Good-bye Marianne - A Story of Growing Up in Nazi Germany

This book tells the stories of three child survivors of World War ll. One spent her childhood in England, the other two in Germany. Each of their stories is quite different. Pat was four-and-a-half when the war between Great Britain and Germany began on September 3, 1939, but it wasn?t until she was seven that her family life in England changed drastically. For Hilda and Ursula, both born in Berlin, their worlds turned upside down on January 30, 1933, when Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. Hilda would be seven four months later; Ursula had just had her seventh birthday. All three children survived the war for different reasons and in different locations. One escaped Germany days before war was declared, one barely lived through a bombing raid in England, while the third survived a concentration camp. As young children, all three had wonderfully happy childhoods, childhoods that changed suddenly and unexpectedly for each of them when they were seven.

?War does not spare the innocent. Two young girls, one a Catholic from Poland, the other a Jew from Germany, were witnesses to the horror of the Nazi occupation and Hitler?s terror in Germany. As children they saw their homes and communities destroyed and loved ones killed. They survived deportation, labor camps, concentration camps, starvation, disease and isolation.

?This is a moving personal account of history. Urbanowicz and Auerbacher?s painful pasts and similar experiences should guide us to make correct decisions for the future.?

Aldona Wos, M.D.
Ambassador of the United States of America, Retired, to the Republic of Estonia
Daughter of Paul Wos, Flossenburg
Concentration Camp, Prisoner
Number 23504

?Most Holocaust survivors are no longer with us, and that is why this volume is so important. It is a moving testimony by two courageous women, one Catholic and one Jewish, about their youthful ordeals at the hands of the Nazis. They succeed in ways even the most astute historian cannot ? they literally capture history and bring it to life. It is sure to touch all those who read it.?

William A. Donohue
President, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

?Such an original book, written jointly by both a Jewish survivor and a Polish-Christian survivor of the Holocaust, Children of Terror points the way toward fresh insight, hope and redemption. If ?Never again? is to be more than a slogan, tomorrow?s adults must be nourished and informed by books such as this. A fabulous piece of work, perfect for the young people who are our future.?

Rabbi Dr. Hirsch Joseph Simckes, St. John?s University, Department of Theology

?The authors were born in the same year but into different worlds: one a Polish Catholic and the other a German Jew. Despite their dramatically different traditions and circumstances, they shared a common trauma ? the confusion and fear of being a child in wartime. Auerbacher and Urbanowicz vividly describe the saving power of family, place, and tradition. Young readers of Children of Terror will come away with a deeper understanding of the Second World War and a profound admiration for the book?s authors.?