The death march to Nazi-occupied Ukraine of tens of thousands of Romanian Jews is one of the most horrifying-yet one of the least known-of the Nazi's wartime atrocities. In this gripping memoir, Larry Rotenberg, now in his nineties, recalls in vivid detail his childhood in a loving, deeply religious, Romanian Jewish family and his experience of the brutal winter march into Ukraine and the starvation, disease-and deaths of his parents and brother-that followed. It is a story of cruelty and desperation but also of tenderness, ingenuity, and bravery.Had Larry only told this story, he would have given a rare gift to the field of Holocaust studies. Instead, Larry offers readers something much greater: a window into what an orphaned, deeply traumatized boy from Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi) was able to forge from the barren hell of a wasteland that few know and even fewer survived. From postwar uncertainty and isolation to life as a young immigrant in a new land, Larry shares his journey through foster care in Canada, haunted by loss and self-doubt yet excelling in every new challenge. His struggle to transform unimaginable hardship into creativity carries him through the ups and downs of medical school, a turbulent stint as Chief of Psychiatry at the US Army Pacific Command during the Vietnam War, a successful campaign to rebuild the dysfunctional psychiatry department at a major Pennsylvania hospital, and finally an acclaimed career in the challenging world of forensic psychiatry. His perseverance after a childhood of traumatic loss unfolds into a rich and meaningful life-one that he now shares with us as the enduring gift of this memoir. Read more