I would love to give this a five star review, but I can't say it is excellent. Henry's story is impressive. He happens to make the right friends and be in the right place at the right time in several instances. It is amazing he survived. His story is harrowing but his attitude is inspiring. My problems were with the writing. The story was disjointed, out of order, and hard to follow. In my opinion the title did not fit the story. I do believe it is the author's first book so maybe with time things will get better. I believe she would have benefitted greatly from a proofreader. Maybe some of these mistakes were corrected before the publishing. Do not let my stars take away from Henry's story. His story needed to be told. I actually found his story so honest and forth write. He did not hold back on the parts that make you cringe, but in order to learn from this, it must hit us where it hurts.

Henry: A Polish Swimmer's True Story of Friendship from Auschwitz to America by Katrina Shawver is a fabulous read. I highly recommend it!

This unforgettable account of a holocaust survivor is very difficult to put down. It was riveting. Writtten beautifully. The structure of the book was not exactly how I would have done it myself but nonetheless- an excellent read.

The chance phone tip leads journalist Katrina Shawver to Henry Zguda, who has led a most amazing life and has a most compelling story to tell. A story about his boyhood in Poland prior to WWII, about German occupation, about Auschwitz-Birkenau. Henry spoke with a thick Polish accent, though he spoke four other languages: German, French, Latin and English. With the words, "Henry, what do you think if we write a book?", this fascinating story comes to each and every one of us.

I read this EARC courtesy of Net Galley and Kohler Books. pub date 11/01/17

So much is written about the Holocaust of the Jews during World War II, yet there seems to be little about people who were not Jewish, yet suffered through that era in history, especially the Polish people. This biography follows the life of a common Pole who survived several years in various concentration camps. It is written in the form of an interview, with the author interjecting background information at times.

This is a must read for anyone interested in the time period of the 1930s and 1940s.

Henry: A Polish Swimmer’s True Story of Friendship From Auschwitz to America
by Katrina Shawver
Koehler Books
Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles
Biographies & Memoirs , History
Pub Date 01 Nov 2017
I am reviewing a copy of Henry: A Polish Swimmer's True Story Of Friendship From Auschwitz to America from Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and Netgalley:
This book only came to Fruition through multiple first person interviews that were recorded from November 2002-2003 with Henry Zguda. English was his fifth language
Henry Zguda was a polish swimmer who survived three years in Auschwitz and Buchenwald during World War Two But he survived and went on to live the American dream.
Henry was catholic and had been accused to listening to the BBC he was severely beaten until he passed out.
Henry talks about poverty, and hunger but also the escape he found in swimming. He talks about his first love.
One day while sitting with the girl he was in love with, Henry was badly beaten because his attackers were certain he was Jewish. He had grown up around anti-Semitism throughout his early life, and only had three Jewish friends in that time.
Henry goes on to talk candidly about the abuse in the camps, the starvation, the depravity. He dropped to a hundred pounds, ready to die. He goes on to say he survived the camp because he was lucky and new someone. Henry survived the camp despite nearly dying of Typhoid fever and any number of infections.
In January of 1959 Henry, in January of 1960 he married Nancy a woman from a large Italian family.
I give Henry five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!

A Gift

I will admit that I am drawn to stories of the holocaust and the trials suffered in the Second World War. I have read a number of books both fiction and non-fiction regarding this topic. I have a great admiration and respect for anyone who has suffered through that time and I feel that their stories must continue to be heard as often and by as many of us as possible.

Shawver had the privilege of meeting Henry Zguda, a Polish survivor of Aushwitz and Buchenwald, via an article she was writing for The Arizona Republic and recognized the opportunity at hand to tell his story. This book is, as I see it, a labor of love and a project that Shawver willingly agreed to undertake without compensation and without a solid plan as to how she would pull it off. I mention this because as I read the book, I was overcome with the sense that this book not only needed to be written but also navigated itself as Henry’s story unfolded.

The book is written interview style with Shawver’s presence an active character as she not only interviews Henry over a course of time but also includes her daily challenges in getting his story down while tending to her daily responsibilities as a wife, mother, and parental caretaker. This may sound strange but these parts of the book actually serve as a reminder as to how precarious a project such as this one can be and how we might easily not have heard this story at all if the author wasn’t who she is.

Sawver also adds to the book a great deal of personal research. She travelled to the places that Henry speaks of and gathers valuable artifacts that are photographed to further illuminate Henry’s experience. The book has a reverent feel, almost as if you are moving through the book version of a memorial museum as Shawver describes her own trauma in the second-hand reliving of potent memories and acts of sheer horror.

