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Im Tunnel: das kurze Leben der Marion Samuel, 1931-1943
A generous feat of biographical sleuthing by an acclaimed historian rescues one child victim of the Holocaust from oblivion
When the German Remembrance Foundation established a prize to commemorate the million Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust, it was deliberately named after a victim about whom nothing was known except her age and the date of her Marion Samuel, an eleven-year-old girl killed in Auschwitz in 1943. Sixty years after her death, when Götz Aly received the award, he was moved to find out whatever he could about Marion's short life and restore this child to history.
In what is as much a detective story as a historical reconstruction, Aly, praised for his "formidable research skills" (Christopher Browning), traces the Samuel family's agonizing decline from shop owners to forced laborers to deportees. Against all odds, Aly manages to recover expropriation records, family photographs, and even a trace of Marion's voice in the premonition she confided to a school "People disappear," she said, "into the tunnel."
A gripping account of a family caught in the tightening grip of persecution, Into the Tunnel is a powerful reminder that the millions of Nazi victims were also, each one, an individual life.
When the German Remembrance Foundation established a prize to commemorate the million Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust, it was deliberately named after a victim about whom nothing was known except her age and the date of her Marion Samuel, an eleven-year-old girl killed in Auschwitz in 1943. Sixty years after her death, when Götz Aly received the award, he was moved to find out whatever he could about Marion's short life and restore this child to history.
In what is as much a detective story as a historical reconstruction, Aly, praised for his "formidable research skills" (Christopher Browning), traces the Samuel family's agonizing decline from shop owners to forced laborers to deportees. Against all odds, Aly manages to recover expropriation records, family photographs, and even a trace of Marion's voice in the premonition she confided to a school "People disappear," she said, "into the tunnel."
A gripping account of a family caught in the tightening grip of persecution, Into the Tunnel is a powerful reminder that the millions of Nazi victims were also, each one, an individual life.
158 pages, Paperback
First published May 31, 2004
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242 people want to read
About the author
Götz Aly
26 books70 followersGötz Haydar Aly is a German journalist, historian and social scientist.
After attending the German School of Journalists, Aly studied history and political science in Berlin. As a journalist, he worked for the taz, the Berliner Zeitung and the FAZ. Presently, from 2004 to 2005, he is a visiting professor for interdisciplinary Holocaust research at the Fritz Bauer Institut in Frankfurt am Main.
After attending the German School of Journalists, Aly studied history and political science in Berlin. As a journalist, he worked for the taz, the Berliner Zeitung and the FAZ. Presently, from 2004 to 2005, he is a visiting professor for interdisciplinary Holocaust research at the Fritz Bauer Institut in Frankfurt am Main.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
October 22, 2012
Devastating. The author won an award for his book Hitler's Willing Executioners. The award was named for one child killed in the Holocaust, Marion Samuel. Her name had been picked at random, and nothing was known about her but her name and place of death. The author is a historian, and he felt this was unacceptable. He found out a number of things about this child, including the title phrase, which is what she told a playmate happened to Jews in the Third Reich, 'they go into a tunnel and don't come out'. He wrote this slim volume to remember what we could about Marion Samuel. It is not sentimental or maudlin, but the facts are searing enough as is.
I learned about the Nazi's property declarations, and how the confiscation of Jewish property propped up the Nazi welfare state for ordinary Germans.
I learned about the Nazi's property declarations, and how the confiscation of Jewish property propped up the Nazi welfare state for ordinary Germans.
February 21, 2008
This is a slim book, but Marion Samuel only lived to 12. She was one of the 6 million Jews who did not survive Hitler. Through the diligence of author Gotz Aly, we are given a glimpse into 3 generations of one family and how Nazi hatred affected them all.
October 18, 2011
Definitely could've done without Seinsch's afterword, although the last line was good: "They were young and old, poor and rich, men and women, children full of dreams and hopes--like Marion Samuel, a child with a ribbon in her hair." I suppose the people on the committee couldn't help but be a bit annoyed though...I mean, having their proverbially anonymous victim being brought out into the light like this...
October 23, 2020
This book was beautiful and painful at the same time. It was fascinating to see the painstaking research of the author and how he was able to piece together the tragic story of an unknown child, Marion Samuel, who was killed in the Nazi concentration camps. I would highly recommend this to almost anyone.
