This remarkable World War II memoir documents the true story of a Jewish youth from Ukraine who evades death during the Holocaust by joining a transport of non-Jews conscripted for compulsory labor in Germany. Incredibly, he lives in plain sight among his enemies for almost three years.
Eighteen-year-old Sasha flees from the Nazi-occupied Dubno ghetto days before the SS death squads massacre the remaining Jewish inhabitants. He attempts to save himself by using falsified identity documents to pose as a gentile in the very heart of Hitler’s Germany. He is repeatedly forced to flee when suspicions and rumors that he might be Jewish threaten his life. Each day he faces new challenges: whether he is being questioned by the Gestapo after running away from a job or being examined by a German physician who may well discover that he is circumcised. As he moves from town to town and job to job, Sasha’s quick wit and some twists of fate allow him to survive—at least until the next time. Meeting no other Jews, he fears he may be the only Jew still alive in Europe.
Eighteen-year-old Sasha flees from the Nazi-occupied Dubno ghetto days before the SS death squads massacre the remaining Jewish inhabitants. He attempts to save himself by using falsified identity documents to pose as a gentile in the very heart of Hitler’s Germany. He is repeatedly forced to flee when suspicions and rumors that he might be Jewish threaten his life. Each day he faces new challenges: whether he is being questioned by the Gestapo after running away from a job or being examined by a German physician who may well discover that he is circumcised. As he moves from town to town and job to job, Sasha’s quick wit and some twists of fate allow him to survive—at least until the next time. Meeting no other Jews, he fears he may be the only Jew still alive in Europe.
