A Childhood

The story recounted in Jona Oberski's novella is tragically familiar - during World War II, the life of a young Jewish couple and their 7-year old son is destroyed when they are taken from Amsterdam to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. What sets this book apart from other Holocaust stories is the narrative voice, which is that of the little boy. The simplicity of the narration, brilliantly rendered in Ralph Manheim's translation, fuels the tragic irony of the text. It is very obvious that the boy is describing events which he does not understand at all, whilst we, as readers, share in the adults' horrible secret. The book's brevity adds to its effectiveness - were it any longer, it would have been too harrowing. Oberski is show more himself a Holocaust survivor which makes this read even more poignant.

This edition forms part of Pushkin Press' "Pushkin Collection"

3.5 * show less

The story recounted in Jona Oberski's novella is tragically familiar - during World War II, the life of a young Jewish couple and their 7-year old son is destroyed when they are taken from Amsterdam to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. What sets this book apart from other Holocaust stories is the narrative voice, which is that of the little boy. The simplicity of the narration, brilliantly rendered in Ralph Manheim's translation, fuels the tragic irony of the text. It is very obvious that the boy is describing events which he does not understand at all, whilst we, as readers, share in the adults' horrible secret. The book's brevity adds to its effectiveness - were it any longer, it would have been too harrowing. Oberski is show more himself a Holocaust survivor which makes this read even more poignant.

This edition forms part of Pushkin Press' "Pushkin Collection"

3.5 * show less

The blurb tells me that this slim book is a novel (a novella really, it’s only 137 pages long) but there is an awful veracity about it and it seems more like fragmented memories from real life.

Jona Oberski (born 1938 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch writer. Wikipedia tell me that his parents fled Nazi Germany the year before he was born, but they were deported to Bergen-Belsen some time after the Netherlands were occupied in 1940. The child who narrates this story is about the same age as Oberski would have been at the time.

The book consists of five parts, each with a few brief episodes, told in the simple language of a child, and entirely from his limited perspective. In that respect it’s a little like The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2006) show more by John Boyne, but it does not share that troubling plot line: there were no children in Auschwitz because they were gassed immediately so Boyne’s story has to be read as a not-very-satisfactory fable which runs the risk of sanitising history. (IMO The film is even worse in this respect). Bergen-Belsen, however, was a concentration camp where Jewish hostages were held pending prisoner swaps with the Allies: when the boy’s mother in A Childhood talks about having the exit papers to go to British Palestine, it is because a couple of hundred of hostages who had these permits were actually traded. Knowing this explains her comparative optimism even though conditions when they were evacuated were terrible, and towards liberation typhus was rampant in the camp and thousands of people died.

To read the rest of my review please visit
https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/09/13/a-childhood-by-jona-oberski-translated-by-ra... show less

Kinderjaren is an autobiographical novel. It is a fictionalized account which closely follows reality, but some details, such as the age of the child, have been changed. This short novel describes the deportation of a Jewish family, the death of the father in a concentration camp, and eventually their liberation during a transport at the end of the war. The work is written from the perspective of the child, almost all in the words of and at the level of comprehension of the child.

Kinderjaren has been translated into many languages. Jona Oberski, the author, recently (September 2022), forty-four years after Kinderjaren, published a new work.

Aangrijpend verhaal, hoe kan het anders? Ben niet overtuigd van de eentonige staccatostijl.

Uitgeleegd aan Paraschiv Sandra 13.01.2026

In dit boekje beschrijft Oberski de wereld zoals een kind die zou zien. Het is maar een dun boekje, maar het verhaal van een argeloos Joods jongetje dat zijn beide ouders verliest is zeer aangrijpend geschreven. Aanbevolen!
Uitgelezen: dinsdag 13 juni 2000