Roman Halter, Roman’s Journey (Granta, 2007)

Halter was an optimistic and boisterous schoolboy in 1939 when he and his family gathered behind net curtains to watch the Volksdeutsch neighbours of their small town in western Poland greeting the arrival of Hitler’s armies with kisses and swastika flags.

Within days, the family home was seized, and 12-year-old Halter became a slave of the local SS chief. Returning from an errand, silently witnesses his Jewish classmates being bayoneted to death by soldiers at the edge of town. Halter recounts his remarkable six-year journey through some of the darkest caverns of Nazi Europe, and the loss of every other member of his family and the 800-strong community of his boyhood. Halter tells his indelible story with a simplicity and grace that allow the facts of his suffering and survival to speak for themselves.