If Home Is Not Here

I dove into the frigid river, the sudden shock leaving me gasping. By the time that I was two-thirds across the river, my strength was fading…. Somehow, I managed to reach the shore – the unoccupied zone of France and my entry into freedom.

Max Bornstein’s epic account of a poor Jewish boy born in 1920s Poland is breathtaking in scope. Not quite two when he immigrates to Canada, he returns to Europe in 1933, the year that Adolf Hitler came to power. Barely surviving as a stateless refugee in 1930s Paris, he manages to escape as France falls to the Nazis only to be interned in a Spanish concentration camp. Rich in details of pre-war life in Poland, France and Canada and life for Jewish refugees in wartime Britain, If Home Is Not Here gives rare insights into the experiences of a Jewish boy caught up in political forces beyond his control.