Description:
Halina was one of the only 300 who survived the 800-kilometer Volary Death March and finally felt the need to record her hellish story of survival.
Brief description: Halina Goldberg Kleiner was born in Czestochowa, Poland, in 1929. Her father owned a lumberyard in the city until the Nazis seized it from him after invading Poland in 1939. That began her terrifying story of survival. She was one of the few who survived the infamous Volary Death March. Halina met her husband-to-be, Leon Kleiner, after the war in a Displaced Persons Camp in Salzburg, Austria. They spent most of the next year together getting to know one another and hoping that someday they could marry. Halina was one of the very first Jews to be allowed to immigrate to the United States, and in the summer of 1946, she settled in Buffalo, New York. There she astounded her teachers by completing high school in only two years even though she could not speak a word of English when she arrived. She and Leon reunited in the United States in 1948 after Leon got his chance to immigrate to New York. They married in October of 1949 and started their very successful life together. They had three children who gave them five grandchildren. And now they have two great grandchildren. Sadly, Halina died on April 9, 2022, shortly before her story could be published. She was 93 years old.
Review Quotes:
"Halina Kleiner and I endured the Volary Death March together. She was five years younger than me, and because of that I was amazed at her strength and resilience during those horrible months. I am so glad she finally is telling her story. It is a gripping tale of her many narrow escapes and a symbol of endurance and courage in the face of unspeakable evil."
- Gerda Weissmann Klein, Polish-American award-winning writer and human rights activist. Author of All but My Life (1957), a memoir about her experiences during the Holocaust. She was a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2011.
"Halina Kleiner, at age 91, finally put on paper, with the help of her co-author, Edwin Stepp, the true story of her life as a child survivor of the Holocaust. Her book My March Through Hell recounts Kleiner's six-year journey from young, innocent teenager to experienced and savvy survivor of German torture and a witness to mass murder. This book is especially valuable in its tale of Halina's experiences on one of the notorious German "Death Marches," when towards the end of the war, Jews who had survived the starvation and brutality of German concentration and labor camps were placed on forced marches out of the camps to prevent Allied soldiers from finding these emaciated witnesses to the mass murders committed by the Nazis. This book is outstanding and unusual in its many emotionally stirring details of Halina's brutal death march, which resulted in the deaths of so many of those prisoners forced on the "march." Halina credits her survival at each step of her incarceration by the Nazis to luck. But luck, coincidence, happenstance are all a sideshow in this inspirational book. Halina is much too modest and fails to credit her amazing bravery, derring-do, intelligence and cleverness that are largely the real reasons she survived terror and trauma. She made decisions when or how to run away or to stay put, whom to trust and whom to not trust. Whether it was a sixth sense or something else, Halina used judgment, guile and her intelligence to enable her to escape-for a time-capture by the Nazis or their collaborators during and immediately after the war. It is true, as Halina points out, that many victims of the Nazi terror survived years of terror and torture through cleverness until their "luck" finally "ran out." But it is impossible to read Halina's story without feeling tremendous admiration for this 13-18 year old girl, wise beyond her years who outsmarted the Nazis and foiled their plans to murder her. An equally important theme of this book is that relationships among the prisoners played a large role in their survival. Those who lived alone, died alone. Halina established a close relationship with two other young girls who helped each other in countless ways in the camp and literally supporting the one who could no longer walk on their Death March-continuously encouraging each other to keep hope alive. This book is destined to become a classic and a must read in junior high school and above grades. It teaches the history of the terrible things the Nazis inflicted on their Jewish victims without terrifying nor overwhelming junior high or high school readers. It will encourage young readers who will empathize with Halina to think about what they would do in desperate situations. It will inspire readers to appreciate their own lives and to accept or improve their lives without losing hope if they find themselves in difficult situations. In many ways, this book is far better to assign to junior high and high school readers than The Diary of Anne Frank. Read this and you'll understand."
- Kenneth P.Price, PhD. Author of Separated Together. The Incredible True WWII Story of Soulmates Stranded an Ocean Apart