Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz
    Unavailable
    By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz
    Unavailable
    By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz
    Ebook297 pages4 hours

    By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz

    By Max Eisen

    4.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    WINNER of CBC Canada Reads

    In the tradition of Elie Wiesel’s Night and Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz comes a bestselling new memoir by Canadian survivor

    Finalist for the 2017 RBC Taylor Prize

    More than 70 years after the Nazi camps were liberated by the Allies, a new Canadian Holocaust memoir details the rural Hungarian deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau, back-breaking slave labour in Auschwitz I, the infamous “death march” in January 1945, the painful aftermath of liberation, a journey of physical and psychological healing.

    Tibor “Max” Eisen was born in Moldava, Czechoslovakia into an Orthodox Jewish family. He had an extended family of sixty members, and he lived in a family compound with his parents, his two younger brothers, his baby sister, his paternal grandparents and his uncle and aunt. In the spring of1944--five and a half years after his region had been annexed to Hungary and the morning after the family’s yearly Passover Seder--gendarmes forcibly removed Eisen and his family from their home. They were brought to a brickyard and eventually loaded onto crowded cattle cars bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau. At fifteen years of age, Eisen survived the selection process and he was inducted into the camp as a slave labourer.

    One day, Eisen received a terrible blow from an SS guard. Severely injured, he was dumped at the hospital where a Polish political prisoner and physician, Tadeusz Orzeszko, operated on him. Despite his significant injury, Orzeszko saved Eisen from certain death in the gas chambers by giving him a job as a cleaner in the operating room. After his liberation and new trials in Communist Czechoslovakia, Eisen immigrated to Canada in 1949, where he has dedicated the last twenty-two years of his life to educating others about the Holocaust across Canada and around the world.

    The author will be donating a portion of his royalties from this book to institutions promoting tolerance and understanding.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 19, 2016
    ISBN9781443448550
    Unavailable
    By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz
    Author

    Max Eisen

    MAX EISEN was born in Moldava nad Bodvou, a town in rural Czechoslovakia. He was ten years old when Hungary occupied Slovakia. In 1944 his family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of them were immediately killed in gas chambers. Max, his father and uncle worked as slave labourers, but two months later both men were selected for medical experiments and subsequently murdered. Max lived; he managed to survive the Death March in January 1945 and the camps at Mauthausen, Melk and Ebensee in Austria. He was liberated by the American 761st Black Panther Tank Battalion on May 6th, 1945. Eventually, he returned to Czechoslovakia, where he spent three years in an orphanage. Max Eisen arrived in Quebec City in October 1949 en route to Toronto, where he met his wife, Ivy Cosman. In 2016, Eisen released his memoir By Chance Alone, which was a finalist for the 2017 RBC Taylor Prize and the winner of the 2019 CBC Canada Reads competition. He died on July 7th, 2022. Max Eisen is survived by his wife, his sons Ed and Larry, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. 

    Related to By Chance Alone

    Related ebooks

    Holocaust For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Happiest Man On Earth

      Nov 5, 2020

      We were a big loving family. I was born in 1920 in Leipzig, Germany. My father, Isidore, and mum, Lina, had me soon after they married, followed by my sister, Johanna – Henni for short. Proud of our country, we considered ourselves German first, and

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz

      Jan 27, 2021

      The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz
      4 min read

    • Article

      My Life With A Monster

      Jul 16, 2021

      My Life With A Monster
      4 min read

    • Article

      'A Woman Of No Importance' Finally Gets Her Due

      Apr 18, 2019

      Virginia Hall was an American spy who worked for Britain and the U.S. and played a key role in undermining the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. Her story was rarely told — until now.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Editorial: A Lesson From The Holocaust: Never Stop Telling The Terrible Stories

      Apr 13, 2018

      "My mother went in the gas chamber first," the Holocaust survivor recalled. "They took my sister and me to the bathhouse, shaved our heads and gave us striped clothes and wooden shoes. We started asking for our parents and crying, 'Where is Mom? Wher

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Audacious Angel Of Auschwitz

      Aug 11, 2021

      The Audacious Angel Of Auschwitz
      8 min read

    • Article

      Sins Of My Grandfather

      Feb 21, 2020

      Sins Of My Grandfather
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Holocaust

      Dec 15, 2020

      The Holocaust
      2 min read

    • Article

      Holocaust Survivor ‘We Must Remember What Hatred Can Do’

      Nov 7, 2021

      The year was 1943, the world was at war and Yvonne Engelman was a prisoner at the most  notorious concentration camp in history: Auschwitz. Now 94, Yvonne lives in Sydney and believes that it is her duty as a survivor to share her powerful story. “We

      3 min read

    • Article

      Surviving The Straits Of Hell

      Dec 23, 2020

      NINETY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD MOSHE HA-ELION proudly ushers me forward to admire the view from his smart fourteenth-floor apartment overlooking the beach in Bat Yam, south of Jaffa. It is late January and the mist is rising over the Mediterranean as if shield

      9 min read

    • Article

      Letter From The Diaspora: Why Ukraine Will Endure

      Mar 24, 2022

      When I close my eyes and think of Ukraine I see sunflowers and red poppies, tables full of food, and smiling faces. It’s how my extended family in Ukraine greets me when I visit.  Since the Feb. 24 invasion, I’ve oscillated between sadness, dread, an

      3 min read

    • Article

      Commentary: Can The World Agree Upon A 'Common Memory' Of The Holocaust?

