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Ragdolls
SAME COVER AS STOCK PHOTO SHOWN. SCUFFING, MINOR EDGE WEAR & DINGS ON COVERS AND SPINE. LIGHT CURLING AT OUTER EDGE OF BOTH COVERS. AUTHOR INSCRIPTION AND SIGNATURE ON FIRST PAGE. OTHERWISE CLEAN PAGES THAT ARE IN NICE CONDITION.
173 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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445 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 17, 2014
An incredible, horrible, adventure of a boy age 11-15 bouncing through multiple concentration camps, near death experiences, living among the "walking dead;" gray skeletal barely alive camp inmates. And then the book ends the with "hate is nothing, love is everything." To survive such trauma, to tell the story, and to walk away embracing love (if not God because what God would allow such an event to happen), just a miraculous and horrendous story. Self published, multiple typos and formatting errors add to the charm.
January 14, 2015
Henry Golde has spoken to the 6th grade Boys' & Girls' Brigade members in Neenah, WI for the past several years. It is incredible to think about all that he went through when he was around the same age as them. The book Ragdolls was easy to read and a well-written first person view of the Holocaust.
I read this book in one day - I simply couldn't put it down. The most powerful part of Golde's writing is the epilogue.
"Hate is nothing and love is everything."
I read this book in one day - I simply couldn't put it down. The most powerful part of Golde's writing is the epilogue.
"Hate is nothing and love is everything."
February 3, 2009
This book was written by a man who now lives in Appleton, Wisconsin. He is probably the last survivor from the Holocaust. He spoke at my son's high school and I went to see him. He is the most inspiring person I have ever met. His book is hard to find, except from Amazon.com in a used edition. I have contact information for anyone who would like to buy one as he is the publisher.
May 3, 2015
Great first hand story of what the author Henry Golde went through in surviving the Holocaust. I'm pretty sure it's the only book I've ever read on the topic and I found out about it through the grapevine as Henry's son is a friend of mine and a mutual friend told me his father had written this book, so I looked into it. Very glad I did.
Hard to believe that people did, can do and continue to treat each other so poorly. I felt right there beside him as he explained what happened and the emotions surrounding each step of the way from being incarcerated to finally being freed from his captors. It makes me want to read more on the topic and really see how the Nazi party ever came to be so powerful, how so many people could be so intolerant for so long... and not really all that long ago historically.
The Epilogue is amazing. In it he says: "If we believe in one God, why do we hate each other so much. Hate is nothing and love is everything."
To see the worst humans can do, to live through what he did and maintain that attitude is worth the price of admission in my mind. Everyone should read this book.
Hard to believe that people did, can do and continue to treat each other so poorly. I felt right there beside him as he explained what happened and the emotions surrounding each step of the way from being incarcerated to finally being freed from his captors. It makes me want to read more on the topic and really see how the Nazi party ever came to be so powerful, how so many people could be so intolerant for so long... and not really all that long ago historically.
The Epilogue is amazing. In it he says: "If we believe in one God, why do we hate each other so much. Hate is nothing and love is everything."
To see the worst humans can do, to live through what he did and maintain that attitude is worth the price of admission in my mind. Everyone should read this book.
February 1, 2020
My son will be acting as Henry and telling his story in 2 days at our public library. Henry was hoping to be able to make it to the performance.
Henry Golde moved on to Heaven today, October 19, 2019
He was 90 years old💖
Henry Golde moved on to Heaven today, October 19, 2019
He was 90 years old💖
July 6, 2008
This book gives a whole new perspective on what the Holacost was. It is another view that is close, but also different from my grandmothers.
March 22, 2025
A most worthwhile narrative nonfiction for grade school pupils through high school students and also appropriate for college-level history & cultural courses. The author, born the same year as Anne Frank, recounts his life from the age of 11 to 16 as a witness to Holocaust horrors and atrocities in Poland, Germany, and finally Czechoslovakia; this fine little volume provides the reader with a child's understanding of the tumult ensuing around him.
Within this account, the reader lives the daily precarious survival of one individual. Beginning with the anti-Semitism of his hometown near Warsaw, the author, Henry, relates his early youth followed by the war years: a series of internments in ghettos, labor camps, and concentration camps of German-occupied Europe.
