The numbers about the Holocaust are often cited as difficult to fathom. The horrible systematic approach of the Nazis is hard to imagine, so when someone says "Six million," it can be hard to assign a comprehensible narrative to this number, but this isn't the story of six million people. This is only the story of one child, a real human who was born and lived in Poland, the victim or racism there. When the Nazi's came to purge Europe of their Jews, he was one of the only 52 children under eight to survive.
The point about the numbers is not to quantify suffering, because the suffering cannot be told in just the facts—that is the value of this narrative. By explaining the sheer horror and synchronicity of his own personal fears about anti-Semitism, always wondering whether he would be safe, because there were clearly those in the community who already hated him because of an accidental quality of his character—it's not like he chose his ethnicity. So when the Nazis arise in Germany, that is a little too close to home.
Little by little, his fears grow, and because he is a child, he is used to having enormous fears that amount to nothing, so he has to figure out whether the Nazis are a real threat or whether this is just rumor-mongering. When he ends up shipped off to a camp, that is when the true terror sets in. Not only that but only a percent of a percent survived. He tells of the unimaginable horror of enduring one of the planet's most brutal, horrifying environments ever conceived, from the place of his innocent, impressionable psychology. No doubt he deserves his story to be seen and heard.
