David Hersch was a normal 19 year old living with his family in Dej, Hungary when the Nazis dictated that he and his family, along with thousands of other Jews living in his community, should be moved from their homes to the Dej ghetto, then through the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, and eventually, at least for Dave, on to KZ Mauthausen, known for being the Nazi's most deadly and wicked concentration camp. Gusen I and Gusen II, camps near the Mauthausen granite quarry, were especially heinous due to the back-breaking labor the Jews (and also plenty of non-Jews that the Nazis would prefer didn't exist) had to perform. Hauling 100 lb. chunks of granite up and down dangerous and uneven stone steps and lugging loads of granite rocks to the stone crusher were part of the daily routine, assuming you survived the work.
Then there was the filth, rampant disease, and flippantly cruel attitudes of the Nazis and even those Jews selected to lead their respective groups. You could be beaten to death, alternately scalded and frozen by an outdoor shower in the bitterly cold winter, or even shot by a guard looking for some entertainment, in the hopes that during your fall, you might take some of your fellow Jews with you. And these were just a few of the ways you could meet death at Mauthausen.
As the Allied forces pressed into Europe, the Nazis forced the camp prisoners on "death marches" because they weren't equipped with the mass gas chambers so well known in some other camps, and exterminating them quickly would take too long. Better to make them march either until they dropped from exhaustion, stepped out of line, or made it to the next camp. All would end in death anyway, and yet Dave Hersch managed to escape not one, but two death marches, as well as several occurrences during the marches that should have resulted in instant death. Yet somehow, they didn't.
Jack Hersch tells his father's thrilling tale of escape by weaving present-ish time with the past, telling the story of how a cousin discovered Dave's picture and story on the Mauthausen Memorial site, which prompted him to discover more details about his father's miraculous survival, since by then, Dave had passed away and Jack couldn't ask him directly. Each chapter is only a few pages long and it jumps around from the present, to the early days as the war was kicking into gear, to Dave's time in the camps, to the trajectory of the Allied forces who would eventually rescue him. It's a great way to tell the story because you get the full picture, and honestly, you get breaks from the horror of Dave's experience (and many others) as pieces of backstory fill in. During the book, Jack often expresses how he wished he had pressed his father for more details about his imprisonment and eventual escape, but instead he was satisfied with Dave's yearly retelling of the tale at the family's Seder celebration during Passover. Some of Dave's classic expressions were, it was "no big deal" and "not so terrible," as if anyone could describe being a prisoner at a concentration camp this way, yet that is exactly what Dave did. Dave was clearly a very positive and incredible individual and he raised a child who would go on to write a very important book, one that shares the miracle of his escape. Jack has nothing to be ashamed of and I believe Dave would be immensely proud of his "Jeckelah," as he would tenderly call him in Yiddish.
Death March Escape is a fantastic true story and it is written beautifully by Jack Hersch. I highly recommend it to everyone. It's one of many stories that must be told, so an atrocity like the Holocaust can never again occur.
