The Boy in the Back is a grip­ping tes­ta­ment to Jan Blumenstein’s resilience — endur­ing the Nazi camps by try­ing to become invis­i­ble, yet main­tain­ing his resolve to sur­vive and bear witness.

Blu­men­stein passed away in spring of 2025, but before he died, he gave the world the gift of his sto­ry as told to Fern Lebo, an author friend. Lebo tells the sto­ry in the first per­son to bring read­ers as close as pos­si­ble to Blumenstein’s voice, which she worked care­ful­ly to pre­serve. The mem­oir unfolds in most­ly chrono­log­i­cal chap­ters, pre­sent­ed in stan­dard text, while Lebo inter­spers­es con­tex­tu­al notes and Blumenstein’s reflec­tions from the months after Octo­ber 7 in ital­ic passages.

The pref­ace opens with what read­ers lat­er learn is the mas­sacre of a Roma fam­i­ly camp near where Blu­men­stein stayed at Auschwitz. ​“The gyp­sies were gone and the chim­neys were smok­ing. The air was thick with ash. We knew what was hap­pen­ing. And we were glad it wasn’t us. A hor­ri­ble thing to say, but that’s how it went.” Like this exam­ple, Blumenstein’s voice is famil­iar and usu­al­ly remains mat­ter-of-fact when dis­cussing atroc­i­ties, pro­vid­ing win­dows into his state of mind both then and at the time of telling.

Grow­ing up in the Slo­vak town of Nové Zámky, he played with his best friend and old­er broth­er Robie, and the oth­er chil­dren in town — Jew­ish and not. Look­ing back, Blu­men­stein is baf­fled that he failed to see what was com­ing, but he was a child. On his six­teenth birth­day, he was sent to Auschwitz. Upon his arrival, he noticed that the small­er boys ahead of him were ordered to go to the left; Blu­men­stein added two years to his age and was sent to the right. He endured inhu­mane and dehu­man­iz­ing con­di­tions, nar­row­ly escap­ing death many times through qui­et obser­va­tion and cal­cu­lat­ed action — avoid­ing eye con­tact, not vol­un­teer­ing, stay­ing incon­spic­u­ous. Toward the end of the book, Blu­men­stein recounts his post-war expe­ri­ences and his jour­ney to Cana­da, where he was able to build a full and mean­ing­ful life. 

At times the text mean­ders and could be more tight­ly edit­ed, yet any rep­e­ti­tions and didac­tic expla­na­tions make the book feel con­ver­sa­tion­al. Read­ers are giv­en the priv­i­lege of lis­ten­ing to a sur­vivor whose sharp mind, after near­ly sev­en decades, is still try­ing to make order of the upheaval and chaos that dec­i­mat­ed Euro­pean Jew­ry and hate that threat­ens Jews today.

Ble­men­stein ded­i­cates his mem­oir to the vic­tims of Octo­ber 7. In the fore­word, he writes, ​“I am talk­ing about [my expe­ri­ence in the camps] now because there is the same pres­ence of anti­semitism in the world today as there was in my child­hood … I want it to stop. We say, ​‘Nev­er again,’ and when Fern asked me to tell my sto­ry, I decid­ed it was time. I hope it helps peo­ple under­stand.” Blu­men­stein choos­es to empha­size moments of joy, sol­i­dar­i­ty, and the warmth of fam­i­ly. Through this mem­oir, he urges read­ers to hold fast to their human­i­ty and to stand up against anti­semitism and anti-Zion­ism today.