I'm No Hero: Journeys of a Holocaust Survivor

By Henry Friedman

Book Overview

Henry Friedman was robbed of his adolescence by the monstrous evil that annihilated millions of European Jews and changed forever the lives of those who survived. When the Nazis overran their home town near the Polish-Ukrainian border, the Friedman family was saved by Ukrainian Christians who had worked at their farm. Henry, his mother, his younger brother, and a young schoolteacher--who had been hired by his father when Jews were forbidden to attend school--were hidden in a loft over the animal stalls at a neighbor's farm; his father hid in another hayloft half a mile away. When the family was liberated by the Russians after eighteen months in hiding, Henry, at age fifteen, was emaciated and too weak to walk. The Friedmans eventually made their way to a displaced persons camp in Austria where Henry learned quickly to wheel and deal, seducing women of various ages and nationalities and mastering the intricacies of dealing in the black market. In I'm No Hero, he confronts with unblinking honesty the pain, the shame, and the bizarre comedy of his passage to adulthood. The family came to Seattle in 1949, where Henry Friedman has made his home ever since. In 1988 he returned with his wife to Brody and Suchowola, where he succeeded in finding Julia Symchuk, who, as a young girl, had warned his father that the Gestapo was looking for him, and whose family had hidden the Friedmans in their loft. The following year he was able to bring Julia to Seattle for a triumphal visit, where she was honored in many ways, although, as Friedman writes, "in her own country she had never been honored with anything except hard work." Like many other survivors, Henry Friedman has found it difficult to confront his past. Like others, too, he has felt the obligation to bear witness. Now retired, he devotes much of his time to telling his story, which he believes is a message of hope, to thousands of schoolchildren throughout the Pacific Northwest. He has received national recognition for his role in establishing the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and as a founder of the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0295978015
• ISBN13: 9780295978017
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.2" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A Powerful book about survival, redemption and hope

For me this book was truly a Godsend. Because I was never aware of the complete history of my family's experience during the holocaust, I always hungered to know the truth. When I recieved the book, "I'm no Hero" written by my Uncle, it filled in a part of my heritage that I truly needed to understand. I could not put the book down and to think that my Uncle has now dedicated the last years of his life re living this horrific part of his past to educate students all over the country I can only say,while his book is entitled "I'm no Hero" in my book he is.

amazing life journey

Henry Friedman's life story is played out against the horrors of the holocaust and how one teenager survived with some family members, and ultimately triumphed in America. His life as a hidden teenager is a riveting account of sheer dogged determination to survive under horrendous conditions. The reader is enthralled as he survives one episode to the next. Considering how honest the author is about his growing sexuality, this book should be made into a Hollywood movie. But it is ultimately a tale of the triumph of the human spirit to survive! A must read in any collection on holocaust survivors.Other books of a similar theme include Harold Werner's "Fighting Back"(although Werner was older and was a partisan, which Henry wasn't), Larry Orbach's "Soaring Underground"(although Orbach lived in Nazi Germany), and Thomas Blatt's "From the Ashes of Sobibor" (although Blatt's adventure included stays in the concentration camp prior to his escape/hiding)