Vanished Boyhood

As soon as I heard the airplane engines I ran upstairs to watch the bombers approaching. It was dangerous, but I wasn’t scared. I prayed to God that those American planes would destroy the Nazis and the factories so we all could be free again.

One month before George Stern’s thirteenth birthday, Germany invades his native Hungary. Anti-Jewish edicts are passed and a ghetto is established. A rebel even then, George refuses to wear the Jewish star. “Passing” as a Christian boy, he survives the siege of Budapest as the Soviet Red Army presses closer, strafing the city while the fascist Arrow Cross continues to hunt for Jews. After the war, George leaves Europe for Israel and fights in the War of Independence. Over the next twenty years his family’s journeys take them from Israel to São Paulo, Brazil and finally to Toronto. Filled with determination and bravery, this is also the poignant account of George Stern’s Vanished Boyhood.