Book Description

Eric Brauer was the child of a successful German Jewish family from Breslau, Germany. He grew up in a multi-cultural environment consisting of Protestants, Catholics and Jews. Once Adolf Hitler came into power, Eric's life changed with him being kicked out of school and his father losing his business. With the world being turned upside down, Eric was sent to a farm school to learn those skills which would allow him to immigrate to Palestine or South America. Farming would then provide the means for a community of Jewish youth to survive. Kristallnacht changed the world for Eric and his family. Eric spent some time in Buchenwald Concentration Camp and then was fortunate enough to have been released. He was chosen to go to England on the Kinder Transport. Once in England, he worked on a farm. By a stroke of good fortune, Eric met an aristocratic English lady who afforded him the opportunity to go back to school at the London School of Economics. Unfortunately, that experience was short-lived as he was interned in England as an enemy alien. After being released, he was able to join the British army. Then, he used his relationship with the English lady to join a highly trained group under the Special Operations Executive. That is when Eric Brauer became Eric Bowes. He became a saboteur spending 242 days behind German lines blowing up facilities, slowing the construction of German machines of war. After the war, Eric found his parents who had survived Theresienstadt and Auschwitz Concentration Camps. Upon his father's death bed many years later, Eric made a promise to go back to Breslau, Germany now Wroclaw, Poland to work with the local Jewish community to resurrect the White Stork Synagogue. The synagogue had been constructed in the 1820s. On Kristallnacht, the White Stork had been reduced to a hollow shell. Eric's efforts along with many others are detailed over a period of more than ten years that it took for the synagogue to be brought back to its former glory.