Into the Tunnel: The Brief Life of Marion Samuel, 1931-1943
by Götz Aly
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Description
A generous feat of biographical sleuthing by an acclaimed historian rescues one child victim of the Holocaust from oblivion When the German Remembrance Foundation established a prize to commemorate the million Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust, it was deliberately named after a victim about whom nothing was known except her age and the date of her deportation: Marion Samuel, an eleven-year-old girl killed in Auschwitz in 1943. Sixty years after her death, when Götz Aly received show more the award, he was moved to find out whatever he could about Marion's short life and restore this child to history. In what is as much a detective story as a historical reconstruction, Aly, praised for his "formidable research skills" (Christopher Browning), traces the Samuel family's agonizing decline from shop owners to forced laborers to deportees. Against all odds, Aly manages to recover expropriation records, family photographs, and even a trace of Marion's voice in the premonition she confided to a school friend: "People disappear," she said, "into the tunnel." A gripping account of a family caught in the tightening grip of persecution,Into the Tunnelis a powerful reminder that the millions of Nazi victims were also, each one, an individual life. show lessTags
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meggyweg Although these books are about different times and places in history, both provide a portrait of an era by looking at the life of one ordinary individual.
Member Reviews
The author vividly portrayed a period in history by looking at the life of one ordinary individual. I was impressed by how much information he was able to dig up on Marion Samuel and her family, considering that sixty years had passed and most of them had been killed. This is a slim but powerful volume that brings to life the horrors of the Holocaust.
Aly has written a touching volume about how little we can know about the many, many people who perished as part of the Holocaust. At times sad -- the Samuel family had nearly everything taken away from them, including, in the end, each other -- and at times miraculous, with the amount of information Aly was able to discover about this one little girl and her probable fate.
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34+ Works 1,377 Members
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Im Tunnel : das kurze Leben der Marion Samuel 1931–1943
- Original title
- Im Tunnel: das kurze Leben der Marion Samuel 1931–1943
- Original publication date
- 2004
- People/Characters
- Marion Samuel
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, Biography & Memoir, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 940.53 — History & geography History of Europe History of Europe 1918- World War II, 1939-1945
- LCC
- DS134.42 .S26 .A6813 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania Asia History of Asia Israel (Palestine). The Jews Jews outside of Palestine
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 53
- Popularity
- 572,371
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.94)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 1
