This valuable book centers on the testimony of six women and four men, each of whom during the 1990s spoke to high school students in Jacksonville who were studying the Holocaust under the direction of Samuel Cox. Eight of the speakers were Holocaust survivors, including four who had endured Auschwitz. The accounts of their wartime existence are conveyed by Cox with sympathy but also with blunt honesty, for the camps were blunt in what they imposed: the constant threat of death, by gas or other means; the long days of heavy labor; the tiny amounts of food that prisoners were given to sustain them; the filthy conditions and overcrowding that prompted disease; and the forced marches, especially common in the last months of the war, as sick and famished prisoners were compelled to plod from camp to camp, and those who fell behind were shot. First is the narrative of a former officer in the United States Army, a man who had taken part in the liberation of Dachau and had then served as deputy commandant at Landsberg Prison, where many high-ranking Nazis, some of them heavily involved in the Holocaust, were confined after the war, and a number were executed. His recollections of what he saw at Dachau, and his impressions of the notorious Nazis whom he encountered at Landsberg, are particularly riveting. Cox’s book concludes with the account provided by a Danish physician, who participated in the best-known rescue of the war, the evacuation to Sweden of almost all Jews living in Denmark, this action taking place just as German occupiers were preparing to deport them to the camps. Of the ten individuals featured, only one was still alive when Cox completed his book in 2023. Inevitably, the last members of the generation that endured the Holocaust, as well as those who combatted it or otherwise witnessed it, are passing on. Yet, this is coming at a time when interest in teaching young people about the Shoah and its lessons is at unprecedented levels. The subject, not widely taught prior to 1980, is now a fixture in most European countries, and a considerable majority of states in the US either mandate or promote Holocaust education in their schools. Many hundreds of colleges and universities worldwide offer courses on the Holocaust. Since the number of survivors is declining rapidly, those who teach about the Holocaust must grapple with the issue of how best to provide immediacy to students who will never have the opportunity to attend a talk by someone who was there. Among the resources that instructors may find useful in compensating for this loss are anthologies of testimony. The book that Samuel Cox has added to the field includes a range of accounts, each of which offers its own perspective on Holocaust-related issues, while none is more than 30 pages in length. It is a work that will be of interest to a wide readership, but it may have a particular appeal in high school or college courses that include units on the Holocaust, for it has the virtue of covering a great deal of ground in a short space.

Samuel Cox did as he vowed. He gave everlasting names to some of the most amazing and surely the bravest human beings that God ever created. Sam’s stories of Holocaust survivors were not written with the detachment that exists in some works of historical non-fiction. While accurately captured, the accounts were told with the compassion and depth of understanding that could only be achieved by many painful face-to-face and heart-to-heart conversations with individuals about the most horrific and darkest moments which exists in any period of our world’s history. The unimaginable cruelty of Hitler and his Third Reich, along with the unwavering courage and resilience of his victims have begun to dim in today’s environment of preoccupation with other pursuits. But people of all ages, education, interests, and lifestyles will be able to read Sam’s unforgettable narratives in I Will Give Them An Everlasting Names: Jacksonville’s Stories of the Holocaust, and they will never again be able to forget the horrors of Hitler’s hell and those who lived to tell the story.

The chronicle I Will Give Them An Everlasting Name, crafted by Samuel Cox, is a remarkable effort in documenting a history that is now all but forgotten. The preservation of these life histories is itself an incredible and desirable achievement, but there is something special that many will not notice or understand about this compilation of stories. Samuel Cox, as a part of his own fascination with history, was able to create an environment of absolute trust with these incredible people. As a second-generation child of a survivor, I know how difficult it is for many Holocaust survivors to speak about the ugly, desperate circumstances they endured. The fact that Sam was able to enlist so many of these folks to speak to his classes and then to divulge their life experiences in such detail is a feat beyond remarkable. The book is prescient and timely in this age of political turmoil, where antisemitic attacks are at an all-time high and democracy itself hangs in the balance. It is unfortunate that there is not a Samuel Cox in each city across America. There are so many stories untold from this era. Let this chronicle serve as an important reminder of what mankind is capable of both in kindness and horror.

The voices of Holocaust survivors, preserved in print by Samuel Cox in I will Give Them an Everlasting Name: Jacksonville’s Stories of the Holocaust, is a valuable source of both historic preservation and inspiration. Cox’s well-crafted narratives make ample use of primary source material, including interviews with, and personal recollections of Holocaust survivors. He provides readers with brief, yet richly detailed stories of men and women who survived the most indescribable horrors in human history who made new lives for themselves in a small southern city far from their ancestral homeland. As a Holocaust educator the value of individual testimonies cannot be overstated. The wealth of primary and secondary documentation covering the Holocaust is vast, however it is the personal stories of men and women who emerged from the Shoah and rebuilt their lives in a land far from home that provides us with a true and terrifying glimpse into the past, juxtaposed against a hopeful view of the future. Local students of the Holocaust will learn how these survivors contributed in inestimable ways to the community they called home for many decades. On a more global level, Cox’s work preserves the stories of a small segment of the population of Holocaust survivors who arrived in the United States in the years following World War II and contributes to the catalog of testimony that is integral to understanding and appreciating the scope of the Holocaust and its impact on survivors, their families, and their communities.