Two Dogs and a Child — A Holocaust Survival Story for Young Readers

Barry Prigat, an author and father of three from Ramat Gan, was born to Holocaust survivor parents who endured the horrors of the Nazi labor camps. Even as a child, Barry heard his mother’s hair-raising stories about what she experienced in the labor camp, but as a boy he preferred to suppress them and pretend he didn’t understand what he was hearing.

His father, by contrast, kept silent about the atrocities he had witnessed in the Hasag labor camp in Częstochowa. “By great fortune, both my parents had skilled, in-demand trades — my father was a master metalworker, and my mother could sew. On the day the Częstochowa ghetto was liquidated, my father was sent to the Hasag labor camp and was freed at the end of the war by the Russian army. My mother, too, thanks to her phenomenal sewing skills, managed to survive in a camp until 1945. When the Russians approached the camp, she was sent along with tens of thousands of other men and women on the ‘death march’ through the terrible European snow.” Only by a miracle did Barry's mother escape the marching column’s final fate and hide in a place of safety, far from the searching eyes of the cruel SS soldiers.

A childhood of repeated stories — and silence

For years Barry heard the same story from his mother, while his father continued to hide behind his silence. The mountains of pain his parents carried cast a threatening shadow over him and had a profound effect on the family’s atmosphere. Is it any wonder that he felt the need to write? “When I grew up, I stopped dealing with the Holocaust and didn’t speak about it at all with my parents. I didn’t ask questions or show interest — until one day, when my father turned 75, in a rather miraculous way he opened his mouth and began to speak. Streams of stories flowed without end. He even put all his impressions and memories from ‘there’ down on paper in a neat notebook. Next he took me and my brother on a roots trip to Poland so we could see what words alone cannot fully convey.”

“I can’t forget the child’s cry”

That was the psychological dam that finally broke for Barry. “After years in which we didn’t talk about the subject, in the past years I found myself studying the Holocaust — including the stories I heard from my parents — with diligence and full seriousness. I had always been a writer, composing dozens of children’s books meant to captivate and entertain kids and make them want to read. But after I read a lot of Holocaust material, I decided to switch phases and write a book that would address the subject and be an important contribution for its readers.”

His book, Two Dogs and a Child, which was published by Dani Books, is a fictional work based on real events he heard from his parents and on historical facts. “Unlike my earlier books, each of which took a few months to write, I worked on this book for five years, continually adding and polishing until I reached the result I wanted. The book tells the story of a boy named Yosef and the ordeals he endures in the shadow of the Holocaust together with his two dog companions, up to the war’s end. It is intended for students in grades 4–8 who want to learn about Holocaust events.”

Why dogs?

“When I started building the skeleton of the story, it was clear to me that a tale about a child trying to survive alone could be literary problematic, so I decided to add two dogs to provide another dimension to the book and also to allow readers unfamiliar with dogs to learn about their lives. One scene in the book depicts the boy’s fear that German soldiers might approach the abandoned house where he is hiding and catch him before he can conceal himself. Then he discovers that his dog can hear the sound of footsteps much earlier than he can, and begins to bark to alert him to hide. That pattern repeats throughout the book whenever German soldiers try to draw near the house. I believe and hope that the combination of a child and two dogs will engage readers in the plot, although the book’s central purpose is to depict Holocaust events.”

A single story that stayed with him

“Sadly, I heard many terrible stories from my parents about the horrors of the Holocaust, but one story in particular gripped me, in a passage my father summarized in his notes about the events that befell him at the start of the war. It concerns an incident during the liquidation of the Częstochowa ghetto, and I quote my father as he wrote it:

‘Even inside the big yard there was no lack of events. I must describe a special case I had witnessed “up close.” A Jew appeared, about thirty years old, with his ten-year-old son. I don’t understand how they managed to slip by the heavy Ukrainian guards, but it seems someone pointed them out. The Ukrainian grabbed them immediately and beat them savagely. Later he turned to the father with a proposition — the father could remain inside, provided his son would be sent to the train. The father hesitated for a second, and for some reason decided to give up his son to save his own life. The child, seeing that they were leading his father away, began to cry and scream: “Where are you leaving me?” At that moment, perhaps the father’s conscience tortured him. He went over to his son, stroked his head — and then both were taken away. A few seconds later two shots were heard — both were murdered in cold blood. I cannot forget the child’s cry, and I remember it every time I see children with their parents.’”