      Feb 16, 2018

      My mother and father were survivors of Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald. All that remained of our family tree were a few yellowed photographs tucked away in a drawer. I can't pinpoint exactly when I first learned that, aside from my parents, every cl

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for By Chance Alone

    4.5/5

    36 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I can't give this terrifying book anything less than a 5 star review. The story that Max Eisen tells of his early life as a young Hungarian Jew who spent over a year in Auschwitz is horrific and graphic, but very, very real. Mr. Eisen is a Canadian citizen now, and he lets us see, in graphic detail, his journey from Moldava, Czechoslovakia to Aushwitz-Birkenau, to camps in Melk and Ebieseee and post-war Marenbad, Prague and finally Canada where he finally arrives in 1949, will make your blood run cold. Young Max was only 15 when he was taken from his family home, with all the members of his family in the spring of 1944. Upon arrival in Auschwitz, after a horrendous journey of many days, Max is separated from his mother, two younger brothers and 9 month old baby sister Judit. He doesn't know that he will never see them again. His father, uncle and young Max were kept in another part of Auschwitz and used for slave labour in various work projects near the camp. Max's survival instinct is strong, and with the help of his father and uncle, he manages to keep on going, living in the horrendous conditions of Auschwitz. He finds himself alone after a few months when his father and uncle were also chosen for the gas chamber and the crematorium, but he still manages to go on. The writing in this book is simple and direct, but that makes this horrible story even more difficult to read. I was given the chance to read and review this book by the National Post Reading Society, and I am honoured that I was given this wonderful opportunity to read this heart-wrenching story. Max's incredibly difficult journey from his birthplace to Canada depicts the true strength of the human spirit. I didn't think I needed any reminders to fully understand the full extent of human depravity, but this book has enlightened me much further than I thought possible. I think everyone in the free world needs to read this book, and then we must make every effort to ensure that the absolute nightmare of the Holocaust can never occur again.
    • 4/5
      This book is one of the 5 finalists for Canada Reads 2019. The theme for this annual book competition this year is "One book that moves us". And yes this is a book that has the power to move a person. Eisen's story of surviving the World War II Holocaust and what he experienced in Auschwitz and other camps is important testimony of the depths humans can sink to. Eisen has spoken about his experiences many times and by all accounts he is a dynamic speaker; however, he is not a great writer and I think this book would have been stronger if he had teamed up with someone who could add colour to his somewhat dry delivery.Max Eisen was fifteen years old and living in a small town in Czechoslovakia when the Nazis decided to wipe out the Jews of that country in 1944. That was one of the chances that Max encountered that led to his survival. In other countries of Europe Jews were sent to the death camps much earlier and they just could not survive the starvation diets and hard work. All of Eisen's family, which included his parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle and three siblings, were sent to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944. At the train Max, his father and his uncle were sent one direction and the others were sent the other direction i.e. to the gas chambers. There's another piece of luck for Max. While Max was soon separated from his father and uncle that might have been another chance for him. His father knew that Max would have a better chance of surviving if he was not part of a family unit that drew the attention of the guards. On their last meeting his father told Max that if he survived he must tell the world what happened and Max carried out this last wish. Max was injured one day at work and taken to the surgery unit. The doctor, a Polish political prisoner, fixed him up and then selected Max as his surgical assistant. This was a job assignment that gave Max some protection from the SS guards and also access to more food. As a result, when the internees at Auschwitz were marched off to get them away from the nearby Russian troops, Max had some stores of energy that allowed him to survive where many others did not. Max ended up at Ebensee in Austria, a camp that was liberated by the American army in 1945. After some years and some more close calls Max arrived in Toronto where he lives to this day. Despite the title of this book I don't think it was by "chance alone" that Max survived. He also had enormous grit and determination and he had a mission given to him by his father. Thank goodness he did survive to tell his story and remind all of us why we must stand up to extremists.
    • 3/5
      Max Eisen was 15 years old when he was sent to a Nazi death camp along with his extended family. The last thing his father asked him was, should he survive, to tell the story of what happened. This book is Max's promise fulfilled.There have been many books written about the holocaust, including academic texts, fiction and memoirs. Each is a frightening reminder of the existence of evil. What is special about this book is that, as an adult, Mr. Eisen was able to maintain a youthful voice in telling his story. He was a child in the camp, and that voice and perspective comes through so well.
    • 5/5
      In 1944, fifteen year old Max and his family were sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most of his family were immediately selected to die, however, Max, by chance alone, survived. First assigned to hard labor, Max was able to secure work in the hospital as an assistant. As liberation neared, Max was sent on a death march, barely surviving.This was a well written and engaging book. It is heartbreaking to think of a fifteen year old being separated from his family, yet through strength of will, and chance, Max survived. Overall, highly recommended.