Mitka's Secret: A True Story of Child Slavery and Surviving the Holocaust

by Steven W. Brallier, Joel N. Lohr, Lynn G. Beck

Overview

The remarkable life story of Mitka Kalinski, who survived seven years of enslavement—while still a child—to a Nazi officer during and after World War II 

Mitka Kalinski had never revealed his past to anyone. Not even to his wife or his four children. 

But in 1981, three decades after it had all ended, Mitka finally broke his silence about the horrors he had endured during the Holocaust and in the years immediately afterward: not only German concentration camps and sadistic medical experiments but also seven years of enslavement in the household of a Nazi officer, “Iron” Gustav Dörr. 

Having been orphaned before the war, Mitka did not know his origins or even his name. Torture, slavery, and a false name stripped him of his identity entirely. Thus, when he immigrated to the United States in 1951, Mitka seized the opportunity to bury his past and forge a new life. He lived the American life in all its fullness and moved to Nevada with his beloved wife, Adrienne, and their children. But the secret he carried became an increasingly heavy burden, preventing wholeness and healing. 

This is Mitka’s account of facing the past, confronting his captors, connecting with lost relatives, and finding peace in the rediscovery of his origins. For Mitka, this also meant reclaiming his Jewish heritage—a journey that gave him a new sense of purpose and freedom from the lingering effects of trauma that had filled his life to that point. By the end, Mitka’s Secret is less a story of survival and more one of redemption and transformation—from hidden suffering to abundant joy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467460859
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	07/20/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	325
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Steven W. Brallier is both a collector and a teller of stories, qualities he developed in his childhood on the western highlands of Kenya. After life in Kenya, Steve had a long career in the entertainment industry as a promoter, agent, and writer, which exposed him to many people with amazing stories. None was more compelling than Mitka's. Almost immediately a deep trust developed between Steve and the Kalinskis, a trust that provided the essential foundation for the powerful story that is Mitka's Secret.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Preface
Part One: Slavery
     1. Kinderheim: Bila Tserkva and Kiev, 1939–1941
     2. Camps: Birkenau, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Pfaffenwald, Autumn 1941–Winter 1942
     3. Iron Gustav: Rotenburg an der Fulda, December 1942
     4. Moly: Rotenburg an der Fulda, 1942–1943
     5. The Voice: Rotenburg an der Fulda, 1944
     6. A White Flag: Rotenburg an der Fulda, Spring 1945
     7. Amis: Rotenburg an der Fulda, 1945–1949
     8. Bad Aibling: Bad Aibling, 1949–1950
     9. Demitro: Bad Aibling, 1950–1951
Part Two: Secrets
     10. America: The Bronx, February 1951–1952
     11. Tim: Baltimore, 1952–1953
     12. Adrienne: North Tonawanda, 1953
     13. Marriage: North Tonawanda and Lockport, 1953–1959
     14. Heading West: Reno and Sparks, 1959–1963
     15. The Sixties: Sparks, 1963–1969
     16. The Seventies: Sparks, 1970–1981
Part Three: Redemption
     17. The Phone Call: Sparks, 1981–1982
     18. Citizenship: Sparks, 1982–1984
     19. Back to Germany: Rotenburg an der Fulda, Early November 1984
     20. Fobianka: Rotenburg an der Fulda, Late November 1984
     21. “My Brother”: Sparks, 1997
     22. Reunion: London, Summer 1997
     23. Bar Mitzvah: Mineola, Long Island, 2001
Afterword

Editorial Reviews

05/24/2021

Researcher Brallier, religious scholar Lohr, and Beck, dean at Pacific Lutheran University, present a moving account of the story of Mitka Kalinski, who survived seven years as a Nazi’s slave before building a life in America. Mitka fled Poland for Ukraine with relatives in 1939, only to be captured and sent to four concentration camps before turning seven. Unsurprisingly, the most harrowing and impactful scenes are from his time in the camps, particularly Mitka’s vivid memories of a stack of corpses and his thought that puppies—not fetuses—were being removed from women’s bellies. In 1942, he was selected to join the household of Gustav Dörr in Rotenburg, Germany to serve as a child laborer. Treated as a slave, Mitka was deprived of sleep and food, becoming so desperate that he’d sometimes sample the pigs’ slop before delivering it to their pen. After the war ended, he was sent to America, where despite being illiterate and not knowing English, Mitka found work and love, and fathered four children—keeping his past a secret until 1981, when the thought of dying spurred a desire to record his life’s history. Mitka’s remarkable story harrowingly demonstrates the horrors and personal repercussions of the Holocaust. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly
“Mitka’s remarkable story harrowingly demonstrates the horrors and personal repercussions of the Holocaust.”

