Four Perfect Pebbles by Lila Perl and Marion Blumenthal Lazan Book Review

The book I chose to read for this report is titled Four Perfect Pebbles. It is written by Lila Perl and Marion Blumenthal Lazan, and this book focuses on the Blumenthal family which is made up of four people, Ruth Blumental, Walter Blumenthal, Albert Blumenthal, and Marion Blumenthal. Ruth and Walter were the parents, while Albert and Marion were the children at ages eleven and nine at the beginning of the book. 

During the time period of the story the Holocaust had begun and it had reached it’s peak. The Blumenthal family was a family made up of Jews who had tried to escape Germany by fleeing to Holland, but as soon as they had arrived, the Nazis had occupied it. At the time of their escape in 1939, Marion was only five years old. After the Nazis occupied Holland, their family was sent to Westerbork camp. Before the German invasion of the Netherlands, Westerbork was a camp for Jewish refugees. 

After the invasion, from 1942-1944, Westerbork was a transit camp for Dutch Jews before they were sent to the “killing centers” in Germany or Poland. From Westerbork they were transferred to Bergen Belsen in Germany. While they were at Westerbork, they had some kind of private quarters, while at Bergen Belsen they were separated by male and female. Marion recalls that they were often told how “lucky they were” because Bergen Belsen allowed males and females to see each other briefly during the day. In the camps Ruth, Walter, and Albert had work duties. 

Being nine, Marion had to find ways to keep herself occupied while the adults and older children were gone. She had one game that gave the book it’s title; she believed that if she were able to find four pebbles of similar size and shape, then all four family members would survive. Marion knew that it may be foolish, but it gave her a purpose and she was determined to have her whole family survive Bergen Belsen. Even at her young age, she knew of death and dealt with it first hand daily. Every day smelt like death, and with their poor living conditions many people died while in their bunk. 

Many people would trip over the bodies in the dark. In the mornings, the guards would examine all unmoving forms from the “beds”, and load them on a stretcher to be taken away. Marion says that on one of her first days in the camp she believed that she saw a wagonload of firewood. She thought that they would be getting some firewood to heat the room up, but as the cart approached she saw the true horror of what was on the wagon. Soon she saw that it was in fact not firewood, but the wagon was filled with the bodies of dead prisoners. This death and sickness can be assumed to have come from the poor living conditions that the prisoners lived in. The barracks meant to hold 100 people were forced to hold about 600. People had to withstand the cold from the German winter on top of the hunger from the small rations. These conditions were the same (or worse) in most concentration camps across Germany. 

The infamous concentration camp, Auschwitz, was one of the camps whose conditions were worse. Over the time that it held prisoners Auschwitz killed approximately 1.1 million Jewish prisoners within its walls. Marion writes that they were marched to the station and were put on a train of cattle cars. They were being sent to Auschwitz, or so they believed. Just six days after, the British got to Bergen Belsen and liberated the prisoners left at the camp. On their trip to the train station the Blumenthals were reunited as a family. Once on the train they were given only a piece of bread which was to last them eight days. This train would soon be known as the “death train.” Typhus soon began to run rampant throughout the train and its cars. With as many as 70 to 80 people per car, people were in tight spaces and very cramped. Typhus is a very contagious disease that can be spread through mites, fleas, or lice. On the so-called “death train” many people got lice. So many that most people resorted to shaving their head. 

Marion had begged her mother not to shave her head, but by not shaving it she had to have her hair combed three times a day for lice. With Typhus being able to be spread by lice many people began to get sick. The guards who were escorting the passengers called out “Toten raus!” which means, “out with the dead!” They continued to say this multiple times over the course of the trip because many people were dying of Typhus. On top of the Typhus that was spreading throughout the train many of the passengers were suffering from dysentery, pleurisy, and tuberculosis. Many others had wounds that were not healing due to all of the disease and lack of medicine. As time continued their small bread and water supply had been diminished.

Eventually, the train had come into contact with Russian soldiers, and the train was liberated. After six long years the Blumenthals had been liberated on April 23, 1945. At the time of their liberation Marion was ten and a half years old and only weighed about 35 pounds. Her mother only weighed 75 pounds. Soon after liberation they found an empty farmhouse that was stocked with many different kinds of food and meats. The Blumenthal family chose this as their new place to stay. Although they now had the space to spread out, they chose to sleep in the same room together because they feared being separated again. At this time, Marion still had an open wound on her leg, and their father was in poor health. 

The Russian military soon came back to the same village that the Blumenthals were staying in, and tried their best to help the Jews that lived there. Every day they transported Marion to a Russian field hospital to try and heal her leg. With every passing day her leg seemed to finally be healing itself, but as she recalls nothing could help her nightmares. After the years spent in concentration camps, and then walking the halls of a military field hospital, she saw all of the horrors of war. Many of the Jews staying in Tröbitz found that Typhus was still spreading and the refugees realized that they still had the lice that carried the disease. At this time Marion finally allowed her mother to shave her head. 

Due to the epidemic, Russian forces were giving the village a two month quarantine. Once May came around the number of Typhus cases began to go down and the former prisoners began to look forward to going to their home countries. Sadly though, when June came around the number of cases began to rise again, and Walter Blumenthal succumbed to the disease. He passed on June 7, 1945. At the time of his passing, Ruth also fell ill to the same disease. Like many others, they had to bury him themselves. With Ruth being too sick, and Marion still being unable to fully walk, Albert had to be the one to do it. At the age of twelve and a half, Albert had to bury his own father. The day after Walter had been buried, the residents of Tröbatz were told that their quarantine was over. 

After they boarded the trucks to leave Tröbatz, they finally were allowed to go back to their “homelands”. The Blumenthals once again were refugees in Holland. The first time they entered Holland had been in January 1939, and now after six and a half years, they finally returned in the summer of 1945. The return to Holland was bittersweet for the family. They had lost their father and husband, and now they had to find housing, food, and a way to make ends meet. Marion writes that she was more excited to return than Ruth was. She was excited and felt free. Leaving behind Nazi Germany, she was finally free. While on the other hand, Ruth was worried about what they had to do next. She had to find a place to stay, a way to get the children an education, and find a way to make an income. Ruth reasoned that Walter’s plan to immigrate to Palestine was the next best thing that they could do. Once they found a life for themselves, Ruth got her beautician’s certification in Amsterdam. They soon found that the trip to Palestine was not the best option for them and began to look into their options for immigrating to America. The family finally was able to make their immigration in April of 1948. Marion was thirteen years old and finally had grown taller and had filled out. 

They finally reached the land of America on April 23, 1948, exactly three years after their liberation from the death train. During the Holocaust many people were not as lucky as this family. One of the most famous figures from the Holocaust, Anne Frank, had definitely not been as lucky. Her and her family had to hide in an attic for two years, yet they still were sent to the concentration camps. Sadly, Anne Frank and her cousin passed away from Typhus in one of these concentration camps. While they did lose their father and had to endure the horrors of what lay within those camps, the Blumenthal family stayed strong and pushed through to see their release from the dreaded concentration camps and the deathly “death train”.