October 5, 2017
I finished this book a few weeks ago. It has been sitting on my table waiting for my post/review. This book is tiny at around 100 pages, but so powerful. This is about Marion Samuel a child deported to Auschwitz. The Rembrance Foundation awards a research award every year in the name of Marion, a child killed during the Holocaust that has almost no information known about her. The author investigated to find out just who Marion was and about her family. The author found family photos, the transport list showing Marion was moved to the transport her father was on, and even an inventory list of Marion's family apartment. There's so much information packed into this book about Marion's life and how the Nazis murdered her and so many of her family members. Marion was killed at Auschwitz on March 4, 1943. She was only 11 years old. This book remembers her. So someone remembers her. I wish there were more books about children lost during the Holocaust. There is a quote I shared in the second pic. It is a fitting quote. 6 million Jews were murdered. It is often forgotten that every number that makes that 6 million is a person. They all had a story. This is a highly recommended read.
June 17, 2013
This brief little book is packed with historical significance as Aly brings Marion Samuel to life after decades of being a faceless victim of Nazi terror and oppression. If only we could do this for all of those whose ,ices were ended by the Nazi terror machine! Ally's methods of scholarship and easily readable style make this a great read for those high school aged and beyond. I, personally, look forward to using it with students in my Holocaust courses during the upcoming school year.
November 2, 2025
Götz Aly is an esteemed German historian who in late 2002 was told he been selected to receive the Marion Samuel Prize created to commemorate the memory of the Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. The Prize was named for one of the victims, selected randomly from a book listing the names of Jewish children murdered by the Nazis.
As a result of his selection, Aly determined to tell the world about the heretofore unknown Marion Samuel who was an innocent, twelve year old girl when the Nazis sent her and her Father to the Auschwitz/Birkenau death camp. Upon her arrival, Marion was marched directly to her death. Her Father, Ernst Samuel was selected to work until he no longer could and thus survived for a few months, tortured by the knowledge of his beloved Marion's fate. His Wife, Cilly, had been deported to that same fate shortly before them and like her daughter was marched directly to her death upon her arrival.
Aly had scant information and no ready sources upon which to begin his research thus his book is short but intense. He details the journey of this young Jewish girl, born to a couple of modest means in pre-war Poland who sought only a quiet life and the ability to enjoy the fruits of their labors, worship according to their Faith and to live in peace, security and harmony within their community of longstanding. Aly provides family photos to contextualize his narrative. He also provides facsimiles of Nazi bureaucratic documents which underscore the demonic mindset of the regime which murdered the Samuels and millions of others.
Aly takes the book's title from little, innocent Marion Samuel's understanding, at the tender age of five or six, that darkness had descended upon her world. She described it to friends as a tunnel bored deep into a mountain. People, Marion said, would enter the unlit tunnel and fall into the abyss as if they never existed. Thanks to Götz Aly we know Marion Samuel and her family existed and we are reminded the Nazis tried and failed to erase their crimes from history's accounting.
This book will imbed itself deeply within your conscience.
As a result of his selection, Aly determined to tell the world about the heretofore unknown Marion Samuel who was an innocent, twelve year old girl when the Nazis sent her and her Father to the Auschwitz/Birkenau death camp. Upon her arrival, Marion was marched directly to her death. Her Father, Ernst Samuel was selected to work until he no longer could and thus survived for a few months, tortured by the knowledge of his beloved Marion's fate. His Wife, Cilly, had been deported to that same fate shortly before them and like her daughter was marched directly to her death upon her arrival.
Aly had scant information and no ready sources upon which to begin his research thus his book is short but intense. He details the journey of this young Jewish girl, born to a couple of modest means in pre-war Poland who sought only a quiet life and the ability to enjoy the fruits of their labors, worship according to their Faith and to live in peace, security and harmony within their community of longstanding. Aly provides family photos to contextualize his narrative. He also provides facsimiles of Nazi bureaucratic documents which underscore the demonic mindset of the regime which murdered the Samuels and millions of others.
Aly takes the book's title from little, innocent Marion Samuel's understanding, at the tender age of five or six, that darkness had descended upon her world. She described it to friends as a tunnel bored deep into a mountain. People, Marion said, would enter the unlit tunnel and fall into the abyss as if they never existed. Thanks to Götz Aly we know Marion Samuel and her family existed and we are reminded the Nazis tried and failed to erase their crimes from history's accounting.