“For us to make ‘Never Again’ a reality when it comes to horrors like the Holocaust, we must read and remember inspiring stories like this. I recommend this book to all who want a more intimate knowledge of human history and to be moved by a story of hope and survival.”
— Eboo Patel
author of Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the American Promise

“Mitka’s Secret is very different from any Holocaust book I have ever read. The horrors of the first part are very painful to read, but after that it becomes a fascinating tale of how one can recover from the most horrendous experiences when you have a loving partner by your side. It also has a beautiful ending when the hero of the story finds his roots, his family, and his faith.”
— Eva Schloss
Holocaust survivor, humanitarian, and speaker
stepsister of Anne Frank and author of Eva’s Story

“A most powerful life story of a child survivor of the Holocaust and his way from a children’s home in Ukraine to America. This book demonstrates that child survivors were not only passive objects of German crimes but also active individuals. After Mitka had somehow survived the shootings in the East and had managed to stay alive in different camps, he was taken to Rotenburg an der Fulda. While Mitka’s memory before arriving in this small German town at the end of 1942 is marked by a few blurred flashbacks only, it now changes into a coherent and detailed narrative about life as a child forced laborer in Nazi Germany, the lifelong impact of trauma, and the healing process of telling this incredible story.”
— Johannes-Dieter Steinert
author of Holocaust und Zwangsarbeit: Erinnerungen jüdischer Kinder 1938–1945, winner of the 2020 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research

“Mitka’s life is the ‘journey of a soul’ filled with tragedy yet transformative enough to inspire and seek the truth.”
— Rabbi Anchelle Perl
Chabad of Mineola, New York

“Millions of children died during the Second World War. They died from the ordinary violence of war as well as the starvation and disease that follow in war’s wake. Millions of those children were Jewish. But they were murdered by cold calculation based on a racist ideology that persists to this day. They were shot, burned alive, hung, starved, and worked to death. This is the riveting account of a rare survivor of this brutal regime. It is also a story of thriving in a new land, building a life and a family, and then seeking to come to terms with a haunting past. Mitka’s Secret will stay with you, trouble you, move you, and give you hope.”
— John E. Phelan Jr.
author of Separated Siblings: An Evangelical Understanding of Jews and Judaism

“In this well-written, well-researched story, the reader lives with a solitary little Jewish boy in the house of a German family in World War II, dressed in rags, often bitterly cold, always hungry, doing heavy work in the fields or lying alone at night in the dark, totally ignorant of the outside world. The constant fear of the unknown, the arbitrary punishments, the minuscule pleasures that could brighten a whole day, the complex relationships with his captors are all there, but above all there is the will to survive as an upright man—as he so triumphantly did.”
— Reg Green
author of The Nicholas Effect: A Boy’s Gift to the World

“To meet Mitka Kalinski and to hear his story, the hurdles and horrors he overcame, is to understand that love once in a while triumphs over hatred—that perseverance, hard work, compassion, and more than a dose of boyish good luck helps one survive a World War. Mitka’s story is amazing and, in the end, beautiful. His ability to forgive, to move forward, to raise a family and build a life in the West is just as profound. His courage to confront the painful past of his youth, to share it all with his wife Adrienne, and to return to the hell from which he escaped so many decades ago—this carries lessons for all of us. We must bear witness; we must never forget.”
— Jacob Wheeler
independent journalist in Traverse City, Michigan

“The moment I heard Mitka’s story, I immediately knew I needed to write music for it. How often do you get a canvas like that of Mitka Kalinski’s life? It has been an absolute honor to be involved with every aspect of his life, and this project and getting to know him has made me a better person—more grateful, kinder, and more willing to be patient with others. This is a story that everyone needs to hear, for it will absolutely change the life of all who are touched by it for the better.”
— Jordan S. Roper
film composer and creator of the symphonic composition “My Name Is Mitka

From the Publisher