Remember Us: My Journey from the Shtetl Through the Holocaust

Remember Us is a look back at the lost world of the shtetl: a wise Zayde offering prophetic and profound words to his grandson, the rich experience of Shabbos, and the treasure of a loving family. All this is torn apart with the arrival of the Holocaust, beginning a crucible fraught with twists and turns so unpredictable and surprising that they defy any attempt to find reason within them.

From work camps to the partisans of the Nowogrudek forests, from the Mauthausen concentration camp to life as a displaced person in Italy, and from fighting the Egyptian army in a tiny Israeli kibbutz in 1948 to starting a new life in a new world in New York, this book encompasses the mythical “hero’s journey” in very real historical events. Through the eyes of 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Martin Small, we learn that these priceless memories that are too painful to remember are also too painful to forget.

Martin Small, born in 1916 as Mordechai Shmulevicz Small, under the tutelage of his rabbinical grandfather, became a Yeshiva scholar. But when the Germans invaded Poland, his idyllic life came to an end. His family was buried alive by Polish neighbors, and Martin was taken prisoner along with a friend and thrown into a work camp. Many years after the war, Small befriended a New York policeman who turned out to be the soldier who saved him from death in the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Vic Shayne has been a professional writer for more than thirty years, having published several books, hundreds of articles, and several screenplays. An avid researcher of the Holocaust period, Vic Shayne has interviewed survivors, family members, and WWII veterans to bring to life Remember Us, the true story of survivor Martin Small.

Milton J. Nieuwsma is a writer, journalist, and filmmaker. His book Kinderlager was the basis for the Emmy Award-winning documentary Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah. Nieuwsma won a second Emmy for the film Defying Hitler.