Job: The Story of a Holocaust Survivor

by Joseph Freeman

With spare prose and in stark images, Joseph Freeman recounts his suffering during the Holocaust from the German invasion of Poland to the liberation of Europe.
Freeman's narrative includes sober accounts of Nazi atrocities, aching portraits of the noble spirits and unsung heroes who were counted among the walking dead of the concentration camps, and the profoundly moving story of the unexpected reunion of Freeman and the American GI who had lifted Freeman's dying body from the mire of a battlefield forty years earlier.
Both poignant and exquisite in its simplicity, Joseph Freeman's autobiography is at once a shibboleth for those who also endured the unspeakable and a haunting warning for those of us living in these days, when the voices of deniers and revisionists of the Holocaust wait to take the place of the aging witnesses who grow weary of their vigil.

Genres: History

126 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 1995

Reviews

[gemsbooknook Geramie Kate Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Job: The moving personal narrative of a Polish Jew who survived the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis.

The Road To Hell: This is the story of Joseph Freeman — one of the few survivors of the infamous death marches that took place in the last months of World War II, when the Russians from the East and the other allies from the West were closing in. Panicked, and yet still ruthlessly attempting to bring about the Final Solution, the Nazis forced their prisoners out of their killing centers on Polish soil — Auschwitz-Birkenau among them — and marched them westward. Half-starved and weakened by the horrors they had endured in the camps, many more prisoners died in the grueling marches.’

These books were incredibly moving.
I have grouped these books together because the second book; The Road To Hell actually takes place towards the end of Job. At the time of writing Job, Joseph Freeman wasn’t ready to relive the traumas of the death march so he left that out of the story. After reading The Road To Hell I can completely understand why he made this decision at the time. But now that I have both books I decided to review them as one.

As someone who has read a lot about WWII and the Holocaust, I am always interested to read about individual people’s experiences during that time. Every time I pick up a memoir about the Holocaust I am always shocked and overwhelmed by the horrific things the authors went through and the strength they had not only to survive but to tell their stories.
These books had so much emotion poured into them that I had to keep putting them down in order to compose myself before I continued reading. Given the fact that these books aren’t very long, the ratio of trauma and suffering is difficult to comprehend.
Joseph Freeman has done a fantastic job with these books. They tell his story with clarity and heart without skipping over any of the difficult situations. The way he has written these books makes you feel like you are sitting with him as he tells you his story rather than reading a book. The connection between Joseph Freeman and the reader is so strong it makes the story leap off the pages.
Job & The Road To Hell by Joseph Freeman are must-read books for everyone.

Geramie Kate Barker
gemsbooknook.wordpress.com

[Victoria]

I really enjoyed this book even though it was a tough read. The story was told through a man and his past experiences before the Holocaust and during and after. The stories told were horrific and hard to imagine myself being put in his place. I have always enjoyed learning more about the Holocaust and this book was a helpful read.