5.0 out of 5 stars First hand account of a child in a concentration camp from beginning to the end, February 12, 2014 By Valerie Caraotta (CONYERS, GA, US) – See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
This review is from: Be a Hero: A Witness to History (Paperback)
Many are familiar with history’s recordings of Hitler’s abuse toward the Jews in concentration camps. Despite historical annotation, you are about to read a book based on the life of Anita Ron Schorr that shares a first hand account of her life where her innocence was stolen as a child as her family braved the “Pyramid of Hate” led by Hitler’s regime. I was reminded quickly how life and family dynamics can change from stable and loving to chaotic and uncertain. Author Marion A. Stahl did a wonderful job engaging the reader on Anita’s evacuation and several moves with other Jews that would ultimately lead to family separation and a concentration camp.
As you trace this young life’s calamities beginning at age 9, you may discover in part as I did, that the human optimistic will to survive may be the most important ingredient in trauma. With family suicide being a choice for some, it was March 23, 1943 where the day of transport began and where home no longer existed. In detailed fashion will events capture and enrage you on how such injustices were allowed and carried out by those indifferent to human suffering.
Taken more than 70 years for Anita to share her feelings, she recalls “I kept those memories locked up, feeling ashamed of them for much too long”. Discover the sad statistics of the number of prisoner fatalities. Though a melancholy plot there is a hope that has sprung from the ashes of life as today she lives to speak to audiences, empowering them.
This book is history at its finest as you will gain the inside picture into both event and emotions. Sometimes in life losses can ultimately be gains in other avenues. I recommend this book with a 5-star rating as the contents will captivate you page after page.
Marion A. Stahl 
I write anonymously. I now fear and do not trust the state medical board which has destroyed both my professional and personal life. I did nothing morally, legally, ethically or medically wrong. None of my patients/ex-patients and/or their domestic partners or spouses have ever filed a complaint against me to any medical board in all the many years I had practiced medicine. I have no personal alcohol and/or drug issues. I did not cross any patient physician boundaries. I have no criminal record. All I did was to relieve the significant chronic pain of a few patients, all of whom were referred to me by other providers, in a small clinic to a lower pain level whereby those patients could function; some even were able to return to work. What I have learned is that licensed professionals in this country have no civil rights; criminals in this country have more civil rights than licensed professionals. When a medical board can blatantly disregard facts, use sophistry, add on allegations and use the services of a biased “expert” in secret hearings and have immunity to commit libel it tells me that America is not the country it used to be. I now have some firsthand sense of how someone accused of being a witch in Salem must have felt. There is a shadow nation in the U.S. known as the Administrative State; it is totalitarian. There is no “law” in Administrative law; it is discretionary and leads to abuse of power, especially by individuals who are not elected by anyone (they are appointed) and they do not have to answer, beyond mere lip service, to the public or the lawmakers. This is not the country my parents grew up in. It is something else. Had I known now that after all of my years of training and hard work that I would simply be nothing more than a subject (with no civil rights) of this tyrannical Administrative State- the state medical board- I would have stopped the pursuit of my medical career while I was still in pre-med.