At only four years old Peter Lantos could feel something changing in his life in Hungary. It’s 1944, and most of his time is spent playing with his cousin Zsuzsi and enjoying the life of a well off family. As owners of a lucrative saw mill business, they have enjoyed the benefits that come with it.

But even young Peter can see that there aren’t so many workers in the mill, their governess has stopped working for them, and the quality of food on the family table isn’t the same.

As months pass, the timber workers all leave, Peter’s dad loses his job as an accountant, and Peter is told about the war. Germany has invaded their country. He wants to know more. What does this mean? Something else he learns is why so many changes have been made in the life of his family in particular. They are Jewish and the invading forces of Germany have forced different rules upon them.

Soon they have to move to somewhere called a ghetto. At first the new house looks bigger than their own, until he learns they have to share with multiple families. Surely things can’t change any more?

Then come the lines for food. No room to play. No one to play with. The soon-to-be squalor of the ghetto, and the total mind-numbing boredom of every single day that seems worse than the next.

More lining up is to come. To get onto trains and off again, only to get on another. These trains aren’t passenger trains, but trains that usually move animals. With 70-80 people per carriage with no windows and only room to stand. Five year old Peter sleeps sitting up on his parent’s feet as they travel for hours.

He and his mother are separated from his father when they reach Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany. There is very little food, hours spent standing in the freezing winter cold as they are counted, and counted again. Peter’s mother tries to spare him from the atrocities around him, but soon there is no place to turn his head without seeing death. Peter wonders whether he will ever see his home, his big brother or his favourite cousin again.

Told in Peter’s five-year-old point of view, The Boy Who Didn’t Want To Die begins with the wonder of a child. He notices changes in their life, and at the mention of moving to another house, travelling on a train or spending the night in a tent, he sees it all as an adventure.

His young optimism is slowly eroded through what he sees, hears and experiences for himself. At such a young age, a brave boy is portrayed, but the hero I saw throughout this novel was his mother. From the outset she was stoic and brave, caring for her young son all as she no doubt worried for her older one. Although being able to see her husband, she watched him gradually disappear before their eyes.

It was Peter’s mum who kept him alive in a concentration camp. She picked off the lice, made sure he could have any extra food she could barter for, and tried to shelter him from the worst things imaginable.

Another story of loss, grief and unimaginable horror of the Holocaust, which proves a mother’s love and the power of the human spirit – even at only age five.

Author – Peter Lantos

Age – 10+

(2023, Scholastic, WWII, World War 2, Holocaust, Germany, Hungary, Jewish, Hate, Trains, Concentration Camp, Bergen-Belsen, Horror, True Story, Real life, History, Historical, Survival, Loss, Grief, Family, Hope, Courage, Determination, Starvation, Soldiers, Racism, Prejudice)