Auschwitz: My First Train Journey
Eight-year-old Kurt Stein has always viewed the world through the safe, admiring gaze of a boy who idolises his older brother and is wrapped in the warmth of a large, loving family. Living with his parents, grandparents, and five siblings in Warsaw, he knows comfort, tradition, and the unshakable belief that childhood is about being loved and nurtured. His world was filled with fun and laughter, warmth and joy.
But when the Nazi occupation tightens its grip on the city, the Steins’ privileged life collapses over just a few months. Their home is seized, their freedoms stripped, and their safety becomes a memory. Forced into the suffocating confines of the Warsaw Ghetto, Kurt watches his parents shrink under the weight of fear, his sisters learn to be silent, and his heroic brother try desperately to protect them all from a world that has turned suddenly and brutally merciless.
As hunger, terror, and despair rise inside the ghetto walls, the inevitable knock comes, a summons to ‘relocation.’ Herded with thousands of others to the trains, Kurt clings to his mother’s hand, believing that wherever they go, his family will stay together. But the train waiting before them is not a passage to safety. It is a sealed boxcar. A machine of disappearance. A journey with no return.
For Kurt Stein, his first train journey is a one-way ticket to Auschwitz—a harrowing plunge into the darkest chapter of human cruelty. Through the innocent eyes of a child, this story unveils the fragility of hope, the unbearable fractures of a family under siege, and the final, shattering truth of what it means to be exterminated.Dedication; For my father, Chief Petty Officer, Congellous Sydney Jones, who fought through the Second World War and remained in the Royal Navy until 1952, clearing mines and his teenage brother, Stanley who was killed in action aboard HMS Charybdis , a light cruiser from World War II. She was part of the Dido-class cruisers and sank in 1943 off the coast of Brittany after being torpedoed by German ships. Her loss was one of the worst Channel naval disasters of the war and Stanley was just 17 years old…
When I began writing, I did not set out to write this story, but because of my father, I knew one day I would write a story set in World War 2. For years, it waited, quiet and patient, like a shadow at the edge of memory. When the idea began, it was not in a library or archive but at a small green baize table, under the clatter of poker chips.
My inspiration called himself Stanley. He was like many elderly men I had known, wry, observant, and well-mannered with a measured way of speaking that suggested he had long ago learned the value of silence. We played cards together for months before I noticed it. A faint marking on his arm, partially hidden by the cuff of his sleeve. Numbers. Blue, blurred with time, but unmistakable.
An Auschwitz identity tattoo.
Genre: Historical
Eight-year-old Kurt Stein has always viewed the world through the safe, admiring gaze of a boy who idolises his older brother and is wrapped in the warmth of a large, loving family. Living with his parents, grandparents, and five siblings in Warsaw, he knows comfort, tradition, and the unshakable belief that childhood is about being loved and nurtured. His world was filled with fun and laughter, warmth and joy.
But when the Nazi occupation tightens its grip on the city, the Steins’ privileged life collapses over just a few months. Their home is seized, their freedoms stripped, and their safety becomes a memory. Forced into the suffocating confines of the Warsaw Ghetto, Kurt watches his parents shrink under the weight of fear, his sisters learn to be silent, and his heroic brother try desperately to protect them all from a world that has turned suddenly and brutally merciless.
As hunger, terror, and despair rise inside the ghetto walls, the inevitable knock comes, a summons to ‘relocation.’ Herded with thousands of others to the trains, Kurt clings to his mother’s hand, believing that wherever they go, his family will stay together. But the train waiting before them is not a passage to safety. It is a sealed boxcar. A machine of disappearance. A journey with no return.
For Kurt Stein, his first train journey is a one-way ticket to Auschwitz—a harrowing plunge into the darkest chapter of human cruelty. Through the innocent eyes of a child, this story unveils the fragility of hope, the unbearable fractures of a family under siege, and the final, shattering truth of what it means to be exterminated.Dedication; For my father, Chief Petty Officer, Congellous Sydney Jones, who fought through the Second World War and remained in the Royal Navy until 1952, clearing mines and his teenage brother, Stanley who was killed in action aboard HMS Charybdis , a light cruiser from World War II. She was part of the Dido-class cruisers and sank in 1943 off the coast of Brittany after being torpedoed by German ships. Her loss was one of the worst Channel naval disasters of the war and Stanley was just 17 years old…
When I began writing, I did not set out to write this story, but because of my father, I knew one day I would write a story set in World War 2. For years, it waited, quiet and patient, like a shadow at the edge of memory. When the idea began, it was not in a library or archive but at a small green baize table, under the clatter of poker chips.
My inspiration called himself Stanley. He was like many elderly men I had known, wry, observant, and well-mannered with a measured way of speaking that suggested he had long ago learned the value of silence. We played cards together for months before I noticed it. A faint marking on his arm, partially hidden by the cuff of his sleeve. Numbers. Blue, blurred with time, but unmistakable.
An Auschwitz identity tattoo.
Genre: Historical
Visitors also looked at these books
Used availability for Conrad Jones's Auschwitz