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The Boy Who Vanished

A True Story of Surviving the Holocaust

Coming Soon
The Boy Who Vanished Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Ernest Gunter Fontheim

With Fred Rosenbaum

Edited by Jordan Fontheim

Preorder from Retailers:

On Sale
Nov 17, 2026
Page Count
288 pages
Publisher
Little, Brown and Company
ISBN-13
9780316612074

The incredible true account of a young Jewish student who, in a desperate gambit to escape the Nazis, went underground in his hometown of Berlin, posing as an Aryan with another young escapee—a harrowing ordeal that he would miraculously escape not only with his life, but also with a love that would last a lifetime.

In 1933, the year that Hitler seized power in Germany, Ernest Fontheim was a bookish and playful 11-year-old, leading a charmed existence in Berlin with his assimilated upper-class Jewish family. In less than a decade, the Fontheims’ fortunes irrevocably changed: By 1941, Ernest’s father had been stripped of his law license, their luxurious apartment had been usurped by a Nazi official, and Ernest, now 19, had been forced into labor at the Siemens munitions factory. First his girlfriend, then his best friend, and then his entire immediate family were “deported to the East,” sent to fates unknown.

Finally, in desperation, Ernest approached his friend at Siemens, the charming Margot Hass, with a plan: along with her parents, they would go underground, posing as an Aryan family in order to avoid the roundups. Ernest and the Hasses soon joined the ranks of the roughly 6,500 Berlin Jews who went into hiding after deportations to the camps began. Most of the invisibles were caught within the first few weeks or months. But incredibly, this little group—joined by fate and by choice—would survive not only the terror of the war but also the chaos of its aftermath, when Ernest found himself facing death on numerous occasions at the hands of their Soviet liberators.

An instant classic, The Boy Who Vanished is the stunning tale of a young man’s struggle to hold onto his humanity in a country gone mad—and his unlikely triumph over the forces of darkness.
 

Genre:

  • "An engrossing and intimate account of the constant vigilance, ingenuity, and performance required for an underground Jew to evade detection in the Third Reich. Deeply personal and profoundly affecting, The Boy Who Vanished takes seriously the importance of artistic and cultural resistance, and is necessary reading for anyone confronting the realities of life in an authoritarian state."
    Elizabeth Hyman, author of The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto
  • "Written in vivid narrative prose, Ernest Fontheim’s story unfolds like scenes from a movie. His odyssey of coming of age underground as a Jewish student in wartime Germany, evading bloodthirsty Nazis on a daily basis, and navigating Berlin’s treacherous black market also exemplifies the courage and luck necessary to overcome a government bent on genocide. Hard to put down, The Boy Who Vanished is a testament to the commitment of a man and his community to freedom, interwoven with a wistful tale of triumph over unimaginable loss.”
    Keren Blankfeld, author of Lovers in Auschwitz
  • “From the challenges of using fake IDs and finding food on the black market to the hair-raising experience of being marked and chased on foot through Nazi Berlin, The Boy Who Vanished reminds us that survival is a community effort requiring ingenuity, tenacity, and a lot of luck. Ernest Fontheim’s unique and harrowing story draws you in starting on the very first page. You will read this book, cover to cover, in one sitting.”
    Heather Dune Macadam, author of 999 and Star Crossed

Formats and Prices

Price

$19.99

Price

$25.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $19.99 $25.99 CAD
  2. ebook $12.99 $16.99 CAD
  3. Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $24.99 $32.99 CAD

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Ernest Gunter Fontheim

About the Author

Ernest Fontheim was a prominent professor of atmospheric physics at the University of Michigan from 1960-1991. Born in Berlin, he survived the Holocaust, although his parents, Georg and Charlotte, as well as his younger sister, Eva, were murdered in Auschwitz. He immigrated to America in 1947. In 1957, he received a Ph.D. in physics from Lehigh University. He passed away in 2019, leaving behind two children and three grandchildren.

Fred Rosenbaum has published eight books, including Cosmopolitans (UC Press), and has co-authored four memoirs of Holocaust survivors, including Taking Risks (with Joseph Pell), Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year; and the best-selling Out on a Ledge (with Eva Libitzky), a finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Award of the Independent Publishers Association. He is the Founding Director Emeritus of Lehrhaus Judaica (now New Lehrhaus), one of North America’s premier schools for adult Jewish education, and has taught at San Francisco State University and the Berkeley-based Graduate Theological Union. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
 
Jordan Fontheim, Ernest’s grandson, is a senior consultant in the healthcare industry and an active member of the Jewish community of Washington, DC. Deeply involved in Jewish culture throughout his life, he grew up hearing his family’s survival story and joined the project to carry his grandfather’s legacy into print for the next generation. He holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Rochester and both an M.B.A. and an M.H.A. from Tulane University. He currently resides in Washington, DC with his partner.

Learn more about this author