This is a hard book to read, as most Holocaust books are. The story jumps between his time before the camp, at the camp, and after liberation. This does get hard to follow at a few points as there's no real date indication, but can be understandable when at the camp as survival was most important. I'm glad there was a positive ending and that he was able to tell his story. A decent read for middle grade and teens who want first hand accounts other than "Night" or "Diary of Anne Frank".

This was an interesting personal narrative from Robert Waisman, a Holocaust survivor. Waisman tells of his early life in Polland, his survival from Buchenwald concentration camp during WWII, and his life after liberation. This book is well written and would be an excellent addition to any middle school or high school library.

This is a must purchase for my schools collection. We have many students who are interested in stories of heroes and courage all year round. The story captivated from the start and had me looking more information on these boys.

Beautiful Holocaust story. Highly recommend for students who are looking for powerful memoirs. Middle grades and high schoolers will enjoy.

Didn't capture my attention and engagement. Interested in trying it again though and hopefully it will take.

What an incredible story! I read this book in the course of 2 days, and I would have finished it in one if my eyes hadn’t been burning from tiredness at night. Yes, it is horrifying and incredibly painful to read this story of childhood Holocaust survival, but this is also a story of friendship and love, and how much good there is in the world even in the darkest of times. It is a story of hope. This is a story told by Romek Wajsman, a Jewish boy who grew up in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland, but ended up in Buchenwald, a concentration camp during World War II. Romek, who changed his name to Robbie Waisman as an adult, tells two stories at the same time. One is the story that begins after the liberation of the Buchenwald Orphans, who worked, hid and survived in the camp. Romek was one of about a thousand of these boys. The other story is of his life before, told in vignettes about his childhood in Skarżysko-Kamienna before the German’s invaded Poland, as well as during his time working in Nazi factories as a slave, and then in Buchenwald trying to survive to see another day. This is an inspiring and eye-opening book for students who are interested in the Holocaust as well as those just learning about it. It would pair well with Night by Elie Wiesel, who actually appears in this story several times. A must read for adults and students!

Romek (now Robbie) relates the harrowing story of his survival during the Holocaust - in Jewish ghettos and in concentration camps and, ultimately, in a home for rescued boys. He has to come to terms with his anger and his grief and also with the knowledge that he survived while most of his family did not.
I have read many Holocaust stories and each one sheds new light on the atrocities that occurred. In Romek's story, I learned about the special effort made in the camps to ensure that children would survive. So many times Romek was sure that he would be selected for death but he wasn't. Finally the camps were liberated - but what to do with the children that survived? They had spent a large part of their childhood in such a horrendous environment. They were sick and emaciated and emotionally overwhelmed. Romek ended up in a sort of orphanage for boys rescued from the camps and this book documents his efforts to deal with what he had experienced.
It is a harrowing but ultimately hopeful read that will remind readers that we must all work together to ensure that the Holocaust is not forgotten and nothing like it should ever be allowed to occur again.
Thank you to the publishers and #NetGalley for an e-galley of the book.

Heartrending, but important and grounded look at stories from the holocaust. Hard to read, but hopefully inspirational for a fight to stop this from happening in our world.

Having never heard of the Boy from Buchenwald, I was interested in reading this story. Like other WW II NF middle grade memoirs, this will stick with readers. A must read in all classrooms.

(I will post this on my blog later as part of a longer book list)

In 1945, as World War II was coming to a close, the Allied forces liberated the Nazis’ concentration camps including Buchenwald. At the time of its liberation, Buchenwald held over a thousand Jewish boys under the age of eighteen, almost half of whom were later transported to France to be rehabilitated by the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants). One of those boys was fourteen-year-old Romek Wajsman. Originally from Poland, he had already experienced the horrors of the ghetto, enforced factory labor under the Nazis, and separation from his family before being relocated to Buchenwald. Romek later emigrated to Canada and changed his name to Robert (Robbie) Waisman. Since the 1980s, Waisman has been an advocate for Holocaust awareness and was featured in the 2002 documentary Boys of Buchenwald. In this book, Waisman focuses on the time frame shortly after the end of the war. He describes his life as a teenage war orphan in France, his struggles to come to terms with the loss of his home and family, and the many people who helped him discover a personal identity and life goals. Interspersed throughout these experiences are flashbacks to events that happened earlier in his childhood, including anecdotes about his family, traumatic incidents in which he directly witnessed Nazi brutality, and multiple near brushes with death. Although this book may strike some teen readers as dry and boring, it has much educational value for its honest and thorough portrayal of the hardships of the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust.

