A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz
| Author | Göran Rosenberg |
|---|---|
| Original title | Ett kort uppehåll på vägen från Auschwitz |
| Country | Sweden |
| Language | Swedish |
| Published | 2012 |
| Awards | August Prize of 2012 |
A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz (Swedish: Ett kort uppehåll på vägen från Auschwitz) is a 2012 book by Swedish author Göran Rosenberg, variously described as a novel and a non-fiction narrative book.
As of 2014, the book has been translated into nine languages and sold more than 200,000 copies.
It won the August Prize in 2012 and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in 2014.
The book starts with a chapter called "The Place" in which, on 2 August 1947, a 24-year-old man arrives via train at the industrial town of Södertälje. He starts working at a lorry factory. Soon after a woman which the author refers to as my future mother joins the man. Originally from Łódź, Poland, the man and woman had started a relationship in the Łódź Ghetto, then been separated in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944 and reunited in Alingsås before moving to Södertälje. They get an apartment and their first child is born; the latter is the author, who refers to himself as "the child". They name him Göran, the most common name in Sweden, and not after his Jewish grandfather, Gershon, and they start speaking to each other in Swedish perhaps to make him fit into the place. The chapter further focuses on "The Child"s experience in Södermanland, which mostly is positive. He learns to downplay his foreign background, and at one point, he writes with regard to one of his teachers, "I never let Mr. Winqvist find out that I knew a few words of Yiddish".
The next chapters, called "The Wall", "The Carousel" and "The Road", recount the experience the man had in Auschwitz, as imagined by the author, informed by the historical record, in addition to the man's prior life in Poland, and general stories from Poland and Sweden during World War II. It ends with the man, now named as David Rosenberg, arriving in Malmö on 18 July 1945. The chapter "The Stop" describes David Rosenberg's early years in Sweden, as well the story of his wife, Hala Staw, during the war and afterwards in Poland. She arrives in Sweden in August 1946.
David travels to Łódź in 1958 and stays for three weeks, but finds the city depressing. He unsuccessfully seeks the graves of his father and other family members.
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