Vojak z zlatimi gumbi. Prirejeno za mladino

'The Soldier with the Golden Buttons – Adapt for Youth', is a harrowing narrative with autobiographical elements, woven from the author’s memories and the testimonies of children who survived the Holocaust.

War enters Biba’s life almost imperceptibly – first as unease among the adults, then as a soldier and a train that takes her away from home. The world she knows begins to disintegrate. She does not understand why everyone is crying, what it means that she is Jewish, why she must wear a yellow star, or why she is swallowed by a train car crowded with children, with doors just like those through which her mother disappeared. Then comes the hut, where she is trapped with them between four stifling walls, beneath a scorching roof. When she is finally reunited with her mother in the camp, her mother is no longer the same, and she herself is no longer the same child. Slowly and painfully, they rebuild the bond that the war has severed, while the love between them must be born anew – from glances, crumbs of bread, a cup of water, and the word “Mama.”

First published in 1964, the novel is a harrowing testimony to how war transforms childhood and to the struggle to rebuild emotional bonds with one’s parents. Set in an indeterminate time and an unnamed place, the story is also a reminder that the severed bond between a child and her mother under conditions of unimaginable horror is not merely a thing of the past.