The narrative opens on the advent of the Second World War. Soon thereafter, the reader experiences the demoralized Polish army retreating through Henry's hometown of Plotz, then the entrance of German troops. On their heels appear the black uniforms of the SS divisions. This heralds the transformation of the trusted streets of the author's hometown into a Jewish ghetto. Several months later, Henry and older brother and parents endure a freight transport to the concentration camp of Dzialdowo (German: Soldau), Poland. Within 2 months a second transport forces the family into the Ghetto Chmielnik. After 10 months, Henry sees his mother for the last time and, forcible separated from his family, is transported by lorry to the labor camp (Arbeitslager) Skarzysko-Kamienna, a major armaments' plant. Here the author enters the services of HASAG, the manufacturing firm from Leipzig, Germany. At Skarzysko the author endures 2 ½ years of grueling 12 hour shifts working within various plants
... and contracts Typhoid fever from which he experiences an unanticipated, but slow recovery.
With the war having turned against the Nazis and the eastern front collapsing, the inmates of the HASAG plants at Skarzysko-Kamienna are herded into freight cars and transported to western Poland, arriving in the HASAG-run labor camps at Czenstochowa and neighboring Rakow. Within 5 months these camps are also evacuated as the Red Army advances toward the borders of the German Reich. HASAG now transports its slave laborers further west within the borders of Germany to its concentration camp of Buchenwald.
After 4 weeks in Buchenwald, Henry is included with the group of laborers transported south by freight train to yet another HASAG facility, the V-1 Rocket Factory, at Colditz, Germany. During the 3 months of labor in the production of rocket elements and anti-tank weaponry here, allied bombing raids hinder production and signal the war is nearing the end.
From Colditz then begins the 3 week, 180 km (112 miles) forced foot march through the rugged Saxon countryside and across the Czech border. Most who begin the march either die of exhaustion along the way or are shot for lagging behind or attempt at escape. Arriving at the "model" concentration camp of Theresienstadt, Henry remains there until the liberation by the Red Army a few weeks later.
Having lost his entire family and spent 6 years as an observing "guest" of the Nazi regime, the author transforms this episode of terror into a message of tolerance and hope. Henry is also a member of the group portrayed in the book .
Within this account, the reader lives the daily precarious survival of one individual. Beginning with the anti-Semitism of his hometown near Warsaw, the author, Henry, relates his early youth followed by the war years: a series of internments in ghettos, labor camps, and concentration camps of German-occupied Europe.
The narrative opens on the advent of the Second World War. Soon thereafter, the reader experiences the demoralized Polish army retreating through Henry's hometown of Plotz, then the entrance of German troops. On their heels appear the black uniforms of the SS divisions. This heralds the transformation of the trusted streets of the author's hometown into a Jewish ghetto. Several months later, Henry and older brother and parents endure a freight transport to the concentration camp of Dzialdowo (German: Soldau), Poland. Within 2 months a second transport forces the family into the Ghetto Chmielnik. After 10 months, Henry sees his mother for the last time and, forcible separated from his family, is transported by lorry to the labor camp (Arbeitslager) Skarzysko-Kamienna, a major armaments' plant. Here the author enters the services of HASAG, the manufacturing firm from Leipzig, Germany. At Skarzysko the author endures 2 ½ years of grueling 12 hour shifts working within various plants
... and contracts Typhoid fever from which he experiences an unanticipated, but slow recovery.
With the war having turned against the Nazis and the eastern front collapsing, the inmates of the HASAG plants at Skarzysko-Kamienna are herded into freight cars and transported to western Poland, arriving in the HASAG-run labor camps at Czenstochowa and neighboring Rakow. Within 5 months these camps are also evacuated as the Red Army advances toward the borders of the German Reich. HASAG now transports its slave laborers further west within the borders of Germany to its concentration camp of Buchenwald.
After 4 weeks in Buchenwald, Henry is included with the group of laborers transported south by freight train to yet another HASAG facility, the V-1 Rocket Factory, at Colditz, Germany. During the 3 months of labor in the production of rocket elements and anti-tank weaponry here, allied bombing raids hinder production and signal the war is nearing the end.
From Colditz then begins the 3 week, 180 km (112 miles) forced foot march through the rugged Saxon countryside and across the Czech border. Most who begin the march either die of exhaustion along the way or are shot for lagging behind or attempt at escape. Arriving at the "model" concentration camp of Theresienstadt, Henry remains there until the liberation by the Red Army a few weeks later.
Having lost his entire family and spent 6 years as an observing "guest" of the Nazi regime, the author transforms this episode of terror into a message of tolerance and hope. Henry is also a member of the group portrayed in the book .
