Thursday's child has far to go

by Walter Laqueur

This is the story of a young man who, against considerable odds, was a survivor. Born in Breslau, which was then in Germany, to a family with roots in both Western Europe and Russia, Walter Laqueur describes with precision and deep involvement the days of his youth during one of the most fascinating periods of modern times - the last years of the Weimar Republic and the first years of the Nazi era. In a remarkable personal account, he re-creates a world that no longer. Exists - Nazi Germany - and tells what it meant to grow up there. Thursday's Child Has For to Go is not about high politics but about families of yesteryear, early friendships, school, "the group," the fears and hopes of an adolescent uprooted from his native country, a young wanderer through various worlds. Laqueur then shifts to Palestine on the eve of World War II, and describes his life as an agricultural laborer in a kibbutz, the joys of guard duty in the fields. And cowboy life among Bedouins and Arab herdsmen. As