Waubonsee Community College

Survivor, Auschwitz, the death march, and my fight for freedom, Sam Pivnik

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-294) and index

autobiography

illustrationsplates

index present

non fiction

Survivor

bibliography

811206468

Sam Pivnik

Auschwitz, the death march, and my fight for freedom

Sam Pivnik is the ultimate survivor from a world that no longer exists. On fourteen occasions he should have been killed, but luck, his physical strength and his determination not to die all played a part in Sam Pivnik living to tell his extraordinary life story. In 1939, on his thirteenth birthday, his life changed forever when the Nazis invaded Poland. He survived the two ghettoes set up in his home town of Bedzin and six months on Auschwitz's notorious Rampkommando where prisoners were either taken away for entry to the camp or gassing. After this harrowing experience he was sent to work at the brutal Furstengrube mining camp. He could have died on the 'Death March' that took him west as the Third Reich collapsed and he was one of only a handful of people who swam to safety when the Royal Air Force sank the prison ship Cap Arcona, in 1945, mistakenly believing it to be carrying fleeing members of the SS. He eventually made his way to London where he found people too preoccupied with their own wartime experiences on the Home Front to be interested in what had happened to him. Now in his eighties, Sam Pivnik tells for the first time the story of his life, a true tale of survival against the most extraordinary odds

Facing the Angel -- The Garden of Eden -- The world turned upside down -- Occupation -- Day turned into night -- Descent into Hell -- The razor's edge -- The Rampe -- The Prince's mine -- Death March -- Cold comfort farm -- The Cap Ancona -- Liberation -- The Land of Milk and Honey -- A kind of justice? A kind of peace? -- Return to Eden