at the age of 85, in 2012.

"'A compelling, compassionate and impressively literary contribution to the writing of humanity on the brink.' Observer" 'To lose everything, and I mean everything, but to retain one's sanity and, more staggeringly, one's love of life beggars the imagination. This is the book of a man who has achieved just that... I urge you to read it' John Hurt 'Thank you to Roman Halter for this memoir - a very telling, and moving, journey' Carole Angier, Guardian 'An impressive book - Halter relates the tale of his extraordinary odyssey in clear-eyed, level headed prose, free of moral philosophising or pleas for retribution.' Scottish Sunday Herald 'A unique story told without sentimentality - This is writing after my own heart.' Aharon Appelfeld