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The Smallest Hope Jack Klajman
The walls of Warsaw’s ghetto are high, and the holes in the wall are so small that only children can squeeze through, so it’s up to the bravest young inhabitants to smuggle food back to their starving loved ones. Nazi guards patrol the ghetto walls, and the punishment for being caught is death. Only nine years old, Jankiel (Jack) Klajman risks his life to give his family a chance to survive. When the Jews in the ghetto rise up against the Nazis in 1943, Jack turns his smuggling efforts to the aid of the
resistance, and narrowly escapes during the rebellion. Along with other Jewish boys pas- sing as gentile, he then makes a living selling cigarettes in the heart of the city to the Nazi soldiers. Jack represents the Smallest Hope of a once-great Jewish community. Although he suffers immense losses during the war, when Jack leaves behind the fire-scarred ruins of Warsaw he finds a way to flourish, making his way to Canada and building a life full of music, family and hope for a better future.
This dangerous, hustling lifestyle quickly came to dominate my childhood. It was depressing to realize that other children were playing with toys while I was risking my life to feed my family. “
About the author Jack Klajman was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1931. An orphan after the war, he was sup- ported through a program of the Central British Fund for German Jewry to immigrate to England in 1945. In 1948, he immigrated to Canada through the War Orphans Project. Jack settled in London, Ontario, where he owned a fur store for many decades. In 2013, he was featured in the documentary Little Heroes from the Warsaw Ghetto , which chro- nicles his and other Jewish boys’ survival in Warsaw after the destruction of the ghetto. With his wife, Sonia, he had four children and three grandchildren. Jack Klajman passed away in 2019.
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