Overview

On his 16th birthday, June 5, 1944, Jan Blumenstein and his family are driven like livestock to the cattle cars outside of town. Today, as the chilling echoes of ""never again"" ring increasingly hollow, the relevance of The Boy in the Back becomes painfully evident. An unflinching chronicle of terror, determination and resilience, this book tells Jan's life story from the terror of the Nazi trains to Auschwitz, to the joy of a peaceful old age. Through his lens, we confront the October 7th massacre and the uncomfortable reality that history's shadows are creeping back into the present. Deeply moving, this memoir is essential reading for anyone who values life.

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9789493418356

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Reviews

""The Boy in the Back is a gripping testament to Jan Blumenstein's resilience as he survives Nazi camps by striving for invisibility while maintaining his humanity and determination to bear witness. Through Lebo's intimate storytelling, readers experience the personal transformation of a 16-year-old forced to rely on his wits, cunning, and strategy of remaining 'the boy in the back' to survive an industrialized death machine. This powerful memoir serves as a vital connection to living memory at a time when firsthand Holocaust testimonies are disappearing."" - Declan Dunn, founder of Remember.org ""Not just another Holocaust narrative, this book is both provocative and insightful, raising questions we have never asked and suggesting possibilities we have yet to explore. A moving and important read."" - Esther Geva, Professor, Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto ""With vividly remembered details of an adolescence ruptured by racism, Jan Blumenstein's account captures the soul-crushing sounds, sights and smells of the Nazi genocide. His story conveys the increasing tightening of the net that ensnared the Jews of Europe and others targeted for death. Against the forces of dehumanization and renamed prisoner B6164, young Jan finds the inner means to hold on to a sense of who he is; against the odds, he survives. But Blumenstein's story is not merely about his own life, and not only about the past. As an eye-witness to the struggles of those who did not survive, his memory repopulates a lost world with family and community. And now, a lifetime later, at the age of 96 - 70 years after his youth was interrupted - Jan Blumenstein's account toggles between the European past and the Canadian present. From the perspective of a keenly intelligent man fortunate enough to have rebuilt his life after World War II, Blumenstein reflects back in nuanced ways on what he has come to understand about the extraordinary capacity of human beings to do damage to one another, but also to care for one another, even under duress and at personal risk. Every story needs a listener. For Jan Blumenstein, that listener is Fern Lebo, whose conversations with him teased out this long-deferred recollection of the past. Through their work together, we, too, become listeners to memories that have become pressingly important today. Intertwined with the past are alarming accounts of a contemporary rise in antisemitism, racism, and the breakdown of the societal norms that allow people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, religions, and political views to live together peaceably and productively. Jan Blumenstein's life story is not only intensely poignant but - sadly - deeply relevant today."" - Sara Horowitz. Professor and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at York University

Author Information

Fern Lebo has been writing professionally since 1975. Her last book, The Talent Revolution, was published by The University of Toronto Press and has been translated into three languages. Following the October 7 massacre, Fern began interviewing Jan Blumenstein and writing his memoir. Her evocative style conveys Jan's courage and tenacious will to live, creating an intimate connection with The Boy in the Back, Jan's true account of survival as told to Fern, his friend and writing voice. Jan Blumenstein is a Holocaust survivor.

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