This book will imbed itself deeply within your conscience.
June 16, 2017
This was an amazing book filled to the brim with academic research about the life of a little girl who lost her life to genocide. I loved that I learned about someone who I had never learned about before, but this short book was very slow and you could tell this was very well researched which is good, but does not translate well to the novel. Overall, I recommend!
November 20, 2024
I rated this book 5/5 stars because, 1) Gotz Aly's labor of love and restless hard work are incredibly commendable. And 2) this book really made me THINK...contest my own beliefs and think past my own mental binaries. This book was also intimate and provided me with "insider" knowledge on what the experience of a Jewish family in Germany was during the Third Reich.
May 14, 2024
9:17-11:52 PM
January 28, 2024
Picked this up on a whim at the library. Was very interested who this girl was. It gave a lot of info about her family as well. Sad story but I was glad I read it. Very interesting.
October 9, 2023
Emphasizes the importance of memory and the power of research in piecing together a forgotten young girl back together. Aly shows us that this is one important way to bring a fraction of justice to the victims of the Holocaust, and the paper trail that Nazis both left behind but also destroyed in their violence.
I thought that this book read more as a casually written research paper for a class, and some of the findings were not always relevant to Marion's life and was therefore confusing at times. The premise of the book, still, was quite moving and personified the Holocaust just a little bit more
I thought that this book read more as a casually written research paper for a class, and some of the findings were not always relevant to Marion's life and was therefore confusing at times. The premise of the book, still, was quite moving and personified the Holocaust just a little bit more
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December 29, 2025This is among the most remarkable, moving, and compelling books I've read on the Holocaust. The story of its creation is part of what makes that true: It is based on research that Götz Aly did once he found out he had been awarded the "Marion Samuel Prize" by foundation called Remembrance. The foundation had been created by Walther and Ingrid Seinsch to commemorate specifically the Nazi regime's child victims with a book prize named after one such victim, chosen at random. They selected Marion Samuel, about whom nothing was known except that she had been born in 1931, that she had been deported on March 3, 1943, from Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin, and that she had been murdered in Auschwitz upon her arrival on March 4.
When Aly learned he had been selected as the 2002 recipient of the prize, his first thought was "who was this Marion Samuel?" And because he is a historian and researcher of the highest caliber, a brilliant sleuth, a tireless chaser-down-of-clues, and an empathetic and careful interpreter of evidence, he was able to answer that question with this small book -- despite the fact that the 11-year-old Marion left no letters, no diaries, no written records at all.
Through interviews with cousins, schoolmates, through careful study of railway timetables, photographs, tax records, through the extraction of information about the human beings and their fates implied -- although not openly discussed -- in dozens of forms produced by and for the Nazi regime itself, Aly is able to reconstruct a story that underwrites an argument he made elsewhere: the theft of Jewish property went directly towards the support of the "Aryan community."
This moving little book is also an exemplary presentation of evidence: a documentary history of a crime that its perpetrators didn't try to hide. As Ruth Kluger writes in her preface, it is "a weighty little book, as easy to read as it is difficult to forget."
When Aly learned he had been selected as the 2002 recipient of the prize, his first thought was "who was this Marion Samuel?" And because he is a historian and researcher of the highest caliber, a brilliant sleuth, a tireless chaser-down-of-clues, and an empathetic and careful interpreter of evidence, he was able to answer that question with this small book -- despite the fact that the 11-year-old Marion left no letters, no diaries, no written records at all.
Through interviews with cousins, schoolmates, through careful study of railway timetables, photographs, tax records, through the extraction of information about the human beings and their fates implied -- although not openly discussed -- in dozens of forms produced by and for the Nazi regime itself, Aly is able to reconstruct a story that underwrites an argument he made elsewhere: the theft of Jewish property went directly towards the support of the "Aryan community."
This moving little book is also an exemplary presentation of evidence: a documentary history of a crime that its perpetrators didn't try to hide. As Ruth Kluger writes in her preface, it is "a weighty little book, as easy to read as it is difficult to forget."
