Drowning - Gerhard Durlacher

It is 1934 in Baden-Baden: silk-clad women come and go, as do the Mercedes in front of the plush hotels.
A boy grows up and comes to consciousness at the same time that the red-and-black flags are unfurled, and the jack-booted men come to parade in ever-increasing numbers.
But he is not a ?normal? boy; he and his family are ?enemies of the Reich? - they are Jewish.
With a tone of elegant nostalgia infused by a sense of impending catastrophe, Drowning is the most poignant of childhood memoirs.

Gerhard Durlacher was born in Germany in 1928. As a child, he fled with his family to Holland, from where he was taken to a concentration camp. After the war, he returned to Holland, where he taught sociology at the University of Amsterdam for many years. Like the writings of Primo Levi, his work constitutes an essential reflection on the Holocaust. He died in 1998.

?A subtly compelling, fast-paced memoir of the Nazis? coming to power told from the point of view of a perceptive child.... A powerful indictment? Kirkus
?A moving story and a very powerful metaphor for the Jewish experience in Nazi Germany? Independent
?The voice is that of a schoolboy struggling to come to terms with an incomprehensible world. The naive perspective is hardly innovative, but Durlacher puts it to chilling effect? Guardian