Boy Who Lost His Birthday

The Boy Who Lost His Birthday is the uplifting story of one man's journey from boyhood in rural Hungary to triumph over oppression during the Holocaust and finally to a role as a spiritual leader in America. Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits' compelling memoir recounts his happy childhood memories in Derecske, Hungary where he was a member of a thriving Jewish community and aspired to become a cantor. Stricken with wartime poverty, Berkowits and his father left their home and family behind to seek work in Budapest. It was there that they were rounded up with other Budapest Jews and shipped by sealed train to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. Berkowits vividly narrates his treacherous experience as a sixteen year-old boy surviving in the notorious Nazi concentration camp until its liberation by American troops. After recovery in Sweden, Berkowits immigrated to America were he completed his education, joined the United States Army, and became a chaplain's assistant. After leaving the Army, he undertook graduate study at Hebrew Union College, married, and became the founding rabbi of the largest Jewish congregation in Virginia, Temple Rodef Shalom. Berkowits' story shows that he emerged victorious over deprivation, cruelty, and tragedy to become an exemplar of American success.

Laszlo Berkowits' story is compelling, his narrative moving. . . . He does not exalt in his survival, but the reader must exalt in what Berkowits has done with his survival. He made his witness an offering and this work is testimony to the grace of the offering., Laszlo Berkowits' life, his song, and this memoir remind us that there is a path to harmony that can bind the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, Orthodoxy and Reform, even Derecske and Washington. The voice of Laszlo Berkowits, though tinged with past sadness, resonates with hope for the future., This is a marvelous tale of the deepest tragedy and the slow climb back to a full, meaningful life. I've long known that Laszlo Berkowits was a marvelous man and a rather ideal rabbi but just learned here that he's a masterful story-teller.

Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits earned a Master of Hebrew Letters degree and a Doctor of Divinity degree from Hebrew Union College. He is the founding Rabbi of Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Virginia, where he served from his ordination in 1963 to his retirement as Senior Rabbi in 1998.