One Step Ahead of Hitler: A Jewish Child's Journey Through France Book

Fred Gross knew much about the history of the Holocaust, but little about his own story as a child fleeing from the Nazis. It wasn't until the late 1980s, when he began to ask his mother and two older brothers to recall their memories, combining them with his own dawning memories, that he began to produce his memoir. This story is not simply an account of the years spent one step ahead of Hitler. It is about a little boy then grown man coming to know his own story and realizing the tenuousness of memory. A review from Jewish Book World acclaimed Gross's book, "Because of his talent in interviewing members of his family, researching, and writing, it is an adventure you will not soon forget…What makes the book come alive are the many conversations, colorful descriptions, and narrative talent. It could be a novel, but is true. This is a tale worth telling, and here it is told particularly well." Most of the Gross family's flight takes place in France during its defeat and collaboration with the Nazis, when 75,000 Jews were rounded up for deportation to death camps. Gross and his family made it through these anguished years because of their fortitude and ingenuity along with the help of brave men and women of varied faiths. One Step Ahead of Hitler is a story of survival told in words and in photographs of a journey beginning in Antwerp and ending with the Gross family's freedom in America. It is the story of a Jewish family on the run for five long years. From the day bombs fell on their Antwerp neighborhood in 1940 until the war ended with Nazi Germany's defeat, the Gross family simply tried to stay "one step ahead of Hitler" in a journey that took them thousands of miles across France and beyond. Matching wits with a French regime thirsty for the blood of Jews, the Gross family suffered through physical and emotional distress. They were tormented by the difficult decisions they had to make, just to survive another day. In his foreword, David P. Gushee, Distinguished Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University and author of Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, writes: "The author deftly mixes together the perspective of a three-year-old, at the beginning of the war, a child with few memories of his own and almost entirely dependent on the rest of his family for their stories; and then a four-to-eight-year old on the run, with his own dawning memories; and then a fully grown adult, able not only to ask questions of family members but to gather critically important historical information that can help him understand what was happening to his family at each juncture. We watch the author watching his young self going through these traumatic experiences—at each moment the reader somehow experiences the events both through the eyes of a small child and a grown man remembering what it was like to be that small child. The effect is profound."