1934: A 13-year-old Jewish boy escapes Nazi Germany to become the highest decorated WWII Palestinian (future Israeli) soldier in the British Army.
2010: A top Israeli computer scientist searches for her favorite artist of her youth.
From the rise of the Nazi Party through the formation of the State of Israel, across a sea of time, their worlds collide.
An esteemed researcher at IBM Israel joined a sixty-year search to discover the identity of the illustrator of “the pearl of Israeli children’s literature,” And There Was Evening, a bestseller and timeless classic, now in its 42nd edition.
Fred Hausman, the celebrated, but unknown, artist also happened to be the highest decorated WWII Palestinian soldier in the British Army, the only one to earn the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM), the highest gallantry award for a non-British citizen in the British Army, making it the most important WWII medal to Israel.
The present and the past meld in The Lost Artist: Love Passion War (Part 1) written by Fred Hausman’s son, Eric Hausman-Houston. The Israeli researcher’s quest to find her favorite illustrator serves as a present-day backdrop to tell Fred Hausman’s harrowing story of escaping Nazi Germany at age thirteen and traveling alone to Palestine.
There, he befriended an untamable horse and King Abdullah of Jordan. He joined the Haganah and he helped save illegal Jewish immigrants. The Lost Artist chronicles Hausman’s time in the British Army up until the decisive moment of WWII’s North Africa Campaign, the El Alamein line, 65 miles west of Alexandria, Egypt, July 3, 1942, when the Nazis had won the war but didn’t know it.
Young Hausman’s journey offers personal insight into the history of Palestine and Israel, the rise of the Nazi Party, Zionism, the Holocaust, WWII, and the seeds of our present-day Middle East Crisis. The Lost Artist exposes neglected history and government coverups, including British atrocities in Palestine to both Arabs and Jews, why Winston Churchill had to perpetuate the Rommel myth, and how German resistance working at a Berlin radio station gave their lives to stop the Nazis from winning the war.
The Quest for the Medal Continues to this Day
Fred Hausman’s Distinguished Conduct Medal was unlawfully sold to a British lord under false terms. At the end of the book, there is a bonus chapter with information on these seedy misdoings, followed by documentation of Eric Hausman-Houston’s correspondence with Scotland Yard, the British Ministry of Defense, DNW Auction House, and billionaire Lord Michael Ashcroft, who is currently in possession of the stolen medal.
Author: Eric Houston
ISBN: 978-1545569887 (paperback)
Publisher: CreateSpace
Price: $17.95 (paperback); $4.99 (Kindle edition)
Page Count: 528 pp.
Availability: The Lost Artist is available online at Amazon
From the pages of The Lost Artist: Love Passion War (Part 1)
1942
Shells exploded around them as they fired their guns, discharging ear-piercing missiles back towards the enemy troops. When the barrage quieted down, they moved forward, surprised to receive no response from the enemy.
Making their way up to the wide, circular rim of the depression, there was still no shellfire. Believing to have the German troops in retreat, the plan was to cross the depression to go after them. But topping the rim and entering into the cauldron, the sky suddenly exploded.
Rommel, predicting their every move, had earlier fired the first barrage and quickly withdrew his forces beyond the depression’s far rim, causing the retaliating British shells to land on empty ground. Now ready and waiting, Rommel lured the British into a trap.