Henry: A Polish Swimmer’s True Story of Friendship From Auschwitz to America

My Rating: 4.5 stars

I read this book over a few months because it is a heavy thing to deal with. The stories that Henry told of what happened to him and so many others in Auschwitz and the other camps are heartbreaking. This isn't a book for the faint of heart.

Henry's story touches on a very little talked about portion of the holocaust. The Polish people who were arrested as well as the political prisoners, etc who were also arrested from 1993 to the end of the war. Reading about the ways he survived so many camps, and sicknesses all because of who he knew, and how he was able to make friends throughout his life is truly amazing.

Henry's life was one full of happiness, sadness and random acts that changed multiple peoples lives. How he continued on with his life after the war I found amazing as well, learning how much of a struggle it was in occupied Poland after the Germans had been defeated, and the Soviets had taken over was something I had no idea about.

I did really like the formatting of this book of going back and forth between Henry's stories and the author giving us context about what was happening and stats about the camps etc. I learned so so much throughout this whole book, and I feel like I need to re-read it in the near future to learn even more from it.

So much happened throughout this whole book and I am sure I missed a lot of the details about his life, but I am so so glad I read this one. I can't wait to see if the author does more biography types of things like this one or not. I also loved learning about her life and how writing this book was a struggle at times.

This is the fascinating story of an extraordinary Polish man, Henry Zguda, who experienced horrific cruelty and miraculous rescues while at Auschwitz and other concentration camps during WWII. After the war, he eventually made his way to the US and survived to find happiness for the remainder of his life. He claimed to have survived due to two things: luck and meeting people who were able to help him. I would add two more reasons: he was a serious athlete, a large man in top physical condition before being sent to the camps, and he was an outgoing, personable man who made good friends wherever he went and tried to help others whenever he could.
This is not just an account of his wartime experiences. It is more a portrait of a remarkable man who lived through unimaginable circumstances. The author, Shawver, a journalist, got a tip that she should meet this amazing man, with the possibility of writing an article about his life. Once she met him, she realized that she would need to write a book to describe all the important events of his life adequately. He and his wife enthusiastically agreed, and the lengthy process of writing this book began. As they continued meeting, they became dear friends. The author was able to convey a sense of Zguda’s unique attributes and personality so well that I felt as if I knew him and cared deeply about him
I appreciated that the author provided corroborating evidence to back up Zguda’s version of events, including documents, letters and photos. There were many surprising aspects of life in the camps that I’ve never read in any other books. An example: He mentioned casually that he used to swim at Auschwitz. Shawver was quite surprised, but after some searching was able to find a book about some women at Auschwitz that also described the swimming “pool”, though it was really more of a trough. Shawver was also surprised to learn that prisoners were able to send letters, and provides photos of some of these post cards. Since the Nazis were such meticulous record keepers, there are a considerable number of documents she provides to verify Zguda’s account of his experiences.
If you’re interested in this book, you are probably prepared for some grisly descriptions. There were a few places that made me cringe and wonder about how humanity could have produced these human monsters, but for the most part, his descriptions were understated and told matter of factly, as if these things were not unusual. At one point he pulled out a photo of a Nazi officer directing prisoners to load an emaciated body into one of the crematorium ovens. (Be forewarned that this photo is included in the book.)Shawver was shocked as she’d never seen anything like it during her extensive research travels. She knew it was a treasure, irreplaceable, and belonged in a museum. Asked where he got it, he said he’d taken it off a dead Nazi near the time the camp was emancipated. The way he said such things casually, as if it was nothing special, made these gruesome events even more chilling.
It was fortuitous that this journalist happened upon this story at just the right time, since she convinced them to preserve these memories and the photos, letters, and other mementos. I am very glad I read this, and urge you to read it as well. It is hard to put down, and will make you think.
Highly recommended.

Note: I received an advance copy of the ebook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

"Henry" by Katrina Shawver is a book about Henry a polish swimmers life and friendships from Auschwitz to America. What a powerful book, yes, books from Holocaust survivors are almost always powerful but this one was different. Why do I say different as the author writes what Henry reveals to her and he did not hold back anything he seen even pictures he had. Some of the things this man had seen and told about I had no idea about as I had not heard about them such as the women that were made to be prostitutes for some of the prisoners. The horror that people put other people thru is just horrible but this book is a must read. It may be hard to read for older teens but if they are studying on World War 2 that they need to read it. I highly recommend this book just know it is graphic and open and honest.

I was given this book from NetGalley for my honest review and was not required to give a positive review.

HENRY: A POLISH SWIMMER’S TRUE STORY OF FRIENDSHIP FROM AUSCHWITZ TO AMERICA by Katrina Shawver is a memoir/biography that had me turning the pages and finishing this memorable read in just two sittings.
Katrina Shawver was trying to come up with a new story for her column in ‘The Arizona Republic’ when she heard about a former Polish swimming star who survived the death camps of WWII Germany. After her column ran, she knew she had to continue meeting with Henry and tell his entire story. He had an amazing cache of original documents and pictures with stories for them all. This book documents Henry’s story in his own words and the author interjects her own research that verifies Henry’s stories.
Henry tells his story to Ms. Shawver over many taped meetings. With gallows humor and always a sense of hope, Henry recalls his youth and capture by the Germans as they rounded up all Polish young men after their invasion. Henry was a strong young man who was a champion swimmer and water polo player for the Krakow YMCA team at the time of his arrest. Catholic and a proud Pole, Henry was sent to Auschwitz 1 as a political prisoner.
There are several instances when Henry should have died, but he always seemed to know someone who would find him at just the right time to help him survive. Henry knows he was incredibly lucky. From Auschwitz to Buchenwald, Henry details camp life. Even with all the killing and death, there are stories that sound absurd to the situation, but were small moments to forget where and what they were living through so that they could hope and survive for another day.
I have read many stories of the camps from Jewish survivor stories, but this book is through the eyes of a Polish political prisoner. I learned that they could and did send and receive mail, that there were underground activities ongoing in the camps and that the prisoners were segregated from the Jewish prisoners. Buchenwald held mainly German communists, criminals, Jehovah Witnesses, gypsies and the 1000 political prisoner Poles sent from Auschwitz until almost the end of the war.
Henry survives to live under communist rule in Poland because he returns home to his mother. After she is gone, he and a friend have the chance to escape to freedom in the west and they take it.
You will not be able to resist Henry. He is an ordinary young man who survived and lived an extraordinary life. If you are like me and devour books about WWII, this one should definitely be on your list.
Thanks very much to Koehler Books and Net Galley for allowing me to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review. I could not have enjoyed it more.