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 29, 2021
I was lucky enough to hear Henry Golde speak to my class in middle school. I remember how much he stressed loving everyone; that "hate is nothing and love is everything." Henry details his experiences throughout the Holocaust. His words give you a sense of who he was and his perseverance. To hear someone who had experienced so much hate, prejudice and horror at such a young age tell me that "love is everything and hate is nothing" was unimaginable. Henry's story is horrific, but inspiring by how he was able to overcome his experiences and the hatred he held inside for years following the war.
The book is riddled with typos, but I think they make the book more personable as English was obviously Henry's second language.
I highly recommend Henry's memoir. 'Night' by Elie Wiesel is a popular holocaust memoir read in schools; however, I found Henry Golde's memoir more straightforward than Wiesel's.
The book is riddled with typos, but I think they make the book more personable as English was obviously Henry's second language.
I highly recommend Henry's memoir. 'Night' by Elie Wiesel is a popular holocaust memoir read in schools; however, I found Henry Golde's memoir more straightforward than Wiesel's.
July 18, 2016
We started reading this as a class in World Studies at the end of the year so I didn't get to finish it in class. I was interested in it, though so I got it at my local library and read it in my free time. He actually came and spoke to my classmates and me in seventh or eighth grade about his story in the concentration camp. At the end, he told everyone not to hate someone and that love is everything and hate is nothing. To this day, I don't use the word hate because of what he said, which is true. Overall, his story was very moving and it has influenced me that I can overcome anything if I put my mind to it and not to hate but love.
April 6, 2024
As an educator, the footnote in Henry Golde's memoir is something that resonates with me: If I can save one child from hating, then my effort is worthwhile. The children of today are the leaders and politicians of tomorrow and the more we can teach love and empathy, the better the world will be for it. Between "Ragdolls" and "The Happiest Man on Earth" by Eddie Jaku, Holocaust survivors tell their unimaginable tale only to proclaim a similar message of "hate is nothing and love is everything."
November 13, 2018
Meeting and hearing Henry Golde speak may have skewed my feelings of this book.
It is amazing, the things he had to live and deal with to be able to survive as a child through WWII. He describes his ordeals in amazingly vivid details.
It is amazing, the things he had to live and deal with to be able to survive as a child through WWII. He describes his ordeals in amazingly vivid details.
November 15, 2018
This book is not meant to be read for entertainment. It is a witness to a historical atrocity. I was moved by this book and also horrified by it. I'm grateful to Mr. Golde for sharing his experiences.
January 6, 2013
Remarkable story and a wonderful man. I have had the honor of hearing Mr Golde speak on numerous occasions. If you have the opportunity to hear him speak, don't miss it. And don't miss this book.
January 12, 2013
Wow, what a story. Meeting this man you would never know that he endured this.
March 12, 2013
I met Mr. Golde when he spoke at UW Oshkosh a month ago. His experiences during WWII are horrifying but worth the read.
There are many typos in the book, but I was able to look pass them.
There are many typos in the book, but I was able to look pass them.
October 22, 2013
Very nice man with an incredible story, but all of the grammatical errors in the book made it difficult to read in parts.
September 26, 2024
I don’t know how this story isn’t more widely known. I wish this book would get in more folk’s hands and/or a movie get produced about it. To see someone suffer atrocities and face setback after setback and finally lose some of the anger in his heart and come away with love is a powerful thing to read about.
Wish I had read this sooner. I met Golde when I was around 19 or 20. He gave a lecture at UW-MC, and I bought his book. I asked him if he thought hate had to exist in the world for there to be good, and he defiantly said no. “Hate is nothing and love is everything.�
After reading the book, I learned he had owned a tavern in my hometown before I was born. Wish I had known that then, and been able to talk with him more about the paths he had taken, where he ended up, and how his outlook had changed.
Highly recommended.
Wish I had read this sooner. I met Golde when I was around 19 or 20. He gave a lecture at UW-MC, and I bought his book. I asked him if he thought hate had to exist in the world for there to be good, and he defiantly said no. “Hate is nothing and love is everything.�
After reading the book, I learned he had owned a tavern in my hometown before I was born. Wish I had known that then, and been able to talk with him more about the paths he had taken, where he ended up, and how his outlook had changed.
Highly recommended.
April 23, 2021
I struggled to put it down. Some parts were gut wrenching, but I was so grateful for this story. It was well told. I don’t even know what else to say about it.
March 2, 2024
Exceptional depiction of those horrific times.
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