Miracle

Early on the morning of October 9, 1944, seven hundred boys, aged between 13 and 17, were taken out of Block 11 at Auschwitz. The night before, during a visit by Dr Josef Mengele, their identification cards had been stamped with a solitary German word – gestorben – “died” in English. They were then marched by 25 bayonet-wielding SS men to Crematorium 5, stripped, and herded into a gas chamber.

This book is the story of a true-life miracle of the five boys who were pulled from that gas chamber – the only Holocaust survivors known to have escaped such a close brush with the Nazi killing machine – and given a second chance at life. A life, of course, that would be so horrifically snatched from those around them. Five boys, five survivors whose testimonies have been drawn from extensive interviews and whose story is shared in this book for the very first time.

Interweaving the lives of the boys and the grander sweep of history in which they were held, The Miracle of Auschwitz is an unforgettable tale of hope, faith and fortitude in the face of one of the worst crimes against humanity.