Katrina Shawver is a journalist, and in 2002 when hunting out a story for her newspaper, she met Henry Zguda, a survivor of the concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and wrote a piece on him. It was a short piece, at the time just another story among the hundreds that Shawver turned in.

But the small glimpse of Henry's tale – or, rather, perhaps, the strong personality of the 85-year-old Polish man, and that of his American wife, had hooked her curiosity, and for the next year, Shawver met and interviewed Henry twice a week until his passing in 2003.

This book is the ultimate result of those interviews, and the many additional hours over the intervening years that Shawver has spent doing her own research: travelling to see Auschwitz as it is preserved today, visiting libraries and archives, and poring over photographs and documents, many of which were written in German and Polish, languages unfamiliar to her.

This is not an academic history book, though Shawver's research, which she lays out in detail as she discovers each piece of the jigsaw, makes it seem as though we are discovering the history and stories of the concentration camps together with the author. It's a story of friendships and the life of an ordinary, though remarkable man caught up in extraordinary and horrific times. The focal point is of course Henry's time and place in the war, and his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, but Shawver also sketches in a lot of detail for the reader that helps place Henry in the world as a man first and foremost, as well as a survivor, and she writes much about her friendship with Henry and his wife Nancy, and as she learned more about Poland, she also fills us in on the threads of Polish history up until the second World War. The whole is fascinating, and the personal investment and enthusiasm from Shawver, Henry, and the many people who populate the tale, from the camp prisoners themselves to the curators of the artefacts that played a role in the research for the book – the sheer love of telling a good story, along with the dark black weight of the history that made such a book both possible and necessary, makes it a compelling and strangely beautiful tale of one of the very darkest periods of the twentieth century.

It is not a deeply scholarly book, though it contains bright spots of hard-won original research by the author, but rather it is a story of friendships both in and beyond the war and Auschwitz, and a first-hand account, through the eyes of Henry, of what it was like to live day-to-day in the appallingly squalid and cruel, desperate conditions of a concentration camp. Oddly for such a book, dealing as it does with the reality of unremitting death, disease and suffering perpetrated by human being upon human being, the overall effect is of warmth, humanity and unity, thanks largely to Henry's unique storytelling and his broad sense of humanity, and Shawver's journalistic skills.

Having read quite a bit of fiction set around WW2 times,I was not unfamiliar with some of the horrors of the war.
Nevertheless, this account of a survivor, a man who actually went through all that torture and lived to tell the tale, was truly chilling!
Henry's story brought out the fact that along with Jews, many Poles were also imprisoned in the concentration camps, something which I for one didn't know.
The horrible conditions of the camps, the backbreaking work given to the prisoners, severe lack of food and the cruelty of the guards and directors, as told in the words of Henry, really brought out the horrors of a war that destroyed everything in its wake.
Neither hope nor positivity nor spirit would have helped anyone survive these camps as they were utterly inhuman. The methods of killing the inmates.. Lining them enmasse and shooting them, luring them into basement rooms and hanging from hooks on the wall, gassing innocent people before they knew what was happening... Was something witnessed everyday. Survival was by extreme good luck or contacts.
Even years later, seeing pictures and hearing about the ovens used to dispose the bodies and the way corpses were piled up is unbearable.
These stories need to be told so that the world is aware and consciously prevents the creation of an environment where such a thing occurs. This must serve as a lesson to never allow discrimination on any basis to blind people to their human sides and make them monsters.
So many millions lost their lives and few like Henry who survived were surely never the same again.
The history of the war and the snippets of information on the countries involved were enlightening.
It was not a tough book to understand though the subject made it a difficult one to read.

Oh my heart!! Ay times I felt like yhis book tore it right from my chest. I'm a WWII history buff. I love everything about it. Especially triumphant stories such as this one. With most book I've read about the holocaust, I either love them or hate them. Very few times has their been an im between. I loved this book. I was intrigued with the lives of these people from the very first sentence. This is a must read for all lover's of history.

I especially enjoyed this book because my father grew up in Poland near Krakow and came to the US in 1931`. Henry was such a endearing man with a compelling history. I am so glad you were able to meet him and tell his story.

Having a father who is a Holocaust survivor, I am always interested in reading about other survivor stories. Interestingly, Henry was not a Jew, but a Catholic Pole who was imprisoned for three years in concentration camps. The book is comprised of interviews between Henry and Ms. Shawver, which follows the same pattern of interviews similar to the Shoah Foundation interviews, which is based on capturing information from living survivors before their stories are lost. His story, as many survivor stories, shows the strength of the human spirit in spite of unimaginable horrors. This is an incredibly moving book and one I suggest everyone read.