August 26, 2009
I appreciate this book as a work of research, not literature. It is a short biography, investigating the brief life of an ordinary 11-year old. Other than her name and age, Marion Samuel was one of the unknown of the million children whose lives were violently abbreviated in the National Socialists' Final Solution. Her name was randomly selected by the German Remembrance Foundation as the name for a prize to be awarded in commemoration of the child victims of the Holocaust. Gotz Aly received the award for his earlier research and publications and determined to find out as much as possible about this one individual and the set of circumstances that brought her to an ignoble death at Auschwitz. The documentation is the skeleton on which the narrative hangs. At the end, we have a portrait of a child, her family and the machinations of the ruthlessly efficient Reich bureaucracy that disposed of them.
October 12, 2012
Marion Samuel's name was randomly selected by the German Remembrance Foundation, as the name for a prize to be awarded in commemoration of the child victims of the Holocaust. When Götz Aly (whose name btw I keep thinking is written backwards, because Götz to me sounds more like a surname and Aly a first name! XD) received the award he decided to see how much he could find out about Marion, which brings us to this book.
There was not much he was able to learn of her sadly, but he did manage to find out a decent amount about her extended family. But it really just goes to show that she was just a normal 12-year-old girl, from a normal family, much like so many others who died during the Holocaust. And that there ought to be a story like this for every victim.
There was not much he was able to learn of her sadly, but he did manage to find out a decent amount about her extended family. But it really just goes to show that she was just a normal 12-year-old girl, from a normal family, much like so many others who died during the Holocaust. And that there ought to be a story like this for every victim.
July 9, 2015
Aly's achievement is mind-blowing: the meticulous reconstruction of one Jewish family's experience in Nazi Germany, and the elevation of an unknown young child to a specific individual girl whose brief life was swallowed up with many others in an era of true horror. I was particularly struck (and sadly enlightened) by the massive scope of the process and by how heartless, meticulous, and systematic it was. As Jews were packed into railcars and transported off to death camps, their apartments and possessions were seized, carefully inventoried, and redistributed to Germans whose homes had been bombed. It was a thriving economic approach that enriched its perpetrators and completely ignored the corpses. People can be so awful.
February 11, 2008
This biography has been deemed remarkable for the reason that it exists in the first place, and I must agree with that sentiment. When contacted about being awarded the Marion Samuel prize, Gotz Aly knew nothing about the girl for whom it was named. Nor did anyone, seeing has how her name was plucked from among thousands in the books of Holocaust victims. Seeking to return her voice and banish her anonymity, Aly meticulously researched her family, and incredibly found photos and people who knew this little girl. A moving portrait of the personal experience in such a devestating period.
January 14, 2011
Fascinating story of a young "unknown" Holocaust victim. The author received the "Marion Samuel Award" for his historical work with the Third Reich. He felt he couldn't accept the award without learning of the history of Marion Samuel and learning about who she actually. He did some amazing research to bring a life and history to a random girl and her family that were murdered at Auschwitz. The amount of work he did to humanize this victim was amazing. Interesting story.
October 27, 2008
Like in the book Empire Made Me, the author vividly portrayed a period in history by looking at the life of one ordinary individual. I was impressed by how much information he was able to dig up on Marion Samuel and her family, considering that sixty years had passed and most of them had been killed. This is a slim but powerful volume that brings to life the horrors of the Holocaust.
March 24, 2012
Aly has written a touching volume about how little we can know about the many, many people who perished as part of the Holocaust. At times sad -- the Samuel family had nearly everything taken away from them, including, in the end, each other -- and at times miraculous, with the amount of information Aly was able to discover about this one little girl and her probable fate.
January 16, 2016
This gives you the author was able to find out about the life of an eleven-year-old girl killed at Auschwitz, plus everything he was able to find out about her family and her hometown. Soul-crushing -- you know she was literally only one out of 11 million others exterminated that same way, people we will never learn about -- but recommended.
January 23, 2016
This is the most amazing book and one I intend to use with my 8th grade students for a lesson. Beautifully written, the book is a quick read but one you will never forget as long as you live. The research that went into creating this book is beyond belief and I'm so hoping that I can somehow access these documents to use with my students. A must read for Holocaust studies.
March 27, 2008
An easy but memorable read. If I'm remembering correctly (ha), the author randomly chose a name from a list of thousands of unknown Holocaust victims and vowed to research and write about the person. He picked a 12-year-old. Fascinating and so sad.
October 3, 2012
Sad story, and a truly impressive piece of reporting.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews