The Boy Behind the Door: How Salomon Kool Escaped the Nazis by David Tabatsky; Amsterdam Publishers, the Netherlands; © 2022; ISBN 9789493-276314; 177 pages; $12.95 on Amazon.
SAN DIEGO – Salomon Kool was small for his age and baby-faced. As it turned out this was a good thing.
When the Nazis came to his family’s apartment in Amsterdam, he was able to hide in a recess in the wall that was concealed by the door that swung toward him.
His mother and aunt were captured by the Nazis, like his father, brothers and sister before them, but he had eluded that fate.
Later, when he reported to an assembly point where Jews were herded into trucks that would start them on journeys to death camps, the Jewish authorities who were forced by the Nazis to run the place took one look at Sal and decided that he was young looking enough to be sent across the way to a house for children.
Eventually, Sal was smuggled by the Dutch resistance to different homes, where sometimes he could stay only a short time, and in another instance more than a year.
He lived in hiding for five years until, at last, Germany surrendered to the Allies. He made his way back to Amsterdam, hoping that some members of his immediate family had survived.
However, none of them had been so lucky.
This Holocaust story, as told by David Tabatsky, is riveting because he was able to put himself into the head of the teenage Salomon and weave the story from this very real Survivor’s long-ago perspective. The book is described as historic fiction. While the episodes were based on the real Sal’s life; Tabatsky had to reimagine Sal’s thought process and emotions throughout his ordeal.
He succeeded very well.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com