Max Eisen was a teenager in Hungary with three younger siblings when his Jewish family was ordered to pack up and leave in 1944. Apparently they were one of the last Jewish communities in Europe to be taken to the concentration camps. It turns out his mother, aunt, and siblings were all immediately sent to the gas chambers on arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He, his father, and uncle all worked in labour camps for a while, and eventually, Max was the only one left. He managed to survive along with two cousins (one on each side of his family). Lucky for him, he ended up working in one of the surgery rooms at Auschwitz, which did help him survive. He was part of the “Death March” that came as the war was wrapping up and it wasn’t easy to figure out what to do with himself after or where to go.

This was very good. There are plenty of books on the Holocaust, but of course everyone had a slightly different experience and there are always new things to learn from all those experiences. Max’s promise to his father was that he’d tell people what happened there, and he also tours and talks about his experience (or he did – he was eighty-something when this book was written and/or published in 2016). He ended up in Canada, married, and had two sons. ( )

In 1944, fifteen year old Max and his family were sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most of his family were immediately selected to die, however, Max, by chance alone, survived. First assigned to hard labor, Max was able to secure work in the hospital as an assistant. As liberation neared, Max was sent on a death march, barely surviving.

This was a well written and engaging book. It is heartbreaking to think of a fifteen year old being separated from his family, yet through strength of will, and chance, Max survived. Overall, highly recommended. ( )

In May 1944 when Max Eisen was 15, he and his family (his parents, younger siblings, grandparents, uncle, and aunt) were transported in a cattle car from Moldava nad Bodvou, a small town on the Czechoslovakian-Hungarian border, to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. There were nearly forty train cars in this particular transport, and each of them was packed with a hundred people. For the three years prior to this, Max’s uncle and father had been forced to work (with no remuneration) in German labour battalions. Meanwhile, the women, elders, and children struggled to make do at home.

In August 1942, Max and those family members not doing forced labour had already been ordered, along with other Jewish families, to make an alarming three-day train journey—one whose destination was unclear. The deportees were eventually told they were being resettled on farms in Kamenets-Podolsky in western Ukraine. In fact, this is one of the places where the Einsatzgruppen—the Nazi death squads responsible for carrying out “the Holocaust by bullets”—executed Jews en masse. (Since the ongoing shooting was labour intensive and had proven “too traumatizing” to the executioners, an impersonal, more mechanized approach to the liquidation of “useless eaters” had to be devised. Hence the gas chambers and crematoria. Eisen actually provides a document in the supplemental material at the back of his book. It’s a letter to Nazi officials from Karl Prufer, the inventor of some crematoria furnaces used at Auschwitz, in which Prufer requests a bonus for his work—after all, it was done at home and in his free time.) As it turned out, the 1942 train journey did not end in Kamenets-Podolsky. The Hungarian government had second thoughts about sending the transport on to the Ukrainian killing fields. The Eisens and other Jewish families were returned home for the time being. That was perhaps the first time chance worked in Max’s favour.

As the title of his memoir indicates, Eisen believes that he survived by chance alone. In telling his story, he highlights the mysterious turns of events that allowed him, the only member of his immediate family, to survive the Holocaust. At times, he even uses the word “luck” to characterize his experiences. When Max arrived at Auschwitz II-Birkenau in the middle of a spring night in 1944, his mother, younger siblings, grandparents, and aunt were “selected”—for death. Max was directed to the right—to join the men’s column. For the first little while in Auschwitz I, he was in the same work unit and barracks as his father and Uncle Eugene, whom he regarded as his guardian angels. However, when his father saw that the guards had noticed the bond between the family members and were likely to engage in sadistic torment of the Eisens, he arranged for Eugene and himself to join a different work unit from Max’s. Eventually, Max’s father and uncle would be sent to the gas chambers. Before he died, Mr. Eisen was able to bestow the traditional Jewish blessing on his son. He also exhorted the boy, should he manage to survive, to tell what happened in this place.

Later, a guard’s bludgeoning Max on the head for a lapse in working would prove to be another stroke of “luck” for Max. The under-kapo on the work unit took pity on him. He told the boy how to staunch the profuse bleeding and subsequently arranged for him to be taken to the camp surgery. There Max was operated on by Dr. Tadeusz Orzeszko, an extraordinary figure about whom I’d like to know more. Dr. Orezeszko was a young surgeon, a political prisoner, and a member of the Polish resistance. He had feelers out, even in Auschwitz, and apparently assisted many in the camp. (At great risk to himself, he even performed an abortion on a Polish Jewish woman, as he knew that pregnant women were immediately marked for the gas chambers.)

Max’s meeting Dr. Orezeszko may be the most significant event in his life. Not only did the Polish doctor perform surgery on Max, he also intervened when the SS arrived three days post-surgery to transport Max to the gas chambers. Dr. Orezeszko ended up employing the boy as an operating room assistant. The young medical student/political prisoner who had been doing the job was about to be released, and he trained Max before leaving. Max was responsible for the disinfection and sterilization of surgical instruments and materials, as well as the sanitization of the premises between surgeries. He assisted in prepping patients for operations, was called upon to dispose of tissues and body parts, and sometimes even administered ether. His work in the operating room saved him. As a member of the medical team, he slept in the same quarters as the doctors and orderlies, and he had access to food.

In addition to information about his medical work at Auschwitz, Eisen tells about the heavy labour required of him in the work units. He also describes the October 7, 1944 rebellion of the Sonderkommandos, the Jewish inmates forced to carry out “the most gruesome and soul-destroying job” of all: disposing of the victims of the gas chambers. The memoir goes on to detail the protracted nightmare of the “death march” during the early months of 1945, when the Nazis knew they were losing the war and evacuated Auschwitz. The liberation of the camps, the years following the war which left him an orphan (including his time at a Jewish school in Marienbad), and the extreme challenges he faced in getting to Canada are also covered.

By Chance Alone recently won “Canada Reads”, the annual "battle of the books" competition organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Well organized, lucidly written, and accompanied by five helpful maps and other useful supplementary material, the memoir is an extraordinary testament to courage and endurance and an important historical document. In writing it, Max Eisen was able to carry out the final request of his father: to tell the world what happened. ( )

An absolutely riveting account of the atrocities of World War II.

A highly recommended read. ( )

Max Eisen was 15 years old when he was sent to a Nazi death camp along with his extended family. The last thing his father asked him was, should he survive, to tell the story of what happened. This book is Max's promise fulfilled.

There have been many books written about the holocaust, including academic texts, fiction and memoirs. Each is a frightening reminder of the existence of evil. What is special about this book is that, as an adult, Mr. Eisen was able to maintain a youthful voice in telling his story. He was a child in the camp, and that voice and perspective comes through so well. ( )