My Stormy Youth

Powerful Story of Surviving Death Camps

My Stormy Youth presents the Yiddish-translated memoirs of Holocaust survivor Mr. Norman Kamelgard, a 74 year old New Jersey resident born in Poland. Mr. Kamelgard's somber account of Nazi occupied Poland, transformed from a cultural Mecca to desolate slave-labor ghettos, traces his family's fate from preWar posterity to death in the concentration camp. His miraculous survival and emigration to Israel encountered further resistance from British authorities, who imprisoned him for bypassing entry procedures and thinking he was a terrorist. Kamelgard's poignant story captures the profound tragedies forever imprinted in Shoa survivors. Like other survivors, his broken dreams of childhood passionately call attention to the enigma of War and futility of genocide. Sixty-two years after Kristallnacht, Norman Kamelgard found inspiration to publish his memories, first written while a British prisoner. Later he contacted a friend who translated the entire Yiddish version into English. Then, through the serendipity of contacting a Michigan cousin, he learned of the editor, another cousin and psychologist of several books. Parts of My Stormy Youth inspired footage in Director Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List."