Henry’s voice captured in his broken English shines through as he remembers for us, his past and what he endured. A handsome and imposing figure both in his youth and older years, we meet an exceptional man with an iron will. Henry speaks frequently about the forces at play that kept him alive during such an arduous journey. He comes across as accepting of his fate without a trace of bitterness but still with a healthy sense of outrage over the cruelties of man and the horrific ways that cruelty played out. His affectedness runs deep yet his love of life and mankind is ever present. He pays homage to the luck he was fortunately on the receiving end of many times but his point of view will not be lost on those who can clearly see what he had suffered and lost.

This story is worth all of our time. One of the photos included in the book was one of an older Henry and his wife Nancy well after Henry settled in the United States. I could not help thinking upon seeing that photo that this was a couple I might have seen sharing a meal in a diner or sitting together on a park bench never realizing the extraordinary lives they have led. It made me wonder how many more stories are hidden behind the eyes of people we superficially see but do not know. Stories like this one are gifts and a privilege to read. Don’t let this one pass you by. I guarantee you will be better for having read it.

BRB Rating: Read It

Henry Zguda, a Catholic Pole, survived the concentration camps of World War II. He is the first one to say it was because he was lucky and had friends in good places. Through his conversations with Ms. Shawver, the reader gets an inside look at the daily events in the life of a prisoner. There really wasn't much about Mr. Zguda being a swimmer. I expected more of that. What I didn't expect was all the additional information provided about politics, geography, history, and religion provided by both Mr. Zguda and Ms. Sawver. I loved it! Ms. Sawver did a great job of relating the information to common knowledge so it made sense. I was also surprised by the detailed records the Germans kept on their prisoners. The stories were engaging and educational: my favorite combo in a non-fiction book!

I was a little disappointed to discover this book is as much about the author as it is about Henry. Henry's descriptions of Poland and the concentration camps were extremely good and interesting. The author's first hand account of her visits to the areas in the book was quite good for the present day. Her description of the political structure of ancient Poland was a little naïve and superficial. Henry's story is a remarkable testimony to the strength of the human spirit and the evil of Nazi activity during World War II. His memories add much to the knowledge of goings on in the German concentration camps. I would really enjoy a book that focused on Henry's life without being mixed into the feelings of the author. She has done a remarkable job of researching the places and events, and the results are obvious in the story.

This book was told to Katrina Shawver by Henry Zguda. Katrina interviewed Henry for a short story and from that short story she realized that Henry had so much more to tell. Henry was from Poland and was sent to numerous concentration camps. Hitler didn't just exterminate Jews and only put Jews in concentration camps it was a lot of different people to include people from Poland. This story is a mixture between Henry's story and Katrina's story when she went to verify Henry's story.

I am very interested in any books that deal with this subject and this book opened my eyes to even some things that I was not aware of like at Auschwitz they actually had a canteen and the prisoners could buy things. In one of the concentration camps there was a theater.

The book was a tad disjointed and to me the title didn't fit at all but the book was very very good.

Journalist Katrina Shawver met Henry Zguda, an 85-tear old Polish Catholic survivor of two concentration camps almost by chance, in Arizona, where they both lived. Intrigued by the one interview she had lined up with him, she wanted to know more, and interviewed him for several years. The result is an amazing story, told in his own words as much as possible, with additional useful historical background filled in by the author. Americans today do not know enough about the Holocaust; they are likely to know that it related to Hitler's desire to exterminate the Jews. It did, of course, but not only Jews, and Henry's story fills in many gaps in most people's historical knowledge. It also tells us how someone could manage to survive in this terribly system, and even come out of it with a positive outlook on life. I wish every school child in American could read this book (and others) to learn this important history. Most of the survivors of the death camps have passed away by now, leaving fewer and fewer voices to refute and condemn the nay-sayers who believe that "it couldn't have been as bad as all that". It was, and worse. This book does not include a number of the gory details that were only too correctly reported in other accounts of life in the concentration camps. Some might argue that this glosses over important facts, but I think it's better to provide Henry's story without the additional accounts, valid and valuable as those are; readers can seek out these details in other publications. Henry's story is in the end uplifting and positive, and Shawver has represented him beautifully.

Hope, humanity, and life; this sums up the story of a Polish Christian in the wrong pace at the wrong time. When so many today use the history of the ancestors as a crutch here is a terrifying story of turning the worst mankind can offer into something amazing. I am hoping for the movie.

Henry was a Polish man, but not Jewish, who survived unspeakable horrors in German concentration camps during WW2. Towards the end of the book he says ''I am nobody special, but I survive for two reasons. I was lucky, and I knew someone.' This is a very personal story, harrowing but ultimately inspiring. Henry was quite a guy. Katrina Shawyer does an amazing job telling his story. I learned much that I didn't know about this period but I also loved that the story continued his life after the horrors of war, and it is a wonderful story, read it.