I feel like I’ve been sitting at my keyboard awhile struggling for the right words to review this book. It’s definitely one that left me speechless, in a good way. I’ve read NIGHT by Elie Wiesel, and a couple other accounts of surviving Nazi concentration camps, but it never gets easier to read about it. The horror and shock of it strikes me fresh every time, and it should.

I feel like this book does a really great job balancing the reality of what happened with an understanding of its audience as young readers. The authors give a frank account but seem to know when to zoom in or zoom out on the scene being described. There’s a gentleness to the way the story is told. Like it’s not only being told my someone who’s survived, but someone who understands and connects with other kids. I’m not doing a great job explaining this. I guess maybe what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t surprise me at all that Waisman speaks to schools. It seems like he has a gift for it.

A lot of the story focuses on Romek’s recovery from imprisonment in Buchenwald. At first he has very few memories of his life before with his family, or of happiness. At the beginning of each (or most) chapters, he flashes back to a memory, sometimes difficult ones. As he has time to grieve and to heal, those flashbacks show his memories gradually returning. And the progression of them shows its own journey through trauma and anger and loss and until finally he’s able to remember happy moments from his childhood.

BOY FROM BUCHENWALD is an inspiring story about grief and healing. It’s about the way that we need each other. It’s about the worst ways in which we hurt one another and the best ways we help one another heal. I loved it, and I think it’d make a great addition to a classroom library or Holocaust study.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book is a heart squeezer. Obviously this is a difficult subject to write about and the horrors these people were exposed to are unspeakable. This book is extremely well written and though Robbie apologizes in the beginning for being fuzzy on the details since he is now 87 years old, the insight and detail that is included is both remarkable and gut wrenching.

This is a Holocaust memoir about a boy who entered the concentration camps scattered throughout Germany and Poland at the age of 9. He watches some of his family members torn from his grasp and others only learns of their terrible fate when the war is over.

What I appreciated about this book is Robbie's accounting of the camps and the effects it had on him afterwards. I did not think about how these poor boys would have to acclimate to life again after being incarcerated, anxious and malnourished for almost six years. Robbie's descriptions of trying to put his life back together as an orphan in France gives an insight to the Holocaust I am sure many people have not considered.

This is definitely a tear-jerker but I am a history buff and have read Night by Elie Wiesel, who was also at Buchenwald, multiple times. Again, this is a difficult subject to tackle. However, in the words of Winston Churchill, "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

This was a decent Holocaust survival story but didn't really compare well to others I have read. I hate to say that because I know how important these stories are - but some are not as well written and thus may not reach their intended audience.

I’ve read many books about the Holocaust, nonfiction and historical fiction. This one is a work of nonfiction based on an event I had never heard about.
This us the account of a boy who was one of 427 rescued from the Nazi concentration camp known as Buchenwald, by a Jewish Children’s relief agency and taken to France. Waisman is a Polish-Canadian humanitarian today and has penned his harrowing youth experiences during and immediately after the wat ended.

Waisman’s early childhood began in a loving family living in south-central Poland when it was destroyed by the 1939 Nazi invasion. He and his family and were moved to a Jewish Quarter in 1941 where he was forced into child labor/slavery in a German munitions factory. Waisman was eventually taken by cattle car to Buchenwald.

