I Only Wanted to Live

I have read many books on the Holocaust, but this book is unique and important in many ways.  Written a few years ago entirely by the author, now in his eighties, the book is based on his memories of the Holocaust as a boy between the ages of about seven through thirteen. It is not a polished professional manuscript – nor was it in fact intended to be – and this is one of this book’s great strengths.

Arie Tamir writes a narrative of his life during WWII, beginning first with a description of his more than a comfortable family life in Krakow, Poland, before the war, living with his parents, an older sister, and younger baby sister born just before the war, and a large extended family in proximity.  The bulk of the book then records his experiences during the war and the Holocaust as it descended upon and engulfed Krakow, him and his family, and eventually the entire landscape of his life. 

The book’s narrative includes his and his family’s life in German-occupied Krakow, the eventual forced relocation into a ghetto created for Jews in the city, and the saga of his and his family’s life during the years of imprisonment within the ghetto. The narrative of the ghetto covers the effects of the rumors of new and increased measures against the Jews, the actual “actions” that took place against them, the steps some members of his large family and others took to hide from and evade the deportations or to escape to the Christian side outside the walls and gates, the ghetto’s eventual violent liquidation, and Arie’s solo escape from its then desolate and body littered streets.  

He also writes of his months hiding out in the open, his time living with righteous gentiles, his inevitable capture and imprisonment in the Plaszow interment/work camp near Krakow, and his eventual internment in Mauthausen, where, very close to death, he and the camp were liberated in May 1945 by American soldiers.

Arie’s story is remarkable in and of itself, but the voice of the writing also makes it unique.  As you begin to read this book, you become aware that Arie Tamir is not a professional writer, and this, after a while, was for me, the great pull into the narrative. The book written from his perspective and memories as a boy, describes the people and events of his world – of his family, living in the ghetto, surviving, and the good and the brutality that descended upon him – in a language infused with the natural youthful voice of a boy throughout the narrative. 

This is a story of a plucky boy, intelligent, and smart (I’d actually say precocious) and a kid always thinking on his feet, always working through how he was going to survive, perhaps not aware of this drive at the beginning, but this was the goal and theme that came to be the primary focus his life, as the title indicates, “I Only Wanted to Live.”  And this boy, a son, brother and friend, also seriously thought through and worked to save his family, and a good part of the narrative speaks of his efforts towards that goal.

For the greater part, he only writes of what he experienced, heard, observed, or was told, at the time.  Because of these limits, the book is not a history of the Holocaust, but only portrays the portion and extent of the destruction he experienced, endured, and survived.  To fill in his personal narrative with additional information to give greater context to what he saw, personally experienced, and understood, or to make more sense of the events and actions that swirled around him, he added a chapter at the end of the book composed of “Side Notes”.  The contents of this chapter expand information about the events, groups, places, and individuals involved in the narrative, such as the Judenrat, Gestapo collaborators within the ghetto, the deportations and “actions”, and Plaszow, and Amon Goeth.

The Nazis targeted Arie and his family for genocidal extermination solely because they were Jewish, and the reading of the narrative reveals the boy’s intelligent and mainly successful risks he took to survive this destruction.  Yet on a deeper level, from a spiritual perspective, consistent and compatible, I believe, with both Jewish and Christian religious and theological traditions and understandings, one can see the hand of God upon this boy in his life.  The Lord providentially provided for, directed, and empowered Arie through the “circumstances” of the aid and assistance of his extended family, friends close to his age, a Catholic priest, others he describes as Righteous among the Nations, and even the workers, prisoners, and German guards in the camps, and it is this aspect of the story which has also made a great impression upon me.

I do not presume to know the mind of the Almighty, but one great benefit to all of us through God’s hand upon this boy, was that Arie came to provide a unique testimony and witness – that of a boy who endured and witnessed with his own eyes the unbridled evil of the Nazis’ savage, brutal, and godless destruction of European Jewry including children just like him.  And also along his way, as he became a beneficiary of the remaining presence of goodness, righteousness, and justice within men, women, and youths from different nationalities, cultures, faiths, and social strata, he also became a witness to the grace of God implanted and enduring within others that the Lord used to provide for Arie. 

And this double witness of Arie’s story, stands as an encouragement to us today to do what we can do to address and resist the growing and dangerous evils of injustice, intolerance, racism, and violence that seems to be growing and strengthening daily all around us.  Every witness to the Holocaust points to this – the necessity of doing what we can to work to expose and counter all ideologies of oppression, darkness, and hate, and policies of injustice, division, and cruelty that, in the youth of Arie, became the evil breeding ground leading to the violence and brutal genocidal slaughtering – Shoah – of the Jews during the Holocaust.