| Summary, etc |
"Icchok (Eddie) Klein is born into a loving Jewish family in Sieradz, Poland, in 1927. He has two older brothers and parents who dote on him. When World War II breaks out in 1939, his family is separated, with his two older brothers fleeing to Soviet-occupied Poland. They eventually become partisans and die while fighting against the Nazi occupation. Eddie never sees them again. Eddie and his parents move to Lodz and are eventually incarcerated in the Lodz ghetto. When his father dies from hunger and his mother is deported in September 1942, Eddie becomes an orphan. Distraught and near-apathetic about his fate, Eddie is suddenly taken into the Lodz ghetto's inner, privileged administrative circle, housed and protected by controversial elder Mordechai Rumkowski. Under Rumkowski's wing, Eddie is safe--fed and warm--and he sees a whole different side to the workings of the ghetto. But when the ghetto is liquidated in August 1944, Eddie, too, is put in a cattle car and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Working in a kitchen and as a messenger, Eddie survives, and due to his connections is sent to the Sosnowiec labour camp, a "better" camp, at the end of 1944. When the camp is evacuated in January 1945, Eddie is sent on a death march and eventually ends up in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Barely surviving the harshness of Mauthausen, Eddie is forced on yet another death march in April 1945, this time to Gunskirchen. He is liberated at the beginning of May and recuperates in a hospital in Linz, Austria. With no surviving family, Eddie decides to try and get to British Mandate Palestine. He leaves from Salzburg in July 1945 with the help of the Jewish Brigade and gets to Italy, where he spends a few months. In November 1945, he boards a ship to pre-state Israel on the last legal ship to do so under the British government's White Paper. Eddie studies at Ben Shemen school and later becomes part of the Palmach, fighting in the War of Independence. While teaching agro-mechanics at Ben Shemen, Eddie meets Miriam; they marry in 1955 and immigrate to Canada, settling in Montreal, in 1956. In the late 1960s, Eddie opens his own factory for miniature automation and builds a variety of high-speed machines. He and Miriam start a family and build a new life together."-- |
