My Name Is David Search for Identity A True Post-Holocaust Odyssey. By Michael Halperin

My Name Is David Search for Identity A True Post-Holocaust Odyssey. By Michael Halperin. ISBN: 978-0-915745-27-2. LC: 2020936501, 6" x 9", Black & White on Cream paper 278 pages. Illustrations $16.95 

Jewish Non Fiction Holocaust Biography,  Jewish Holocaust Survival Biography

Three traumatic events shaped David Gutgeld’s young life in Warsaw, Poland.  His mother died after his birth in 1938.  The 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany forced his father to flee for his life. In 1940 three-year-old David and his eight-year-old brother Jacob were forcibly interned with their aunts and grandmother in the infamous Warsaw Ghetto. As news of wholesale execution of Jews became known, the women planned the children’s escape into the arms of Alexander and Mela Roslan, Polish-Catholic merchants, who willingly made their choice at the risk of death. To protect them from suspicion, the Roslans named David “Tadek.”  Jacob became “Gieniek.” At war’s end David embarked on a remarkable soul-searching odyssey and adventure across war-torn Europe with his brother and the Roslans who, in an act of love and altruism, refused to abandon them.  An existential crisis erupted when they discovered their father alive and living in the British Protectorate of Palestine.  Forces beyond David’s control threatened to tear him away from Alex and Mela, the father and mother who loved and nurtured him. 

Author, playwright, screen and television writer Michael Halperin served as Executive Story Consultant, 20th Century-Fox and Story Editor, Universal Television, and writer-producer for MCA Television. He authored Black Wheels, National Education Association choice for its African American 100 Best Book List. Best-selling Jacob’s Rescue: A Holocaust Story, Random House, written under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, was named ABA Best Book, Children’s Book Council; Notable Children’s Trade Book, Int’l. Reading Assn. Teacher’s Choice. Writing Great Characters, Lone Eagle; Writing the Second Act, MWP; Writing the Killer Treatment, MWP are staple texts for universities. His latest book, Fields of Poison: Migrant Farmworker to Crusading Physician, was published jointly by Floricanto and Berkeley Presses.