A los diez años ya había sobrevivido a dos guetos, el campo de exterminio de Auschwitz y el de Sachsenhausen, y a la terrible "marcha de la muerte" de 1945. El número tatuado en su brazo B-2930 forma parte de su vida. "No me quiero borrar el número. Nunca quise. Es parte de mi vida, es mi identidad." La vida de Thomas Buergenthal, "el juez que fue víctima", ha sido un duro camino desde que nació en 1934, de padres judíos alemanes, hasta convertirse en juez de la Corte Internacional de Justicia en el año 2000. Entre estas dos fechas, sobrevivió a los campos nazis, se educó en Estados Unidos y se dedicó al derecho internacional y a la defensa de los derechos humanos. Su autobiografía es un claro homenaje a las poderosas palabras de su padre: "No desesperar bajo ningún concepto". El pequeño Buergenthal hace suyas estas palabras y conserva, con inmensa voluntad de sobrevivir, su vida y sus principios, sin sucumbir a la tentación del odio ni al cinismo. Los campos de exterminio no sólo no lo quebraron, sino que lo convirtieron en una persona que buscará siempre la justicia y el respeto de los derechos humanos. Un niño afortunado es una obra de una humanidad, lucidez, ternura y tolerancia excepcionales. Sus reflexiones sobre las circunstancias que permitieron su supervivencia son de una calidad humana extraordinaria.

For being about the horrors of Nazi occupation of Europe and the Holocaust, this wasn't a difficult read. The author, Thomas Buergenthal, writes about his childhood in an approachable manner. It probably helps that he's writing it several decades after the fact - the pain and anger he would have felt during and immediately after the events have had time to heal. It's light on details of the day-to-day activities of those years, as he and his family were first on the run from Germans, then living in the Jewish ghetto in Poland, then the various concentration camps he was imprisoned in. As a result, it glosses over a lot of the horrors, focusing instead on events that stick out to him most - but those events are rather harrowing in themselves. He doesn't linger on them though. Some might find this lack of detail frustrating, others may be relieved. I've read other accounts of the Holocaust, most memorably Elie Wiesel's [b:Night|1617|Night (The Night Trilogy, #1)|Elie Wiesel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1473495285s/1617.jpg|265616], so I was able to fill in what wasn't there.

This felt like a very honest and intimate account of his days surviving WWII and the Holocaust. His writing here is flowing and stark, and he doesn't get bogged down with unnecessary repetition like last few autobiographies I've read. He was indeed a "lucky" child to survive Dr. Mengele and Auschwitz. Speaking of Night, they were both clearly in Auschwitz at the same time, as they both describe the Death March with the same sort of dreadful resignation. He was lucky many other times in order to survive, and that continues even after his liberation as he details how he was eventually reunited with his mother.

One cannot stress enough how important this time period was to the shaping of the world as it is today and why it's necessary that it continue to be taught in our schools. Buergenthal's work in international humanitarian law is inspirational and reminds us that, no matter how bleak things can still appear, there is hope for improvement and that things already have improved in many places. We can make the world a better place, but we can only do that by remembering the atrocities that came before and striving not to repeat them. ( )

Nothing Dr. Buergenthal could write can make me understand the unbelievable horror he lived through. Clearly, he belongs to that band of children given to be resilient in the face of overwhelming odds.

I was fortunate to hear the professor speak at the installation of Ralph Steinhardt as the new holder of the Loebinger Chair (and recipient of an actual GWLS chair, which Buergenthal humorously pointed out had never been given to him....). His love of living was so apparent in his remarks, I felt compelled to read his memoir. ( )