The Survivor: How I Survived Six Concentration Camps and Became a Nazi Hunter - The Sunday Times Bestseller

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De Joodse Josef Lewkowicz is nog maar een tiener, wanneer hij samen met zijn familie opgepakt wordt en naar de concentratiekampen gestuurd wordt. Daar aangekomen worden de meeste van zijn familieleden rechtstreeks naar de gaskamers gestuurd, alleen hij en zijn vader worden de andere kant uitgestuurd. Al snel krijgt hij een nummer op zijn arm getatoëerd:85314. Dit wordt zijn naam voor de komende jaren. If you know anything about Nazis concentration camps these are the names you will likely recognize: The body is the first element to break out of this stage, responding by big appetites of eating and wanting more sleeping. Only after the partial replenishing of the body is the mind finally able to respond, as "feeling suddenly broke through the strange fetters which had restrained it" (p. 111). Noble, Holcomb B. (September 4, 1997). "Dr. Viktor E. Frankl of Vienna, Psychiatrist of the Search for Meaning, Dies at 92". The New York Times. p.B-7 . Retrieved 22 May 2012. Many of these camps allow visitors where you can see for yourself and feel the spectre of the murder victims around you.

Frankl concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. In a group therapy session during a mass fast inflicted on the camp's inmates trying to protect an anonymous fellow inmate from fatal retribution by authorities, Frankl offered the thought that for everyone in a dire condition there is someone looking down, a friend, family member, or even God, who would expect not to be disappointed. Frankl concludes from his experience that a prisoner's psychological reactions are not solely the result of the conditions of his life, but also from the freedom of choice he always has even in severe suffering. The inner hold a prisoner has on his spiritual self relies on having a hope in the future, and that once a prisoner loses that hope, he is doomed. As time passed, however, the prisoner's experience in a concentration camp became nothing but a remembered nightmare. What is more, he comes to believe that he has nothing left to fear "except his God" (p. 115). By July 1933, German concentration camps ( Konzentrationslager in German, or KZ) held some 27,000 people in “protective custody.” Huge Nazi rallies and symbolic acts such as the public burning of books by Jews, Communists, liberals and foreigners helped drive home the desired message of party strength and unity. In post-war Europe, Lewkowicz lived almost from hand to mouth – the family property in Poland had been appropriated by neighbours – then he travelled to South America to join a great-uncle anxious to find any relation who had survived. Resourceful and adaptable, he worked his way up from factory work and street-trading to become a successful diamond dealer, making a happy marriage and finally settling in Israel, where he lives today. How did Lewkowicz survive when so many of his family, friends and fellow Jews died? “In my mind,” he writes, “there was always hope, though I could see none.” Few names in any language prompt a sense of horror as does “Auschwitz.” When a person says “Auschwitz,” they rarely have to explain the reference; a chain of associations, images, and feelings—all of them dreadful—are borne with its utterance. Rarely does a word inflict such sharp, immediate, and lingering effects on listeners.In 1946, Lewkowicz managed to join the American military police, helped by his knowledge of German, fairly good Russian and some English. He persuaded the American authorities to allow him to hunt down Waffen-SS men, the worst killers: he could recognise their faces, voices and mannerisms through the disguises many of them would adopt. “There was one name at the top of my list: Amon Göth.” Man's Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose to each person's life through one of three ways: the completion of tasks, caring for another person, or finding meaning by facing suffering with dignity. A truly harrowing account, humanely told in fast-paced, affecting prose. You won’t be able to put it down — even in those moments where the truth feels too hard to read." — Sophy Roberts, author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia - In 1933, Jews in Germany numbered around 525,000—just one percent of the total German population. During the next six years, Nazis undertook an “Aryanization” of Germany, dismissing non-Aryans from civil service, liquidating Jewish-owned businesses and stripping Jewish lawyers and doctors of their clients. Nuremberg Laws Hitler was obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the “pure” German race, which he called “Aryan,” and with the need for “Lebensraum,” or living space, for that race to expand. In the decade after he was released from prison, Hitler took advantage of the weakness of his rivals to enhance his party’s status and rise from obscurity to power.

This is not historical fiction, this is a firsthand account of one man who, by the grace of God, survived the horrors of not one but six Nazi camps. Josef attributes his survival to ‘miracles’ and I suspect he must be right. One of the last great untold stories of the Holocaust, The Survivor is an astonishing account of one man's unbreakable spirit, unshakeable faith, and extraordinary courage in the face of evil. In an effort to punish the villains of the Holocaust, the Allies held the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46, which brought Nazi atrocities to horrifying light. Increasing pressure on the Allied powers to create a homeland for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust would lead to a mandate for the creation of Israel in 1948.In the tradition of The Boy in the Woods and By Chance Alone, The Survivor is an unbelievable yet true story of one man's endurance and his determination to not only survive the Holocaust but to bring to justice those who perpetrated great crimes against humanity. I read this book at the same time I was reading 'Sooley' by John Grisham, a fictionalized novel of a refugee family and the one basketball star son, who attempts to escape the poverty and anonymous suffering of war with his sporting efforts. The isolation, the powerful but helpless pull of family in distress but out of reach, the near freak importance of a kind word or gesture of kindness or a chance encounter. The doubt and crushing memories of those family lost to the fog of violence and chaos. That was fiction.

At only sixteen years old, Josef Lewkowicz became a number, prisoner 85314. Following the Nazi invasion of Poland, he and his father were separated from their family and herded to the Kraków-Plaszów concentration camp. Forced to carry out hard labour in brutal conditions, and to live under the constant threat of extreme violence and sudden death, before the war was over Josef would witness the unique horrors of six of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Ebensee.The Enlightenment, during the 17th and 18th centuries, emphasized religious tolerance, and in the 19th century Napoleon Bonaparte and other European rulers enacted legislation that ended long-standing restrictions on Jews. Anti-Semitic feeling endured, however, in many cases taking on a racial character rather than a religious one. reactions of depersonalization, moral deformity, bitterness, and disillusionment if he survives and is liberated. [6] Frankl observed that among the fellow inmates in the concentration camp, those who survived were able to connect with a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then immersed themselves in imagining that purpose such as conversing with an (imagined) loved one. According to Frankl, the way a prisoner imagined the future affected his longevity. Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews became routine targets for stigmatization and persecution. This culminated in Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass” in November 1938, when German synagogues were burned and windows in Jewish home and shops were smashed; some 100 Jews were killed and thousands more arrested.