The Last Selection
A Child's Journey through the Holocaust
University of Massachusetts Press
Just before the end of the Holocaust, Dr. Josef Mengele made "the last selection." Goldie Szachter Kalib, then a 13-year old Jewish girl from Bodzentyn, Poland, and her mother were part of that selection. In The Last Selection: A Child's Journey through the Holocaust, Goldie describes her life during World War II. She includes accounts about her charming childhood in Bodzentyn, Poland, her experiences hiding with a Polish Christian family, her time in the slave camp and then Auschwitz, life in the gas chamber, her experiences in Bergen-Belsen, and finally liberation. Portions of The Last Selection: A Child's Journey through the Holocaust were used in the ABC Daytime Emmy-Award winning movie on children in the Holocaust.
This haunting memoir records the experiences of a young Jewish girl forces to confront the horrors of the Holocaust. [Kalib's] account begins with a rare portrait of Jewish life in a small Polish town in the 1930s. She details the events that shattered the world of her youth, beginning with the Nazi invasion and occupation of her hometown, Bodzentyn. She hid with a family of Polish Christians until the suspicions of neighbors forced her to leave. Eventually, she and her entire family were sent to Auschwitz where her parents, two brothers, and 24 other members of her family perished.'—Menorah Review
'Kalib's child's eye view of Auschwitz's maniacal orderliness and the world's-end chaos of Bergen-Belsen makes a useful employment to [Anne Frank's] famous diary. At a time when revisionists are running ads in college newspapers claiming the Holocaust is a hoax, this affecting memoir should go into every high-school and college library.'—Kirkus Reviews
'An excellent, finely written history of a village, its people, and one family's courage and perseverance against overwhelming odds.'—Women Library Workers Journal
'An absorbing story of a young girl, robbed of childhood but lucky enough to survive the Holocaust. Reviewing her ordeal in vivid detail, Kalib offers an uncommonly accurate portrait of wartime Poland. . . . I highly recommend this richly textured reminiscence.'—Abraham H. Foxman, National Director, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith
Sylvan Kalib, Goldie Szachter Kalib's husband, is professor of music at Eastern Michigan University. Ken Wachsberger is director of publications at Pierian Press.
