Arnold Grossman

This Boy's War Arnold Grossman

It is 1944. There is hope that the Second World War will soon come to a victorious end for America and its allies. An idealistic and naïve thirteen-year-old, Adam Saperstein, living in a small New Jersey town, has a particular stake in the war. A band of bullies at school has convinced him the conflict in Europe is his fault. Why? Because he is a Jew. Were it not for him and his kind, he is told, there would have been no Hitler to menace the world and "kill or boys over there."Saperstein's loving parents cannot convince the boy, who recently ascended to spiritual manhood through the bar-mitzvah, that his religion should neither cause him shame nor guilt. The family's faith, they tell him, provides a fortress against the intolerance they face in a community in which they are unwelcome. A rock is thrown through a window of their home, bearing a note demanding, "JEWS GET OUT." A fire is set on their front porch. Saperstein endures daily taunts and physical threats. Yet his parents refuse to cower before the intolerance, assuring their troubled son that justice will prevail, which he finds hard to envision with each humiliation. Saperstein, tall for his age, is a reasonably good baseball player and an avid fan of the New York Giants. His proudest possession is a baseball on which he has obtained the signatures of every member of the team roster, save one, a mean-spirited catcher, who once threatened to throw the young fan onto the subway tracks for cornering him after a game. One athletic skill of Saperstein's dwarfs all others, although he takes no particular pleasure in it. He holds a trophy as the fastest rope climber in his school, thanks to the speed he has developed being chased up to the ceiling by knife-wielding bullies in gym class, who vow to re-circumcise him if they catch him. It is after several late-night, whispered conversations with God, and with framed photos of his baseball heroes, that Saperstein makes his covenant with all of them: to do his part in bringing the war in Europe to an end.