[.ca] 100 Cigarettes and a Bottle of Vodka: A Memoir (ISBN 0385658974)

Amazon.ca:
In his memoir 100 Cigarettes and a Bottle of Vodka, Arthur Schaller seems to lead a life both blessed and cursed. On one hand, the teenaged Schaller's blond hair and blue eyes allow him to pass himself off as a non-Jew and eventually escape into the Polish countryside after the Nazi occupation, and his innate intelligence and survival instinct help him distinguish between those who might help and those who may be more inclined toward collecting the negligible bounty that serves as the book's title for turning him in. At the same time, he lives under the pall of being separated from his family and with the day-to-day fear that his Jewish heritage will be discovered. Schaller's story takes the reader from life in pre-invasion Warsaw to the eventual occupation of the city by the Nazis. The teenager watches helplessly as his life, along with those of his family, friends, and neighbours, is systematically deconstructed before he escapes into the Polish countryside. Throughout his journey, Schaller stays in touch with his humanity and his past through music (his mother taught piano). At one point after he is smuggled out of the city, he watches from a distance as clouds of smoke signify the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. "My family was dying there… and fighting. I could not picture them fighting. They were all such peaceful people!" Several days later he hears the sound of a neighbouring farmer playing a harmonica . "My eyes swelled with uncontrollable tears," recalls Schaller. "Oh, to have an instrument! To be able to express my feelings instead of just choking them off!" Schaller (who would go on to write a song called "The Times We Live In," recorded by Salome Bey) died a few months after writing this Canadian Jewish Book Award winner, "content in the knowledge," as the jacket tells us, "that his story would reach the world." Direct, spare, and with nary a wasted word, the tale is beautifully told, and becomes frighteningly real in this heartbreaking recollection. --Shawn Conner

I couldn't put it down:
I'm not a reader, and I was working one day and started reading this book. If it's not a good book, I'll put it down and never pick it up again. That wasn't the case with this book. I couldn't put it down and finised reading it within 2 days. WWII and the Holocaust have always interested me, and this book really made me understand more about it and what times were like for the Jews having to endure that horrible time. I strongly recommend this book to anyone.

Great book! :):
I read this book the summer i was fourteen. I had just begin to become interested in the Holocaust and WWII. Well, it's a year later, and I still vividly remember how interesting this book was. This is an incredible memoir. I won't spoil it or say too much, but Schaller tells us of the events of his young life as a Jew in Warsaw when the war broke out. I found myself marveling at the fact that when the story begins, he is around my age, and how courageous he is stunned me. This book really set off my fascination for what happened to those 6+ million during that dark time for humanity. Well, it's a great book, just see for yourself.

A powerful story of faith in dark times:
100 Cigarettes And A Bottle Of Vodka: A Memoir is the true story of the life of a young Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied Poland, when the reward for turning in a Jew was indeed 100 cigarettes and a bottle of vodka. Arthur Schaller lost his mother to the Nazi extermination camps, and was forced to embark on a long odyssey, hiding and passing as a Catholic orphan, to escape annihilation. A powerful story of faith in dark times, and coming of age in a world no child should ever have to live in, 100 Cigarettes And A Bottle Of Vodka is a singularly compelling life remembrance and a welcome contribution to the growing library of eye-witness Holocaust Studies.