The focus of this narrative is based. on his experiences following the 1945 liberation of Buchenwald, but frequently flashes back to the years in the camp as well as to his time working in the factoy. As a child, he witnessed sick and weak workers being tortured and killed,

Interestingly, his descriptions of his Buchenwald companion Elie Wiesel were fascinating as we all know of this famous individual.
This is a shocking and compelling story of recovery from extreme trauma. I just wish all the boys could have experienced the same fate

E ARC provided by Netgalley

Romek Wajsman lived in Poland with his family before WWII, but his parents, brothers, and sisters were split up when the Nazis started rounding up Jews. Romek worked at a munitions factory stamping artillery shells when he was just 11. Eventually, he ended up in Buchenwald with many other boys. When the camps were freed, the boys were put under the protection of the French, and brought to the Ecouis complex in 1945, where they got much needed care. Not only were many of the boys gravely ill and malnourished, but the staff understood that there were traumatized by their experiences. At first, it was though that they shouldn't talk about what happened, but eventually the wisdom of processing their grief and trauma prevailed. Romek was determined to make it back to his home in Poland, since that thought carried him through the war. He had friends from the camp who went separate ways, and eventually Romek is told that his home is no longer there, and that Jews who have tried to return have been occasionally killed. Eventually, his sister is found, and he finds a variety of mentors, including Jean and Jane, who want to adopt him and send him to high school and college. He declined, deciding to train as an electrical engineer and eventually immigrate to Canada. For years, he did not talk about his experiences, but started to work with organizations in the 1980s to educate people about the Holocaust. Now in his 90s, Romek, now Robbie, decided to work with a coauthor to tell his story.

This is a little told but much needed follow up to Holocaust experiences. Few books follow what happened to survivors after the war; Moskin's I am Rosemarie touches on it briefly, and Matas' After the War and Skrypuch's Stolen girl both address different aspects, but this is much more information than I have read about the aftermath. There is plenty of information about Waisman's experiences during the war, told in flashbacks. My only complaint is that a linear recounting would have been a bit easier to follow, but I can see why the flashbacks were used.

Since the author was the age of many young readers when he was in the camps, this is a particularly interesting account. There can't be too many more Holocaust survivors who remember enough to tell compelling stories; even Waisman says that for many years, he suppressed details of his experiences. It's understandable why there aren't as many accounts of what happened after survivors got out of the camps, and it's good to see this description of how one boy was able to overcome the trauma of the war with the help of the extended Jewish and French community.

What an incredible story! The Boy from Buchenwald is a memoir about the author Robbie Waisman's survival of the awful Buchenwald Concentration Camp, and his reintegration into to society after liberation. I have always been interested in reading this kind of a story. Many of the Holocaust books that I have read had focused solely on what the person went through during their time in the concentration camps. However, not many of them go into detail about how they survived liberation and what they went through in order to reinsert themselves back into normal life. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Elie Wiesel in the book and found a new perspective on the impact that he had on the other Buchenwald boys. I am now also very curious to learn more about the OSE (Child's Aid Society) and the the work that they did for the children during and after WWII. Overall, I think that The Boy from Buchenwald is a wonderful story that does a really good job of introducing the Holocaust to Children. I would give this book a Five out of Five stars.

Romek was 14 when liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945. This memoir describes how he survived, his return to society, and his search for his family.

This memoir tells the story of Robbie Waisman, a boy who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust at the concentration camp of Buchenwald. While enduring the loss of family, friends, and other strangers he encountered throughout many of his younger years, Waisman used his faith and hope to see his family again to make it through. He met perhaps the most famous survivor of the holocaust, Elie Wiesel, who also breathed hope into an otherwise hopeless world.

Once Buchenwald was liberated, Waisman's journey was far from over as being a Jewish in Europe post- WWII presented a whole lot of other, and somewhat unexpected challenges as well.

This is a breath-taking story of suffering and hope, loss and renewal, and the strength of spirit. I believe all students should read stories like this, especially as the years go by and this period of history becomes further into the past. We can never forget the atrocities this world experienced and knowing the story from a child's eyes is especially powerful!